Ghost vs Grav
Ghost and Grav are both CMS software. Ghost is open source under MIT, with 56k GitHub stars. Grav is open source under MIT, with 16k GitHub stars.
Which to pick
- Pick Ghost when
- You publish content and want to run paid memberships or newsletters without taking a platform cut.
- Pick Grav when
- You need a small to medium website without a database and like content in files.
Side by side
A publishing platform for blogs and newsletters with built-in memberships, paid subscriptions through Stripe, email sending and themes.
A flat-file PHP CMS that stores pages as Markdown files, with Twig themes, plugins and an optional admin panel.
Self-hosting requires Node.js and MySQL plus Mailgun for newsletters; Ghost(Pro) is the easier route.
Plugin quality varies, and large sites become slow without care.
Production-ready (both)
Self-hosted server and cloud service
Self-hosted server
JavaScript, TypeScript, Node.js and MySQL
PHP, Twig and Symfony
Open source, MIT (permissive) (both)
You can build it into a product you sell, as long as you keep its copyright notice. (both)
56k GitHub stars
16k GitHub stars
Established: started 13 years ago, latest release v6.73.0.
Established: started 12 years ago, latest release 2.2.22.
Other comparisons
More content management systems
Both sides were judged on 2026-11-03 from each project's README and GitHub data. License, age and popularity lines are worked out directly.