Choosing a content management tool means balancing publishing needs with confidence that a project is maintained and usable today. For August 2026, these ToolVitals results compare open/source-visible content management tools using the supplied health, shipping, openness, license, and ToolVitals data.
The supplied ordering uses the ToolVitals score first, then health and shipping to break ties. GitHub stars are context only and do not determine placement.
Rankings
| Rank | Tool | Openness | License | Health | Shipping | GitHub Stars | Score | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ghost | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 98 | 98 | 55075 | 98 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 2 | EmDash CMS | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 98 | 97 | 11997 | 98 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 3 | Wagtail | OSI-approved OSS | BSD-3-Clause | 97 | 97 | 20461 | 97 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 4 | Grav | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 97 | 96 | 15652 | 96 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 5 | Orchard Core | OSI-approved OSS | BSD-3-Clause | 97 | 95 | 8167 | 96 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 6 | Alchemy CMS | OSI-approved OSS | BSD-3-Clause | 96 | 96 | 907 | 96 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 7 | Ech0 | OSI-approved OSS | AGPL-3.0 | 95 | 95 | 2052 | 95 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 8 | Ycode | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 94 | 96 | 286 | 95 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 9 | Halo | OSI-approved OSS | GPL-3.0 | 94 | 95 | 39629 | 94 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 10 | E107 | OSI-approved OSS | GPL-3.0 | 93 | 96 | 330 | 94 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 11 | Conrete CMS | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 94 | 91 | 851 | 93 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 12 | camaleon-cms | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 90 | 95 | 1238 | 92 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 13 | Enhavo | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 89 | 87 | 92 | 88 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 14 | Lektor | OSI-approved OSS | BSD-3-Clause | 79 | 77 | 3947 | 78 | 🟢 Good |
| 15 | Umono | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 76 | 75 | 22 | 76 | 🟢 Good |
| 16 | Vvveb | OSI-approved OSS | AGPL-3.0 | 72 | 74 | 1176 | 73 | 🟢 Good |
| 17 | Microfeed | OSI-approved OSS | AGPL-3.0 | 68 | 60 | 4052 | 65 | 🟢 Good |
| 18 | ExpressionEngine | OSI-approved OSS | Apache-2.0 | 70 | 47 | 505 | 61 | 🟢 Good |
| 19 | lara-zeus Sky | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 64 | 53 | 213 | 59 | 🟡 Fair |
| 20 | PrettyBlocks | OSI-approved OSS | AFL-3.0 | 50 | 32 | 94 | 43 | 🟡 Fair |
| 21 | Markdown Ninja | OSI-approved OSS | AGPL-3.0 | 38 | 17 | 415 | 29 | 🔴 Needs Attention |
| 22 | Changelog | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 35 | 20 | 2768 | 29 | 🔴 Needs Attention |
| 23 | Microweber | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 40 | 10 | 3436 | 28 | 🔴 Needs Attention |
| 24 | BlogBowl | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 37 | 14 | 159 | 28 | 🔴 Needs Attention |
| 25 | Pico CMS | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 33 | 10 | 3904 | 24 | 🔴 Needs Attention |
| 26 | Squilla | OSI-approved OSS | GPL-3.0 | 31 | 0 | 1 | 19 | 🔴 Needs Attention |
| 27 | Markdown Site | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 17 | 0 | 631 | 10 | 🔴 Needs Attention |
| 28 | Mecha CMS | OSI-approved OSS | GPL-3.0 | 16 | 0 | 189 | 10 | 🔴 Needs Attention |
| 29 | Platformus | OSI-approved OSS | Apache-2.0 | 3 | 0 | 484 | 2 | 🔴 Needs Attention |
| 30 | Rpub | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 2 | 0 | 62 | 1 | 🔴 Needs Attention |
| 31 | Puck CMS | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 0 | 0 | 169 | 0 | 🔴 Needs Attention |
| 32 | StartupEngine | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 0 | 0 | 140 | 0 | 🔴 Needs Attention |
Top 3 Highlights
Ghost ranks first with a ToolVitals score of 98, a health score of 98, and a shipping score of 98. Its supplied description centers on independent technology for modern publishing, memberships, subscriptions, and newsletters. Ghost is labeled OSI-approved OSS under the MIT license; its 55,075 GitHub stars provide context only.
EmDash CMS ranks second with a ToolVitals score of 98, a health score of 98, and a shipping score of 97. It is described as a full-stack TypeScript CMS based on Astro and as the spiritual successor to WordPress. EmDash CMS is labeled OSI-approved OSS under the MIT license; its 11,997 GitHub stars are context only.
Wagtail ranks third with a ToolVitals score of 97, a health score of 97, and a shipping score of 97. Its supplied description identifies it as a Django content management system focused on flexibility and user experience. Wagtail is labeled OSI-approved OSS under the BSD-3-Clause license; its 20,461 GitHub stars provide context only.
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