10+ Best Static Site Generators to Create Web Pages for Free

A top-notch static site generator can make website building more enjoyable and less exhausting. It allows you to focus on other crucial aspects of your website, ensuring it achieves its goals.

A static site generator can use customized web templates, blend them with data from various sources, and quickly generate and publish web pages. This enables you to create new pages and content without relying on CMS, plugins, or third-party services. 

The best static site generators can efficiently produce high-quality pages while maintaining precision and flexibility. 

They also offer a wide range of templates, themes, and plugin-related features, as well as the ability to incorporate content from various sources. This is why static site generators are becoming increasingly popular every day.

I’ve compiled a list of the best static site generators in this article. This will help you choose the perfect tool for your next static website. 

But before we review these tools, let’s first understand how the static site generator works. Second, what’s the difference between static and dynamic sites? And what are the benefits of having a static site?

How Does a Static Site Generator Work?

A static site generator is a tool that automatically creates a complete static HTML website using raw data and a set of templates. 

It streamlines the process of coding individual HTML pages and prepares them for user access. Because these HTML pages are pre-built, they can load swiftly in users’ web browsers.

Static site generators offer an alternative to Content Management Systems (CMS), another tool for managing web content, generating webpages, and applying templates. 

This means a template is a reusable format for web content; developers use templates to avoid repeatedly duplicating the same formatting. Static site generators are typically associated with the JAMstack web development approach.

What’s the Difference Between Static and Dynamic Sites?

Static Websites

A static website consists of a set number of pre-made files saved on a web server. These files are written in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, which are known as “client-side” languages because they run within the user’s web browser. 

When a user asks for a specific page using a URL, the server sends back the HTML file associated with that URL, along with any related CSS and JavaScript files.

During this process, the web server doesn’t modify the files before sending them to the user, so the web page will appear identical to everyone who views it. The content remains “static,” and the only way to change the website’s appearance is by manually editing the files.

However, this doesn’t mean static websites can’t have interactive or engaging features. They can include clickable links and buttons, images and videos, calls to action (CTAs), forms, downloadable content, and animations created using CSS or JavaScript. 

With sufficient expertise, you can create a static website that looks quite appealing. Nevertheless, a static site will always maintain the same appearance for all users.

Typical examples of static websites include personal resumes, portfolios, brochure-style sites, single-page landing pages, and other informational websites that don’t require personalized content or frequent updates. 

These websites are typically small, consisting of three to four pages or fewer, and have limited content.

Dynamic Websites

In contrast, dynamic websites rely on client-side and server-side scripting languages, such as JavaScript, PHP, ASP, or Python, as well as databases for storing and retrieving data. 

When a user visits a dynamic website, the site can change through code executed in the browser or on the server. But the result is still an HTML page displayed in the web browser.

To create dynamic content, these websites use a mix of server-side and client-side scripting. Client-side scripting, typically done with JavaScript, executes in the browser, whereas server-side scripting runs on the server before sending content to the user’s browser.

The main difference between static and dynamic websites is that dynamic ones generate content in real-time. This adaptation is based on user input or other factors, providing a more interactive and customized browsing experience. 

They enable features such as user registration, content management systems, e-commerce capabilities, and more.

Here’s a quick summary of the difference between Static and Dynamic sites:

Static Website	Dynamic Website
It has friendly development costs.	Higher development cost
Static website loads more quickly than a dynamic one.	A dynamic website is slower than a static one.
Website development involves using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.	It supports server-side languages such as Node.js and PHP.
It’s impossible to interact with the database.	You can interact with the database.
The content of web pages cannot be altered during runtime.	The content of web pages can be modified.
It features a content management system.	The content could vary each time the page is loaded.
There are no content management features.	Easy-to-use cookies
It is difficult to use cookies	Easy to use cookies
Has robust security	It has average security

What are the Benefits of Using a Static Site Generator?

Here are some benefits you’ll come across when working with SSG:

1. Better Performance

Many CMS apps have caching systems that store and reuse pages for efficiency. However, there’s still some work involved in handling and updating these cached pages.

On the other hand, static websites can generate pages in advance and keep them ready for an indefinite period. They can also reduce file sizes before publishing, ensuring a quick loading experience. 

These static sites can be easily distributed worldwide through Content Delivery Networks (CDNs). A static site will consistently outperform a CMS-based site with a similar design.

2. Speed

Static assets are naturally quicker than server-rendered assets because they don’t require an application server or a database to generate pages. Moreover, static assets can be distributed through a Content Delivery Network (CDN) instead of a regular web server, enhancing your website’s speed and SEO.

However, it’s essential to remember that relying solely on static assets doesn’t guarantee a fast website. Developers can still slow down a site using excessive client-side JavaScript or poorly optimized images. Nonetheless, a well-constructed site using a static site generator is set up for exceptional speed.

3. Security and Reliability

While no website can be completely immune to security threats, static assets offer limited opportunities for attack. There’s no database to target or application server to exploit. When hosted on a Content Delivery Network (CDN) at the edge, there isn’t even a single web server that could be vulnerable.

Static sites are also highly reliable compared to traditional server-based applications. They don’t rely on a database connection that could fail, and there are no server runtime errors. 

Even if a new build encounters issues, the site remains accessible with the previous assets. Additionally, static assets can easily handle sudden spikes in traffic without requiring any special adjustments.

4. Flexibility

Static websites can be generated using various frameworks, allowing developers to utilize their preferred programming languages and tools, such as JavaScript, Ruby, React, Vue, and others. This flexibility makes building and maintaining the site more convenient. 

It also helps optimize your cloud infrastructure usage and simplifies development by reducing dependencies.

Furthermore, static sites offer scalability by enabling content distribution across different platforms without needing content reauthoring. A static structure can readily adapt to evolving requirements for your website or application.

5. Version Control

CMS relies on a database, and this means that if you delete a page or its content, you either need to have revision history enabled in your CMS to restore a previous version or maintain regular database backups for such rollbacks.

In contrast, a static site with version control enables you to effortlessly revert to a previous site and content version without requiring database adjustments.

How to Use Dynamic Content in a Static Website

You may encounter situations where you need to collect user information and display data from external sources on your static website. So, in those cases, how can you get static website generators to include dynamic content without compromising performance?

The best way to embed dynamic content on a static website is by using a third-party HTML widget generator, such as Elfsight.

For example, let’s assume you want to add a form widget to your static website. Generate the widget code after building the widget using the following tool:

The widget code can be copied from your Elfsight dashboard.

Now, please copy and paste the embed code where you want to display it on your static website.

<script src="https://static.elfsight.com/platform/platform.js" async></script>
<div class="elfsight-app-d716ceab-7a95-4993-bbe6-e0918aec1153" data-elfsight-app-lazy></div>

Here’s a video that demonstrates how to add dynamic content to a static website and install third-party HTML widgets.

In this video, you will find how to add a client’s logos widget, embed Google Reviews on website, use accordion widget, display Microsoft Document using a file viewer widget, put LinkedIn company page feed, add age verification to HTML website, show popup subscription widget and finally add an HTML form widget with upload field.

Also, you can embed dynamic content widgets such as social proof widgets, social media plugins, and cookie consent widgets.

No code Static Site Generators to Build Entire Websites

These static site generators do not require coding skills; they provide visual page builders that allow you to create web page elements by dragging and dropping.

Brizy Website Builder

Brizy is one of the best no-code static website generators, offering various features, including 36+ elements (e.g., accordions, countdown timers, social media icons, tabs, and table widgets), custom SEO settings, and clean, optimized code.

Key Features:

• Layouts: Brizy Cloud comprises 180+ beautiful web design templates for different industries (e.g., construction, health, automotive, non-profit, beauty, events, and business).
• Elements: The no-code website builder comprises over 30 elements, including buttons, maps, galleries, and timelines, to help you design your static web page precisely as you envision it.
• Blocks: Blocks let you add different sections to your web pages, such as Gallery, CTA, Team showcase, Testimonials, Headers & Footers, and Hero.
• Styling & Effects: Custom margin & padding, custom attributes, custom CSS, and effects for entrance, hover, and scroll.
• Popups: Create popups, integrate them with your email autoresponder, and collect emails.
• Generate multi-page static websites: Create unlimited web pages, and Brizy will generate static HTML web pages for each one.
• Optimized code and files: HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files will be optimized and ready to publish on your server. All the images will be stored under the “Assets” folder, allowing you to locate them easily and make changes, such as compressing them using an image compressor like ShortPixel.

Create your landing page or multi-page website on Brizy Cloud and select the “Export HTML files” option under the publishing options.

Brizy Pricing

In the Brizy pricing guide, we explained the differences among Brizy plans in detail. In brief, static website generation is available on Brizy for the Agency ($69/month) and White Label ($89/month) plans.

Best Static Site Generators to Create Web Pages

Hugo

Hugo is an open-source static site generator written in Go. It can swiftly turn Markdown content files into HTML files with customizable themes. You can easily put these HTML files online.

It’s user-friendly and doesn’t require special permissions, databases, or external software. You can connect Hugo sites to cloud-based CMS tools like Netlify CMS, CloudCannon, or Forestry, allowing non-technical content editors to manage content. 

Hugo is compatible with various operating systems, making it versatile for hosting on your preferred server or content delivery network (CDN). This includes options like S3, GitHub Pages, and Dropbox.

Key Features 

• Multiple Themes: Hugo offers over 300 themes, making it easy to use while still providing the power to create complex websites.
• Blistering Speed: It stands out as the quickest tool in its category, with the average website building in under a second, thanks to its speed of less than 1 millisecond per page.
• Robust Content Management: This Static site generator can handle limitless content types, menus, dynamic API-driven content, taxonomies, and other features, all without the need for plugins.
• Multilingual and i18n: It has complete internationalization (i18n) support for websites in multiple languages, maintaining the same user-friendly development experience you can appreciate in single-language sites.
• Built-in Templates: Hugo comes with ready-made templates that make it easy to handle tasks like analytics, SEO, commenting, and more.
• Custom Outputs: The platform enables you to generate your content in various formats, such as JSON or AMP, and simplifies the customization of these formats.

Next.js

Next.js is a web development framework developed by the private firm Vercel and is open-source. It’s designed to facilitate the creation of React-based web applications, offering server-side rendering and generating static websites. It provides tools for data retrieval, dynamic API routing, streamlined builds, and more.

Key Features

• Loading UI and Streaming: The specific file loading.js assists in designing a useful Loading User Interface (UI) using React Suspense. By following this approach, you can display an instant loading state from the server while the content for a section of a route is loading. The new content is automatically switched in as soon as the rendering finishes.
• Route Handlers: You can craft personalized request handlers for a specific route by utilizing the Web Request and Response APIs.
• React Server Component: React and Next.js enable you to build hybrid web applications, where certain portions of your code can be rendered on the server or the client side. This section provides insights into the distinctions among these rendering environments, strategies, and execution times.
• Built-in CSS Support: This framework enables you to import CSS files into a JavaScript (JS) file using styled-jsx. Because it offers styles for both the client and server sides, you’ll immediately see an established design when you visit a website. Next.js offers various options for styling your application, such as Global CSS, CSS Modules, Tailwind CSS, Sass, and CSS-in-JS.
• Middleware: It allows you to execute code before a request is completed. Subsequently, depending on the incoming request, you can alter the response by redirecting it, rewriting it, adjusting the request or response headers, or providing a direct response.
• Hot Code Reloading: Next.js provides hot code reloading, which means that if you make any code changes, the page refreshes rather than the entire application.

Gatsby

Gatsby is a free-to-use tool for generating static websites (SSG). It’s built upon the React frontend development framework and utilizes technologies like Webpack and GraphQL. 

It is handy for constructing static sites that double as progressive web apps, adhere to the most up-to-date web standards, and prioritize speed and security.

Gatsby’s websites function on the Jamstack architecture, which relies on JavaScript, APIs, and HTML markup. This eliminates the need for database queries or server-side programming languages. 

This setup enables sites to be hosted via object storage services or content delivery networks (CDNs). It results in faster loading times, simplified hosting, and more straightforward development processes.

Key Features

• Extensive Open-Source Ecosystem: The primary advantage of Gatsby is its robust open-source community. With robust API hooks, developers can tailor Gatsby to their needs throughout the building process. This includes importing data, converting data formats, or integrating third-party tools. The Gatsby community has developed over 3,000 plugins, making it likely that you’ll find a pre-made solution to meet your needs.
• Built for performance: Gatsby prioritizes performance when constructing websites. Pre-rendering pages and minimizing the reliance on servers to generate content significantly enhances the user experience. In a particular test, the Gatsby static site generator loaded twice as quickly as a React application and five times as quickly as a particularly complex site.
• Integrate with Third-party Platform: The platform is intentionally designed for seamless integration with third-party platforms, enabling developers to import data from various sources swiftly. This enhances the user experience and provides greater flexibility during development.
• Integrates with headless CMSes: A headless CMS separates content storage from its display, allowing you to use the content on various frontends without being tied to a specific backend. This is especially useful for websites with many digital touchpoints, such as modern online stores. Gatsby is compatible with most headless content management systems (CMS) platforms.
• Gatsby’s Documentation: The Gatsby tutorial sets a high standard for open-source documentation. It’s easy to understand, covering everything from setting up your development environment to getting started with the essential tools, and providing a good understanding of what Gatsby is all about.

Eleventy

Eleventy, often abbreviated as 11ty, is a straightforward and robust tool for creating static websites. It leverages JavaScript to convert data and templates into HTML pages. 

It’s especially suitable for beginners, offering speedy website builds and delivering fast-loading websites as a default feature. Additionally, it boasts a vibrant and welcoming community.

Eleventy shines when it comes to content-focused websites and is trusted by prominent organizations like Google, Netlify, MIT, CERN, the A11y Project, ESLint, and others.

Because Eleventy generates pages in advance, they can be delivered swiftly via a Content Delivery Network (CDN). Furthermore, Eleventy doesn’t produce client-side JavaScript, which enhances your site’s loading speed.

Key Features

• JavaScript-friendly: It was created as a JavaScript option for Jekyll. It doesn’t rely on any specific client-side JavaScript framework or library, so it doesn’t impose any particular choices on your frontend technology.
• Flexible configuration: Eleventy doesn’t need any configuration out of the box, but it offers versatile choices for a personalized setup. It’s deliberately designed to work independently of frameworks, build processes, and other tools, allowing you to tailor it to your preferences.
• Multiple Languages: This platform supports various template languages, giving you the flexibility to choose one or use them all within a single project. These languages include HTML (.html), Markdown (.md), WebC (.webc), JavaScript (.11ty.js), Liquid (.liquid), Nunjucks, etc. This versatility allows you to mix and match these languages as needed, making it possible for a project to transition to or adopt Eleventy gradually over time.
• Adaptable Project Structure: Eleventy operates within your project’s current folder arrangement and generates HTML using the templates, content, and data you provide.

Hexo

Hexo.io is a quick and easy tool for making static websites and blogs. It’s built with Node.js and can be installed effortlessly with NPM. 

This tool features numerous useful functions for quickly creating, building, and launching your website. Hexo features an intuitive asset management system that enables you to arrange and upload your files when deploying your website easily.

Just like Jekyll, Hexo can also help you migrate your content from other popular platforms, such as WordPress.

Key Features

• Themes: It offers an extensive collection of over 390 stunning themes that are rich in features and can be customized to your liking. You can even make your themes using compatible template engines.
• Plugins: It provides robust APIs that allow for unlimited customization. Numerous plugins support a wide range of template engines like Pug, EJS, Nunjucks, and more. You can effortlessly incorporate it with NPM packages such as Less/Sass, Babel, PostCSS, and others.
• One-Command Deployment: It permits you to deploy your site to platforms like GitHub Pages or Heroku with just a single command.
• Blazing Fast: Its generating speed is breakneck, thanks to Node.js. It can build hundreds of files in just a matter of seconds.
• Detailed Documentation: Hexo offers comprehensive documentation that covers everything from installing its command-line tools to setting up your website, generating content, and publishing it.
• Markdown Support: It supports all the features of GitHub Flavored Markdown, including most Octopress plugins.

Gridsome

Gridsome SSG is designed for Vue.js, a JavaScript framework focusing on rapidly creating web pages. With Gridsome, you can easily gather data from various sources, including content management systems, files (such as JSON or Markdown), and APIs. It leverages modern technologies like GraphQL and Node.js.

When working on your project locally, Gridsome provides instant hot reloading, allowing you to see your changes immediately. You won’t need external servers or databases, as all operations occur directly on your project files.

Gridsome provides a more streamlined knowledge base, featuring code splitting and link prefetching to ensure speedy page loading. 

Key Features

• Easy to install: Gridsome includes a CLI (Command-Line Interface) that simplifies project creation. You only have to install it once globally, and it will be available for all your future project creation needs.
• Super-Fast: Gridsome ensures top-notch performance for each page by implementing the PRPL pattern, which optimizes page loading. It automatically provides code splitting, progressive image loading, asset optimization, and link prefetching. As a result, Gridsome websites typically achieve nearly perfect page speed scores without any additional configuration.
• Simple Deployment: With Gridsome, you don’t need servers or databases; use files. You can deploy your entire website to a Content Delivery Network (CDN) and let it run on its own. A Gridsome site can effortlessly manage thousands to millions of visitors without any issues and won’t incur expensive server expenses.
• SEO-friendly: Gridsome websites load as static HTML and transform into fully functional Vue.js-powered single-page applications (SPAs). This approach allows search engines to crawl and index the content, improving SEO rankings easily.
• PWA-ready: Gridsome creates static progressive web apps (PWAs) that load essential HTML, CSS, and JavaScript initially, followed by prefetching subsequent pages. This enables you to navigate swiftly without page reloads, even when offline.

Nikola

Nikola is a Python 3 (3.8+) software that’s free and open-source, using the MIT license. Initially, it was designed for creating blogs, but it can also be used for various websites and even as a content management system (CMS). 

However, it’s essential to note that when using Nikola, the content you display to users should be your own, not something generated by the user. One key feature of Nikola-based sites is that they don’t execute any code on the server, which means they can’t process user input in forms.

Key Features

• Host anywhere: You can easily host a Nikola website on any web server, regardless of size. It consists of simple HTML files and associated assets.
• Easily extensible: It allows you to create a plugin with a few lines of Python code to incorporate any desired feature. Alternatively, you can design your theme using Mako or Jinja2. You can also explore the Plugin and Theme Indexes to discover pre-made solutions.
• Built-in components: Nikola includes all the essential tools to construct a contemporary website, featuring features such as blogs (with tags, comments, categories, and archives), user-friendly image galleries, and code listings.
• Multiple input formats: This platform accepts input in various formats, including IPython (Jupyter) Notebooks, Markdown, reStructuredText, and HTML.
• User-friendly: It features a user-friendly interface to help you start quickly and streamline your tasks. You won’t have to remember complex header details to create a post.
• Fast rebuilds: Nikola uses doit, which enables incremental rebuilds. This means it only rebuilds the pages that require updating, conserving CPU resources, time, and upload bandwidth.

Statiq

Statiq is a powerful platform for generating static websites. It’s built on the Statiq Framework, allowing you to easily expand or customize it beyond its basic capabilities.

The simplest way to start using Statiq Web is to install Statiq.Web package in a .NET Core console application and configure everything using the bootstrapper.

Unlike other static generators that come as standalone executables, Statiq is a framework that operates within your console application.

Key Features

• Data Agility: Statiq can handle YAML, JSON, and XML formats. It’s built to seamlessly integrate any data format into any context. Whether you’re working with data files or front matter, feel free to use the data format that best suits you.
• Ultimate Flexibility: Statiq is designed to provide a straightforward and user-friendly experience, particularly in applications like Statiq Web. However, it also allows total customization and control when you want to expand or utilize the full Statiq Framework. You don’t need to compromise your creative vision because of your static generator.
• Templating Choice: Statiq supports various types of content and provides templates that match those content types. It currently supports Markdown, Razor, and plain HTML.
• Deployment Built-In: Statiq includes built-in deployment features for common scenarios, such as Netlify and Azure App Service. It’s also planning to add support for GitHub Pages, AWS, and other deployment options soon.

Pricing:

If you wish to use Statiq Web and Statiq Docs for commercial purposes, you’ll need to obtain a private license, which costs $50. This license covers all releases within the current major version and is required for each developer.

Docusaurus

Docusaurus is a free, open-source static site generator (SSG) made by the Facebook team and based on React. It’s excellent for building websites using Markdown content and particularly handy for teams aiming to publish documentation.

This software is attractive because it’s simple and allows your technical writers to concentrate on content creation. It’s also connected to GitHub, ensuring your documentation syncs with your software releases.

Key Features

• Powered by MDX: You can write your docs and blog posts in MDX, and Docusaurus will turn them into static HTML files that can be easily served. You can even include React components in your Markdown using MDX.
• Built Using React: You can expand and personalize your project’s design by creating React components. Use the adaptable framework to set up your website layout, utilizing the data generated by Docusaurus plugins.
• Ready for Translations: It allows you to use git, Crowdin, or any other translation management tool to translate your documentation and then deploy it separately.
• Content Search: Docusaurus utilizes Algolia’s documentation search to simplify locating information within your documentation. 
• Document Versioning: It ensures your documentation remains aligned with project updates.

Jekyll

Jekyll is a simple, adaptable, and blog-friendly static site generator that powers GitHub Pages. It remains one of the most popular SSGs. 

It is built using Ruby, featuring excellent documentation and an active, responsive community. You can use Jekyll alongside front-end frameworks like Bootstrap.

While Jekyll starts with a minimal setup by default, you’ll discover many themes and plugins when configuring a custom domain for your static site. 

Jekyll takes Markdown or Textile content and Liquid templates, creating a fully static website set to be hosted by web servers like Apache HTTP Server, Nginx, or others.

If you’re experienced with WordPress development, you’ll find Jekyll’s Liquid templating engine easy to learn and use.

You can link Jekyll’s websites to cloud-based CMS tools like  Forestry, CloudCannon, or Siteleaf. This enables content editors to modify the website’s content without requiring coding skills.

Conclusion on Best Static Site Generators 

The best static site generator for your project will depend on your unique needs and requirements, as each has a unique set of benefits and drawbacks.

When selecting a static site generator, it is critical to consider factors such as performance, ease of use, and community support. Furthermore, it is crucial to understand the generator’s limitations, including the built-in templates and the required knowledge of specific languages or frameworks.