Build Performance

How fast each static site generator builds, especially as content scales up.

Astro

Fast for typical content sites thanks to Vite’s tooling, though as a JavaScript-based tool it doesn’t match the raw throughput of compiled-binary generators like Hugo or Zola on very large sites.

VuePress

Reasonable build performance for small-to-medium sites, but VuePress 1’s webpack-based pipeline is noticeably slower than Vite-based alternatives at larger scale.

VitePress

Faster than VuePress thanks to Vite, though like other JS-based tools it still trails Go/Rust-compiled generators on very large sites.

Gatsby

Historically criticized for slow build times on large sites despite incremental build features, one of the practical reasons many teams moved to faster alternatives like Astro.

Docusaurus

Adequate build performance for typical documentation sites, but as a webpack/React-based tool it can slow down noticeably on very large docs sets with thousands of pages.

Eleventy

Fast for a JavaScript-based tool, since it has a comparatively simple architecture with no client-side framework or bundler overhead baked in by default.

Hugo

Overwhelmingly fast — routinely builds thousands of pages in a few seconds, widely cited as the fastest generator in this group, thanks to Go’s compiled performance and heavy use of concurrency.

Jekyll

The slowest generator in this group on large sites, since Ruby’s execution model and Jekyll’s build process don’t parallelize as aggressively as Hugo’s or Zola’s.

Zola

Very fast, close behind Hugo, benefiting from Rust’s compiled performance — a common choice for teams who want Hugo-like speed with a different templating language.