Eleventy vs Middleman
Eleventy
11ty.devMiddleman
middlemanapp.comSide by side
| Figure | Eleventy | Middleman |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | — |
| Free plan | Yes | — |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | — | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | — |
| Plans published | 1 | 0 |
| Spec score · Static site generators | 8.9 (#2) | 7.5 (#26) |
| Community support | The official site links to documentation, Discord, Mastodon, Bluesky, a newsletter, YouTube, and GitHub. | Users can ask questions in the Middleman community forum. |
| Content sources | markdown | markdown |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Multilingual support | Yes | Yes |
| Local preview server | Yes | Yes |
| Supported languages | HTML,Markdown,WebC,JavaScript,Liquid,Nunjucks,Handlebars,Mustache,EJS,Haml,Pug,TypeScript,JSX,MDX,Sass | Ruby |
| What it does | Eleventy is a simpler static site generator that compiles templates into HTML. | Middleman is a static site generator for building websites with tools used in modern web development. |
Plans
In their own words
Eleventy
Eleventy is a free static site generator that compiles templates into HTML. It starts with zero configuration and also allows flexible configuration as project needs change. Content can come from Markdown, and templates can use HTML, JavaScript, WebC, Liquid, Nunjucks, Handlebars, Mustache, EJS, Haml, Pug, TypeScript, JSX, MDX, Sass, and custom formats. Eleventy does not require a JavaScript framework and produces zero client-side JavaScript by default. It can fit into an existing directory structure, letting teams convert selected templates rather than an entire site. The tool includes a local preview server, CMS integration, and multilingual support. It requires JavaScript and recommends Node.js version 18 or newer; quick-start commands are provided for macOS, Linux, and Windows, and for npm, pnpm, and Yarn. Its documentation says it probably is not the right tool for single-page applications, given its defaults and full-page navigation. Eleventy supports self-hosted use and is marked MIT licensed. The homepage reports a build time of 1.93 seconds for 4,000 Markdown files.
Middleman
Middleman has no write-up on Specifiction yet; its figures are above.