Roq vs Zola
Roq
iamroq.devZola
getzola.orgSide by side
| Figure | Roq | 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 |
| Plans published | 1 | 1 |
| Spec score · Static site generators | 7.9 (#14) | 8.5 (#10) |
| Content sources | markdown | markdown |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Multilingual support | No | Yes |
| Local preview server | Yes | Yes |
| Product | Roq is a Java and Quarkus powered static site generator for building websites and blogs. | Zola is a static site generator that turns content into static HTML pages. |
| Support | The documentation invites users to report missing information by editing the docs, and the site links to the Roq GitHub repository. | The maker links to documentation and a community forum for help. |
| Supported languages | Java | Rust |
Plans
In their own words
Roq
Roq is a free, open-source static site generator built with Java and Quarkus. It creates websites and blogs from Markdown and outputs static files for GitHub Pages, Netlify, or another static server. The project is aimed at AI users and coders, including developers who want zero configuration with customization in Java. Development mode provides a local preview server and live reload, while a browser WYSIWYG editor supports content editing and previewing. Markdown works by default, with plugins for AsciiDoc, tagging, search, diagrams, series, and sitemaps. The default theme includes a blog layout, dark mode, sidebar navigation, responsive design, and social links. Roq bundles CSS, JavaScript, and web assets with esbuild and can use npm packages through mvnpm without Node.js. A GitHub Action supports publishing, and GitLab CI is documented. The CLI installs through JBang on Linux, macOS, and Windows.
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.