Nikola vs Zola
Nikola
getnikola.comZola
getzola.orgSide by side
| Figure | Nikola | Zola |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 1 |
| Spec score · Static site generators | 8.8 (#4) | 8.5 (#10) |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Hosting | A generated Nikola site can be hosted on any web server because it consists of HTML files and assets. | Zola outputs static files, so generated sites do not require a database or server to manage. |
| Integrations | The features page says Nikola can work with static-site CMS solutions including Dato CMS, Netlify CMS, and Contentful. | The documentation provides deployment guides for Netlify, Vercel, GitHub Pages, and Cloudflare Pages. |
| License | Nikola is released under the MIT license, while some bundled or required components use other licenses. | The project states that code introduced after version 0.22 is licensed under EUPL-1.2, while earlier code remains under MIT. |
| Product | Nikola is a static site generator that turns content into a website ready to deploy. | Zola is a static site generator that turns content into static HTML pages. |
| 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. | The maker links to documentation and a community forum for help. |
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.
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.