Cobalt vs Zola
Cobalt
cobalt-org.github.ioZola
getzola.orgSide by side
| Figure | Cobalt | Zola |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | — | Free |
| Free plan | — | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | — | Yes |
| Plans published | 0 | 1 |
| Spec score · Static site generators | 7.5 (#25) | 8.5 (#10) |
| Content sources | markdown | markdown |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Local preview server | Yes | Yes |
| Product | Cobalt is a static-site generator. | Zola is a static site generator that turns content into static HTML pages. |
| Support | The maker identifies Gitter as its main chat space and says users can also join through a Matrix room synced with Gitter. | The maker links to documentation and a community forum for help. |
| Supported languages | Rust | Rust |
| Templates | The home page says Cobalt uses a familiar template language. | Zola uses the Tera template engine, which its documentation compares to Jinja2, Liquid, and Twig. |
Plans
In their own words
Cobalt
Cobalt has no write-up on Specifiction yet; its figures are above.
Zola
Zola is a static site generator that turns Markdown content into static HTML for blogs, knowledge bases and landing pages. It runs on Linux, macOS and Windows, and can also be self-hosted. Distributed as a single executable, it includes Sass compilation and syntax highlighting. Its maker says an average site generates in less than a second, including those steps. Because the output is static files, a published site does not need a database or server to manage. Zola uses CommonMark with added support for footnotes, GitHub-flavored tables, task lists and strikethrough. It uses the Tera template engine and can create multilingual sites with language-specific configuration and content. Users can define taxonomies and generate pages for their terms, such as categories, genres or tags. Search can run without servers or third parties, and indexing is configurable. Deployment guides cover Netlify, Vercel, GitHub Pages and Cloudflare Pages. The plan is free. Windows installation documentation says Zola does not work in PowerShell ISE. Code introduced after version 0.22 is licensed under EUPL-1.2; earlier code remains under MIT.