Q1 2021 Static Site Generators (JAMStack) report
Intro
It was 5 years ago when Matt Biilmann, CEO and Co-founder of Netlify, announced the concept of JAMStack. The concept proved to be very useful for many use cases.
JAMStack approach continues conquering the world. Probably all major frontend frameworks support now server-side rendering out of the box and there are solutions that simplify building JAMStack websites with a frontend framework of your choice.
JAMStack tooling continues to evolve and mature. With this report, I wanted to show the current state of JAMStack tools, their stats, and trends based on fresh Q1 2021 data. To make a picture more complete I aggregated data from different authoritative resources.
If interested, I recommend checking out other reports as well: Frontend Frameworks, State Management Libraries, Testing Frameworks, Build Tools and Module Bundlers, and End-to-End Testing Frameworks.
Data Sources
Data for the report came from:
- NPM - libraries downloads, releases, types, and dependencies.
- Google - search interest data.
- GitHub - stars, commits, contributors, license, and age.
- State of JavaScript Survey - libraries usage amongst developers.
- ThoughtWorks's Technology Radar data.
- Snyk - security information.
Metrics
- Stars - the total number of GitHub stars as of April 1, 2021.
- New Stars - a number of new stars in Q1 2021.
- New Stars, % - (100 * New Stars) / (Stars - New Stars)
- NPM Downloads monthly - an average monthly npm downloads number in Q1 2021.
- NPM Downloads monthly % (incr.) - an increase of the average monthly npm downloads number compared to Q4 2020.
- Search Interest, % - Google search interest average number compared to other libraries in the 01.10.2020-31.03.2021 period.
- Developer Usage, % - percentage of developers using a library according to the latest StateOfJS 2020 survey.
- ThoughtWorks Tech Radar - a "ring" where a library was put. ThoughtWorks distinguishes four rings - "Adopt", "Trial", "Assess", and "Hold". You can learn more about the Radar here.
- NPM Releases - a number of NPM releases in Q1 2021.
- Commits - a number of commits in Q1 2021.
- Contributors - a number of contributors in Q1 2021.
- Dependencies - a number of NPM packages a library has in its dependencies list.
- Types - the way typings are provided, either bundled with the package (
BUNDLED) or published to the @types organization on npm (SEPARATE). - Security - calculated by Snyk a level of security (from
AtoF) of Npm packages based on the number of vulnerabilities and their severity.A- no vulnerabilities,F- the least secure level. - Age
- License
Report
Hint: scroll horizontally to see values for all the libraries.
Each library has two links - Moiva and GitHub links. Use Moiva link to see more data about a particular library, to see historical data and trends.
Criteria | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Stars | 50K | 66K | 36K | 7K | 9.1K | 33K | 23K | 19K | 17K | 10K | 9.5K | 7.5K |
New Stars | 1.5K | 6.3K | 2.6K | 447 | 891 | 708 | 1.9K | 618 | 971 | 550 | 268 | 359 |
New Stars, % | 3.1% | 11% | 7.8% | 6.8% | 11% | 2.2% | 9.1% | 3.4% | 6% | 5.7% | 2.9% | 5.1% |
Monthly | 2M | 5.2M | 1.4M | 112K | 114K | 63K | 171K | 312K | 139K | 91K | 51K | 50K |
Monthly % (incr.) | 11% | 28% | 16% | 49% | -2% | 13% | 83% | 34% | 18% | 14% | -1% | 4% |
Search Interest, % | 10% | 33% | 22% | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - |
Developer Usage, % | 28.1% | 36.7% | 16.8% | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - |
Tech Radar | ASSESS | ASSESS | - | - | ASSESS | - | - | - | - | - | - | - |
Releases | 28 | 8 | 4 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 3 | 2 | 17 | 3 | 0 |
Commits | 615 | 495 | 168 | 25 | 76 | 12 | 299 | 22 | 41 | 141 | 26 | 28 |
Contributors | 25 | 35 | 10 | 13 | 1 | 5 | 37 | 11 | 10 | 19 | 9 | 7 |
Dependencies | 151 | 50 | 15 | 6 | 32 | 22 | 78 | 6 | 8 | 10 | 71 | 80 |
Types | BUNDLED | BUNDLED | - | - | - | SEPARATE | - | - | - | BUNDLED | BUNDLED | - |
Security | ||||||||||||
Age | 6 years | 5 years | 4 years | 3 years | 3 years | 9 years | 4 years | 3 years | 4 years | 3 years | 4 years | 3 years |
License | MIT | MIT | MIT | MIT | MIT | MIT | MIT | MIT | MIT | MIT | MIT | MIT |
Popularity: GitHub Stars
The most number of GitHub stars belongs to Next.js, a React framework. Gatsby, another React framework, and Nuxt.js, a Vue.js framework, go next with 50K and 36K stars respectively. 
Next.js got 6.3K stars in Q1 2021 and outnumbered competitors by a convincing ~4K stars margin. 
Comparing relative growth, Next.js and 11ty were on par with 11% growth. Though it's important to take into consideration, that 11% for Next.js meant 6.3K stars, while 11% for 11ty meant 891 stars. 
Popularity: NPM Downloads
Only 3 frameworks had >1M of average monthly downloads: Next.js, Gatsby and Nuxt.js.
Next.js holds 3M downloads lead over Gatsby and ~4M downloads lead over Nuxt.js. 
It was a very successful quarter for Docusaurus which NPM downloads almost doubled (83% of the increase).
Downloads of 11ty decreased by 2% which looks strange taken that the number its stars increased by 11%.
React Static seems to be not in a good shape - its downloads decreased by 1% and it got the least number of new stars, 268. 
Development Activity: commits, releases, and contributors
Gatsby, Next.js, and Docusaurus were the most actively developed projects in Q1 2021.
Gatsby got more than 600 commits from 25 contributors. 
Gatsby was also leading in the "Number of NPM releases" category - it published 28 new versions. 
26 developers contributed to Docusaurus repository in Q1 2021. That number supports the trend of Docusaurus being widely adopted. 