Who should pick it
Ghost
Pick Ghost if publishing with memberships and newsletters is the whole job and you want an official 1 GB RAM floor. Its primary install path is Ghost-CLI on Ubuntu; the Docker Compose path is listed as a preview.
Comparison · self-hosted publishing and CMS platforms
Ghost vs WordPress
Ghost: Modern publishing platform with memberships and newsletters.
WordPress: Open-source CMS and blogging platform.
Requirements
Side-by-side VPS specs
Every value is taken from each app’s RunOnVPS dataset entry. Badges show whether a figure is an official project figure or a RunOnVPS estimate — never compare the two as if they were equal.
| Resource | Ghost | WordPress |
|---|---|---|
| Minimum RAM | 1GB Official | 1GB Estimated |
| Minimum CPU | 1 Estimated | 1 Estimated |
| Minimum disk | 10GB Estimated | 10GB Estimated |
| Recommended RAM | 2GB Estimated | 2GB Estimated |
| Recommended CPU | 2 Estimated | 2 Estimated |
| Recommended disk | Not stated Not stated | Not stated Not stated |
| Suggested VPS tier (our sizing) | 2 GB RAM tier | 2 GB RAM tier |
| GPU | Not required | Not required |
| Docker support | Yes (preview) | Yes |
| Licence | MIT | GPL-2.0-or-later |
| GitHub stars | 55598 | 21501 |
| Commercial alternative | Substack | WordPress.com |
| Category | Web / Community / Collaboration | Web / Community / Collaboration |
Disk figures describe the application footprint recorded in the dataset. Personal media, documents, backups and other user data can require substantially more storage. Full source notes: Ghost requirements · WordPress requirements.
Who should pick it
WordPress
Pick WordPress if you want the general-purpose CMS and blogging platform. Its official requirements are software-only (PHP and MariaDB/MySQL versions), so every hardware figure on its page is an estimate from its Docker deployment.
Verdict
The short version
- In our dataset both map to the same 2 GB recommended tier, so server size does not separate them.
- Ghost is MIT-licensed; WordPress is GPL-2.0-or-later.
- Docker support differs: WordPress is recorded as “Yes” via its official Docker Hub image, while Ghost’s Docker support is recorded as “Yes (preview)” in our dataset.
- Their catalogued alternatives differ — Ghost against Substack, WordPress against WordPress.com — and Ghost has more GitHub stars in the dataset (~55.6k vs ~21.5k; the WordPress figure is its GitHub mirror repository).
Neither verdict nor table scores the apps against each other — the right pick depends on the job, the licence you can accept, and how much of the spec is published rather than estimated. If you plan to run either alongside other apps, add it to a multi-app VPS estimate →