Cecil vs Toucan
Cecil
cecil.appToucan
toucansites.comSide by side
| Figure | Cecil | Toucan |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Windows | Yes | — |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 1 |
| Spec score · Static site generators | 8.8 (#3) | 7.7 (#20) |
| Content sources | markdown | markdown |
| Deployment | The maker documents deployment recipes for platforms including Netlify, Vercel, GitHub Pages, and GitLab Pages. | Toucan's deployment guide covers publishing a Toucan-based static site with GitHub Pages. |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| 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 documentation says static HTML served by a simple file server can provide faster load times and better security than pages generated dynamically for each request. |
| Supported languages | PHP | Swift |
| Templates | Cecil uses the Twig template engine and supports themes. | The official starter templates include options for documentation sites and blogs, with features such as guide navigation, article search, and customization. |
| What it does | Cecil is a PHP command-line static site generator that combines Markdown pages, media, and Twig templates to generate static websites. | Toucan is a Markdown-based static site generator written in Swift. |
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.