---
title: "Static site generator (SSG) - Glossary | MDN"
chunk: 1/3
source: "https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Glossary/SSG"
category: "reference"
tags: "web, html, css, javascript, documentation"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T05:44:06.780773+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

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  1. [Glossary](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Glossary)
  2. [Static site generator (SSG)](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Glossary/SSG)

# Static site generator (SSG)
A **static site generator** (SSG) is a software used to generate _static_ websites. A static website is comprised of [HTML](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Glossary/HTML), [CSS](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Glossary/CSS), and [JavaScript](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Glossary/JavaScript) files. Most importantly static sites do not have [server-side logic](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Learn_web_development/Extensions/Server-side), so for any given URL, all users will receive the same content. Authors write content in any form accepted by the generator, such as Markdown, reStructuredText, HTML, (and sometimes even [React](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Learn_web_development/Core/Frameworks_libraries/React_getting_started), and so on), and the generator compiles them into a set of optimized static files that can be rendered by the browser.
Static sites are commonly used for blogs, documentation, and other content-driven websites, which don't have data that needs to be fetched or generated server-side. They are fast, secure, and easier to deploy, because they can be served from a [CDN](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Glossary/CDN).
## In this article
  * [See also](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Glossary/SSG#see_also)

##  [See also](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Glossary/SSG#see_also)
  * [Introduction to client-side frameworks > static site generators](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Learn_web_development/Core/Frameworks_libraries/Introduction#static_site_generators)
  * [Static site generator](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Static_site_generator) on Wikipedia
  * [Jamstack site generators](https://jamstack.org/generators/)
  * [WordPress](https://wordpress.com/)
  * [Docusaurus](https://docusaurus.io/)
  * [Jekyll](https://jekyllrb.com/)
  * [Astro](https://astro.build/)
  * [VitePress](https://vitepress.dev/)
  * [Eleventy](https://www.11ty.dev/)