Comparison

Hatena Blog vs GitHub Pages

Hatena Blog lands on Depends, and GitHub Pages lands on Worth it.

Hatena Blog

Depends

Confidence: Medium

Buy it if you write in Japanese and want a free, low-fuss blog . it's the default choice for Japan-focused writers.

Read the full report

GitHub Pages

pages.github.com

Worth it

Confidence: Medium

Buy it if your site is static and you already work in Git . it is free, simple, and battle-tested.

Read the full report

Hatena Blog versus GitHub Pages
Compare	Hatena Blog	GitHub Pages
Verdict	Depends	Worth it
Best for	Japanese-language personal bloggers	Developer portfolios
Who it's not for	Global or English-first brands chasing mass reach	Anyone needing server-side code, forms, or databases
Privacy	One takeover-risk finding flagged by researchers; no public security page; no known CVEs.^⁵	No active breaches of the service itself; past CVEs in Pages builds and ongoing phishing abuse of domains.
Support quality	No support evidence in sources	No support evidence in sources
Public sentiment	Users and analysts treat Hatena Blog as the reliable free default for Japanese writing, but niche rather than mass-market.^³	Users call it free, dependable static hosting for Git users, but warn it is static-only and unfriendly to non-developers.¹⁵
Biggest gotcha	Hatena Group was shut down entirely in 2020 . platform sunset risk is real^⁶	100 GB/month soft bandwidth cap; heavy sites risk throttling.¹²

Pick Hatena Blog when

Japanese-language personal bloggers
Dev/engineering team blogs
Hobby and niche reviewers
Japan-market brand content on a budget

When Hatena Blog is not a fit

Global or English-first brands chasing mass reach
Teams needing full CMS control or headless flexibility
Businesses needing vendor longevity guarantees or SLAs
Design-heavy marketing sites

Pick GitHub Pages when

Developer portfolios
Open-source project docs
Static landing pages
Hobby and club sites

When GitHub Pages is not a fit

Anyone needing server-side code, forms, or databases
Non-technical teams without Git workflows
E-commerce or payment-handling sites
Businesses needing SLAs, support, or compliance

Sources

Hatena Blog official sitehatena.blog
official
List of Websites That Use Hatena Blog (Tomba)tomba.io
review
Top 3 Blogging Platforms to Grow Your Brand in Japanwpic.co
review
Is there any point in upgrading to Hatena Blog Pro?note.com
review
Hatenablog takeover detection (Beagle Security)beaglesecurity.com
security
Hatena Group shutting down Jan 31, 2020 (Reddit)reddit.com
news
Hatena Co., Ltd. (3930.T) profilefinance.yahoo.com
official
Hatena Blog Workflows Boilerplate (GitHub)github.com
official
Hatena Blog vs note comparisonnote.com
review
Does Japan have something similar to Medium? (Reddit)reddit.com
review
GitHub Pages documentationpages.github.com
official
GitHub Pages limitsdocs.github.com
official
What is GitHub Pages?docs.github.com
official
Is github pages good for a landing page?reddit.com
review
I've tried Github pages, Netlify, and Cloudflarenews.ycombinator.com
review
My GitHub Pages website went viral (120,000 page views)reddit.com
review