Pelican vs Zola
Pelican
getpelican.comZola
getzola.orgSide by side
| Figure | Pelican | 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 (#23) | 8.5 (#10) |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Hosting | Pelican generates static files that can be served by any web server or hosting service. | Zola outputs static files, so generated sites do not require a database or server to manage. |
| Integrations | Pelican can interface with version control systems and webhooks. | The documentation provides deployment guides for Netlify, Vercel, GitHub Pages, and Cloudflare Pages. |
| License | The project repository identifies its license as AGPL-3.0. | The project states that code introduced after version 0.22 is licensed under EUPL-1.2, while earlier code remains under MIT. |
| Product | Pelican is a static site generator written in Python that builds websites from text files. | Zola is a static site generator that turns content into static HTML pages. |
| Support | The documentation directs users to its feedback and contribution guidelines for help and feedback. | The maker links to documentation and a community forum for help. |
Plans
In their own words
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.