Bridgetown vs Nanoc
Bridgetown
bridgetownrb.comNanoc
nanoc.denisdefreyne.comSide by side
| Figure | Bridgetown | Nanoc |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | — | Free |
| Free plan | — | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | — |
| Self-hosted | Yes | — |
| Plans published | 0 | 1 |
| Spec score · Static site generators | 8.0 (#12) | 8.7 (#6) |
| CMS integration | Yes | No |
| Content sources | markdown | database |
| Deployment | Static output can be deployed to any server that supports HTML, CSS, and JavaScript; the site recommends Render for full-stack production setups. | Nanoc integrates with various deployment mechanisms and provides a nanoc deploy command, with examples for Git, rsync, GitHub Pages, Bitbucket, GitLab Pages and Netlify. |
| Founded | 2020 | 2007 |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Incremental builds | Yes | Yes |
| License | The Bridgetown source code is licensed under MIT. | Nanoc is licensed under the MIT license. |
| Multilingual support | Yes | Yes |
| Local preview server | Yes | Yes |
| Security | The plugins directory lists a plugin that adds a Content Security Policy in a meta tag. | The site says static sites do not contain dynamic content and are therefore immune to most common attacks. |
| Supported languages | Ruby,JavaScript | Ruby |
| What it does | Bridgetown is a Ruby-powered progressive site generator that compiles content, layouts, and components into a website. | Nanoc is a flexible static-site generator that transforms content such as Markdown or AsciiDoc into HTML. |
Plans
In their own words
Bridgetown
Bridgetown is a free site generator for building static sites, full-stack applications or a combination of both. It compiles Markdown, layouts and components into HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Static publishing features include permalinks, Git-based content deployment, atomic builds, data pipelines and pagination. Collections, taxonomies and content relationships organize material, which can be generated at build time or in real time and connected to a headless CMS or other web APIs. For full-stack applications, its Roda backend supports dynamic routes, server APIs and database connections such as PostgreSQL. Templates can use ERB, Serbea, Streamlined or Liquid; components support modular views, web components and Markdown inclusion. The frontend build system includes esbuild and PostCSS, and custom Ruby plugins can extend builds and content. Static output can be deployed anywhere that serves HTML, CSS and JavaScript files. Bridgetown supports Ruby and JavaScript, and its setup guides cover macOS, Fedora and Ubuntu Linux, and Windows through Windows Subsystem for Linux. Installation requires GCC and Make, Ruby 3.3 or newer, and Node 22.21 or newer.
Nanoc
Nanoc is a free static-site generator that turns content such as Markdown or AsciiDoc into HTML. It is a command-line application for local site development and generating finished sites for deployment, not a CMS; content is usually managed on the filesystem. Its scope ranges from personal blogs to corporate websites. Free-form metadata lets pages take different roles, and markup options include Markdown, AsciiDoc and Textile, with eRuby, Haml and Mustache among its template languages. Users can write custom filters and helpers or bring in data from databases and web APIs. Nanoc supports incremental builds, multilingual sites and a local preview server. Deployment integrations include Git, rsync, GitHub Pages, Bitbucket, GitLab Pages and Netlify, and the tool can run checks before deployment. Ruby 3.1 or later is required, with CRuby needed for guaranteed support. macOS and Linux are officially supported; Windows has limitations and is not officially supported. Nanoc is MIT-licensed.