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Hugo vs Gatsby

Security & risk comparison · Updated October 2026

How does Hugo compare to Gatsby on security, AI-readiness, and total cost of ownership? We scored both across 7 dimensions using NVD/NIST CVE data, GitHub metrics, and our census of the Tranco top 100,000.

Key finding

Hugo scores 75/100 overall versus Gatsby's 60/100. Hugo has 5 total CVEs compared to Gatsby's 15, giving it a smaller vulnerability surface. (Source: WebPulse framework scoring, NIST NVD and CISA KEV, updated October 2026)

Who actually runs Hugo and Gatsby

Share of sites with an identified platform, from WebPulse's scan of the Tranco top 100,000 and our Common Crawl census.

WhereHugoGatsby
Top 1,000 1.9% (4) 0.5% (1)
Top 10,000 1.1% (29) 1.5% (39)
Top 100,000 0.6% (164) 0.9% (256)
Wider web0.2%0.1%

Highest-ranked sites on Hugo

  1. ntp.org#71
  2. doi.org#215
  3. brave.com#423
  4. verisign.com#672
  5. letsencrypt.org#1,144

Highest-ranked sites on Gatsby

  1. b-cdn.net#108
  2. utorrent.com#1,445
  3. home.pl#1,783
  4. pusher.com#1,853
  5. wa.link#1,950

Detected from each homepage's HTML, headers and cookies in September 2026. Methodology

75
Hugo
Modern · GO
vs
60
Gatsby
Modern · JAVASCRIPT
Dimension-by-dimension breakdown
security Hugo
92
78
Hugo
Gatsby
performance Tie
65
65
Hugo
Gatsby
ecosystem Hugo
65
25
Hugo
Gatsby
ai readiness Hugo
88
60
Hugo
Gatsby
developer experience Tie
70
70
Hugo
Gatsby
market trajectory Hugo
35
25
Hugo
Gatsby
cost of ownership Tie
90
90
Hugo
Gatsby
Security details
Metric Hugo Gatsby
Total CVEs 5 15
Critical CVEs 0 1
Exploited (KEV) 0 0
CVEs last year 1 4
Avg CVSS 3.0 4.2
Security score 92/100 78/100
Recommended
Hugo

Hugo scores 75/100. Verdict: Recommended.

Acceptable
Gatsby

Gatsby scores 60/100. Verdict: Acceptable.

Quick facts
Hugo
Category: Ssg
Language: GO
First release: 2013
Generation: Modern
Trend: Rising
Market share: 0.1%
Gatsby
Category: Ssg
Language: JAVASCRIPT
First release: 2015
Generation: Modern
Trend: Stable
Market share: 0.3%
Related briefings
Hugo v0.168.0: Go 1.27.2 security fixes, theme limits
October 14, 2026
Hugo update fixes ways an untrusted theme could pull files into a site
September 29, 2026
Zero-CVE Frameworks Gain Share: Hugo, Astro, HTMX
July 3, 2026
Gatsby: 55K Stars, 183 Commits. Developer Love Dies Quietly.
June 21, 2026
HTMX Surpassed Gatsby and SvelteKit. 11,482 Sites at 10M.
June 2026
Joomla: 352,042 Detections. More Than Astro, SvelteKit, Remix, and Gatsby Combined.
June 2026
More comparisons
Hugo vs WordPress Hugo vs Next.js Hugo vs Drupal Hugo vs React Hugo vs Angular Hugo vs Django Hugo vs Laravel Hugo vs Vue.js Hugo vs Astro Hugo vs SvelteKit Hugo vs Rails Gatsby vs WordPress Gatsby vs Next.js Gatsby vs Drupal Gatsby vs React Gatsby vs Angular Gatsby vs Django Gatsby vs Laravel Gatsby vs Vue.js Gatsby vs Astro Gatsby vs SvelteKit Gatsby vs Rails

Data sourced from NVD/NIST CVE database, GitHub API, and WebPulse framework scanner. Scores calculated using a 7-dimension model covering security, performance, ecosystem health, AI-readiness, developer experience, market trajectory, and cost of ownership. Updated October 2026.