Ghost vs Webflow
Ghost and Webflow are both CMS software. Ghost is open source under MIT, with 56k GitHub stars. Webflow is a commercial product from Webflow.
Which to pick
- Pick Ghost when
- You publish content and want to run paid memberships or newsletters without taking a platform cut.
- Pick Webflow when
- A marketing team or designer wants pixel-level control of a site without developers, and the site fits Webflow's CMS limits.
Side by side
A publishing platform for blogs and newsletters with built-in memberships, paid subscriptions through Stripe, email sending and themes.
A visual website builder that produces clean HTML and CSS, with a CMS, hosting and interactions.
Self-hosting requires Node.js and MySQL plus Mailgun for newsletters; Ghost(Pro) is the easier route.
Site plans plus workspace seats add up, CMS item limits apply, and moving off it means rebuilding.
Production-ready (both)
Self-hosted server and cloud service
Cloud service
JavaScript, TypeScript, Node.js and MySQL
Not published
Open source, MIT (permissive)
Closed source, sold by Webflow
You can build it into a product you sell, as long as you keep its copyright notice.
Closed source: you use it under the maker's terms and cannot change or resell the code.
56k GitHub stars
460 Wikipedia readers a month on phones
Established: started 13 years ago, latest release v6.73.0.
Not known
Other comparisons
More content management systems
Both sides were judged on 2026-11-03 from makers' descriptions, Wikipedia, READMEs and GitHub data. License, age and popularity lines are worked out directly.