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Cecil

Free#4 of 35 in Static Site Generators

Cecil: A focused, open-source choice for PHP teams building multilingual static sites. Ranked #4 of 35 in Static Site Generators by our editors (8.9/10); pricing: Free plan; best for PHP static sites.

8.9/10Editor score

Visit Cecil

Cecil8.9 Visit Cecil

At a glance

Editor score
8.9 / 10
Pricing
Free plan
Best for
PHP static sites
Free plan
Yes
Paid from
Free
Content sources
Markdown
Founded
2013
Facts checked
20 Sep 2026

Where it wins
- Incremental builds reduce work for changed pages and dependent templates.
- Multilingual content, translations, taxonomies, RSS, and pagination are built in.
- Responsive images support WebP and AVIF output alongside SEO helpers.
Where it doesn't
- The supported language is PHP.
- It does not include AI features.
- Its output is static, without a database or server-side runtime.

Our verdict on Cecil

Cecil is an open-source, command-line static site generator written in PHP. It turns Markdown and plain-text content, images, and Twig templates into static websites without a database or server-side runtime. The project is aimed at creators and developers building blogs, documentation sites, portfolios, and other content-driven websites. It runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux, and supports themes, front matter, multilingual pages, and template translations.

Its strongest area is the depth of its built-in publishing workflow. Cecil provides automatic pagination, sitemaps, redirects, taxonomies, and RSS, while SEO helpers cover metadata, Open Graph, and structured data. Responsive image generation can produce WebP and AVIF output. A local preview server with file watching supports iterative authoring, and incremental builds target changed pages and dependent templates. These features make Cecil a practical fit for PHP-oriented projects that need more than basic Markdown rendering without moving to a database-backed application.

Deployment can connect with Netlify, Vercel, statichost, Cloudflare Pages, Render, GitHub Pages, GitLab CI, and Surge. Cecil is free, open source, and distributed under the EUPL-1.2 license, with no paid plan structure. Its focus remains static publishing: teams needing server-side runtime behavior, a database, or AI features should choose a different category of tool. For PHP developers who value multilingual support, image processing, SEO outputs, and incremental builds in one generator, Cecil is a focused option; it is less suitable for projects that require a broader language ecosystem or dynamic application features.

Your product? Our editors can test Cecil in depth and publish a review, labelled as paid · from $149/mo →

Cecil pricing

Plans Free planFree Free to use — no paid tier required for the core job.

See plans on cecil.app

Cecil fact sheet

Free plan	Yes
Paid from	Free
Content sources	Markdown
CMS integration	Not verified
Incremental builds	Yes
Multilingual support	Yes
Local preview server	Yes
Supported languages	PHP
Deployment	Self-hosted
Platforms	Windows, macOS, Linux
Support	Docs
Built for	Solo, Small business, Mid-market (editorial estimate)
Integrations	8 integrations: Netlify, Vercel, statichost, Cloudflare Pages, Render, GitHub Pages …
Pricing	Free plan
Website	cecil.app
Facts checked	20 Sep 2026

Cecil integrations

Cecil lists 8 integrations on its own site.

Netlify
Vercel
statichost
Cloudflare Pages
Render
GitHub Pages
GitLab CI
Surge

Alternatives to Cecil

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Cecil vs the competition

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The editor score above is our own research. What this page doesn't have yet is a reader's view — what you used Cecil for, what worked and what didn't. No stars are seeded and no review is paid for; an editor reads every one before it appears.

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Featured on iTechGuides

Cecil is listed in our Static Site Generators directory. Add the badge to your site — it links back to this page.

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Reviewed by iTechGuides Editors · Editorial team · Updated Oct 2026

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Last updated 7 Oct 2026 · How we research and update