Lume vs Nikola
Lume
lume.land
Nikola
getnikola.comSide by side
| Figure | Lume | Nikola |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | — |
| Windows | — | Yes |
| macOS | — | Yes |
| Linux | — | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 1 |
| Spec score · Static site generators | 8.4 (#11) | 8.8 (#4) |
| Deployment | The documentation describes deployment through GitHub Pages, GitLab Pages, Codeberg Pages, Deno Deploy, Netlify, Vercel, Cloudflare Pages, and other hosts. | Nikola sites can be hosted on any web server that serves HTML files, and the handbook lists GitHub Pages deployment support. |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Integrations | Official deployment documentation covers GitHub Pages, GitLab Pages, Codeberg Pages, Deno Deploy, Netlify, Vercel, Cloudflare Pages, Render, and other hosts. | The features page says Nikola can work with static-site CMS solutions including Dato CMS, Netlify CMS, and Contentful. |
| Product | Lume is a static site generator for Deno. | Nikola is a static site generator that turns content into a website ready to deploy. |
| Security model | The maker says Deno provides a permissions system and describes Lume's use of HTTPS imports as clean, fast, and secure. | The handbook says Nikola-generated sites do not run code on the server and describes their server stack as smaller, which it says implies less security risk. |
| Support | The project directs users to its Discord for help and ideas. | The project directs users to GitHub Discussions, a Libera.Chat IRC channel, and GitHub Issues for bug reports; indexed plugins and themes are not officially supported. |
| What it does | Lume is a static site generator for Deno. | Nikola is a static website and blog generator that turns written content into a folder of HTML files for upload to a server. |
Plans
In their own words
Lume
Lume is a free static site generator for Deno, suited to projects that keep their content in files and publish static websites. It handles Markdown and supports formats including YAML, JavaScript, TypeScript, JSX, Vento, and Nunjucks, with room to add more formats. Site data can come from JSON or YAML files, or from a database or API through JavaScript or TypeScript. Processors can alter HTML, CSS, and JavaScript assets, while plugins add options for areas such as image processing, SEO, internationalization, and template engines. Lume says its output does not add client-side JavaScript. It uses Deno and HTTPS imports to obtain project dependencies, and Deno must be installed before setup. Generated sites can be deployed through services including GitHub Pages, GitLab Pages, Codeberg Pages, Deno Deploy, Netlify, Vercel, and Cloudflare Pages. Since it generates static sites only, interactive features such as forms, comments, and search need separate approaches or integrations. Content remains in repository files that can be edited, exported, or moved.
Nikola
Nikola is a static site and blog generator that turns written content into HTML files and assets for a web server. It can build blogs, company and personal sites, software project sites, and book sites. Built-in inputs include reStructuredText, Markdown, IPython notebooks, and HTML, with plugins available for additional formats. Blog components include comments, tags, categories, archives, and RSS/Atom feeds; image galleries and code listings are also included. Nikola supports almost 40 languages out of the box, including posts in multiple languages. Sites can be hosted on any web server that serves HTML files, and the handbook lists GitHub Pages deployment. The software is written in Python 3, with Python 3.8 or later listed on the homepage, and is free under the MIT license. Users can extend it with Python plugins and make themes using Mako or Jinja2. Incremental builds use doit. Because generated sites do not run code on the server, they cannot process form input except for comments. Indexed plugins and themes are not officially supported.