Mustache vs Pug: What are the differences?

Developers describe Mustache as "Logic-less templates". Mustache is a logic-less template syntax. It can be used for HTML, config files, source code - anything. It works by expanding tags in a template using values provided in a hash or object. We call it "logic-less" because there are no if statements, else clauses, or for loops. Instead there are only tags. Some tags are replaced with a value, some nothing, and others a series of values. On the other hand, Pug is detailed as "Robust, elegant, feature rich template engine for nodejs". This project was formerly known as "Jade." Pug is a high performance template engine heavily influenced by Haml and implemented with JavaScript for Node.js and browsers.

Mustache and Pug belong to "Templating Languages & Extensions" category of the tech stack.

"Dead simple templating" is the primary reason why developers consider Mustache over the competitors, whereas "Elegant html" was stated as the key factor in picking Pug.

Mustache and Pug are both open source tools. Pug with 18.4K GitHub stars and 1.9K forks on GitHub appears to be more popular than Mustache with 13.2K GitHub stars and 2.3K GitHub forks.

According to the StackShare community, Pug has a broader approval, being mentioned in 174 company stacks & 119 developers stacks; compared to Mustache, which is listed in 231 company stacks and 18 developer stacks.