Pelican

Pelican generates static sites from Python with no JavaScript framework, no build system drama, no React. Pelican generates HTML from your content files and that's it. It's a Python-based static site generator that's been around since 2010 and does exactly one thing well.

AGPL v3. You write Markdown, run a command, get a folder of HTML files you can host anywhere for pennies. Themes, plugins, RSS feeds, code syntax highlighting, all built in.

Fully free. No paid tier, no cloud service, no account. You install it with pip, write content, generate, deploy to any static host (Netlify, Vercel, GitHub Pages, an S3 bucket, all free or nearly free).

The catch: Pelican is old-school. No hot reload, no component system, no modern frontend niceties. The theme ecosystem is smaller and less polished than Hugo or Astro. And AGPL v3 means if you modify Pelican itself and offer it as a service, you must open source your changes. For a personal blog or documentation site, it's solid and simple. For anything interactive, look elsewhere.