Cecil vs Nanoc
Cecil
cecil.appNanoc
nanoc.denisdefreyne.comSide by side
| Figure | Cecil | Nanoc |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 1 |
| Spec score · Static site generators | 8.8 (#3) | 8.7 (#6) |
| Content sources | markdown | database |
| Deployment | The maker documents deployment recipes for platforms including Netlify, Vercel, GitHub Pages, and GitLab Pages. | 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 | 2013 | 2007 |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Incremental builds | Yes | Yes |
| Installation | Cecil can be downloaded as a PHAR file and installed globally through Homebrew on macOS, Scoop on Windows, PHIVE, or a manual Linux command. | Nanoc is installed using RubyGems with the command gem install nanoc. |
| License | Cecil is free software distributed under the EUPL-1.2 license. | Nanoc is licensed under the MIT license. |
| Multilingual support | Yes | Yes |
| Local preview server | Yes | Yes |
| Security | The maker says generated static HTML has no database or server-side script execution during visits, avoiding vulnerabilities related to dynamic PHP on the final site. | The site says static sites do not contain dynamic content and are therefore immune to most common attacks. |
| Supported languages | PHP | Ruby |
| What it does | Cecil is a PHP command-line static site generator that combines Markdown pages, media, and Twig templates to generate static websites. | Nanoc is a flexible static-site generator that transforms content such as Markdown or AsciiDoc into HTML. |
Plans
In their own words
Cecil
Cecil is a free command-line PHP application that generates static websites from Markdown pages, media, and Twig templates. It stores content in Markdown files with front matter and supports themes for changing site design. The generator can create pagination, sitemaps, redirects, robots.txt, taxonomies, RSS, and SEO metadata such as Open Graph tags, Twitter cards, and structured data. It can also produce responsive WebP and AVIF images and compress them. Multilingual content and template translation are supported, as is a local preview server. Cecil generates static HTML; its maker says site visits do not require a database or server-side script execution. Installation is documented for macOS, Windows, and Linux, but PHP 8.2 or later is required. Deployment recipes cover services including Netlify, Vercel, GitHub Pages, and GitLab Pages. The project is distributed under the EUPL-1.2 license and maintained by Arnaud Ligny. Cecil is free software at free, with no cost or usage limits stated.
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.