Grav

• Grav

  • Source repository: getgrav/grav.
  • GitHub/Star: 15,634 on getgrav/grav (checked 2026-08-18).
  • Written in PHP; 2.x requires PHP 8.3.11 or later.
  • MIT licensed. Current release 2.0.19, published 2026-08-14.
  • Built on Twig for templating and Symfony components for events, console, cache, and YAML parsing, with Parsedown rendering the Markdown.
  • The 2.0 line adds a REST API for headless use, a rebuilt admin, and an MCP server that lets an agent read and write site content directly.
  • CalTopo's training and documentation site at training.caltopo.com is built on Grav, serving <meta name="generator" content="GravCMS" /> over Grav's learn2 documentation theme.

  • Flat file, no database

    • A page is a folder under user/pages/ containing a Markdown file. The file's Markdown/Frontmatter/Yaml carries title, slug, date, and publish state; its filename selects the Twig template; folder nesting is simultaneously the URL structure and the site navigation, with numeric folder prefixes setting order. Configuration is YAML under user/config/. Nothing is stored anywhere else — installing is unzipping an archive, with no schema and no install wizard.
    • What that buys: the entire site is git/Friendly plain text that diffs, branches, and edits in any editor, and backs up by copying a directory. The general shape of the tradeoff is on File/Flat.
    • What it costs: work a database would do with an index has to be recomputed instead, so Grav caches aggressively and its own requirements page recommends a PHP user cache — APCu, Memcached, or Redis — for acceptable performance. Relational content that a database gives away for free (multi-language, multi-user, cross-referenced collections) instead needed a purpose-built object layer, Flex, added in 2018.