Eleventy vs Astro: Minimal JavaScript vs Islands of Interactivity
Eleventy and Astro compared on output philosophy, templating, content collections, plugin ecosystems, and which zero-JS generator fits your project.
Eleventy and Astro agree on the most important principle in modern web development (ship less JavaScript) and disagree on how far to take it. Eleventy outputs pure static files generated by JavaScript templates, with no client runtime, ever. Astro also ships zero JavaScript by default, but keeps React/Svelte/Vue components one import away. Choosing between them is choosing between purism and reach.
Philosophy
- Eleventy (11ty) is a template runner: it takes your templates and Markdown and produces static HTML. There is no client-side framework to opt out of, because there never was one. Templating languages are your choice: Nunjucks, Liquid, Markdown, HTML, and more.
- Astro is a component framework: pages are
.astrocomponents, content comes from typed collections, and interactivity arrives as hydrated islands using real UI frameworks.
Templating and Content
Eleventy's flexibility is its signature: mix template languages per project, structure data with global data files, and keep configuration minimal. Astro's content collections add what Eleventy leaves to convention: schema-validated front matter that fails the build on malformed data.
Both consume Markdown with YAML front matter from your repository, which makes both first-class citizens for Git-backed CMS publishing.
When You Need Interactivity
This is the fork in the road:
- On Eleventy, interactive widgets mean hand-wiring vanilla JavaScript or embedding another tool: a deliberate, manual process.
- On Astro, dropping
<Button client:visible />into a page is all it takes; the framework handles hydration boundaries for you.
If a documentation site or publication might grow a search widget, a theme toggle with state, or an interactive example, Astro's islands are the smoother path. (For docs specifically, Starlight packages this further; see Hugo vs Astro Starlight.)
Ecosystem Fit
Eleventy is popular in the indie-web and small-publication world — minimal, stable, and endlessly composable. Astro has the momentum: more new templates, deeper component ecosystem, and the clearest trajectory for content teams. The wider context is in best static site generators.
Which Should You Choose?
- Eleventy if you want the smallest possible tool between your Markdown and your HTML, enjoy choosing your own templating language, and are confident the site will stay mostly-static.
- Astro if you want typed content collections, component-driven authoring, and interactive escape hatches built in, the default for most new projects in 2026.
Both deploy free to Cloudflare Pages or GitHub Pages, and both emit the low-carbon, cached static output described in Static Sites and CO2.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Eleventy faster than Astro?
Build-time comparisons favor Eleventy on small sites; both produce identical-quality output for visitors: static HTML with no client runtime.
Does Eleventy support components?
Not as a framework concept; it is template-based. Interactive components require vanilla JS or embedding, whereas Astro treats them as first-class.
Which is better for blogs?
Both are excellent. Eleventy for the minimalist purist; Astro for writers who may want interactive elements or shared UI components later.
Can a Git-backed CMS publish to both?
Yes, both read Markdown with front matter straight from your repository, so any Git-backed CMS works identically with either.