Nikola vs Toucan
Nikola
getnikola.comToucan
toucansites.comSide by side
| Figure | Nikola | Toucan |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Windows | Yes | — |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | — |
| Plans published | 1 | 1 |
| Spec score · Static site generators | 8.8 (#4) | 7.7 (#20) |
| Deployment | Nikola sites can be hosted on any web server that serves HTML files, and the handbook lists GitHub Pages deployment support. | Toucan's deployment guide covers publishing a Toucan-based static site with GitHub Pages. |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Hosting | A generated Nikola site can be hosted on any web server because it consists of HTML files and assets. | Toucan says sites can be hosted for free on GitHub Pages. |
| Installation limits | The getting-started guide warns Linux distribution packages may be outdated and says the Ubuntu package is broken and unsupported. | The installation overview says that during the beta release Toucan is available only for macOS and Linux, with Windows support coming soon. |
| Support | 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. | Toucan's contact page invites questions about the generator and inquiries from people looking to build a website with it. |
| What it does | Nikola is a static website and blog generator that turns written content into a folder of HTML files for upload to a server. | Toucan is a Markdown-based static site generator written in Swift. |
Plans
In their own words
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.