Free
Open Publishing Space
An open guide or book site – such as a course reader, handbook, or short open textbook – with a blog and almost any other Grav page alongside it.
HibbittsDesign
Grav CMS Projects
Free or Premium Helios
One Markdown format
Grav CMS Projects at a Glance
Pick a row for what you’re making, then a column for how you’d like to run it. Every project uses the same portable Markdown files, so you can start free and move to Premium Helios later, or bring content in from Pressbooks or your LMS.
The Grav CMS projects, by what you’re making
An open guide or book
Premium Helios
Helios Open Reader
A dedicated reading site for one or several publications, with a table of contents beside every page.
Guides move between the two unchanged.
A course site
Free · one course
Open Course Hub
One course, with modules or weekly units and an optional course blog.
Free · several courses
Open MultiCourse Hub
Several courses in one site, each with its own navigation, colours and sidebar.
Premium Helios · one or several courses
Helios Course Hub
One or several courses in a single install, with modules at the centre and Helios’s app-like layout.
Course content moves across with a few adjustments.
Documentation
Free
Learn2 with Git Sync
A documentation site on the free Learn2 theme, with built-in search and RSS/Atom feeds.
Premium Helios
Grav Premium Helios theme
The Helios theme on its own is designed for documentation sites, by the Grav team.
Ways in
- Pressbooks Converter (beta) – a Pressbooks book → Open Publishing Space or Helios Open Reader
- Common Cartridge Converter (beta) – a Canvas, Moodle, Brightspace or Blackboard course → Open Course Hub (modules), Open MultiCourse Hub (a whole course) or Helios Course Hub
Both are on the Grav Converters page.
Free or Grav Premium Helios? Compare in Detail
The free projects have premium siblings, Grav Helios Open Reader and Grav Helios Course Hub, built on the Grav Premium Helios theme (a one-time license) with a more refined, app-like design. Content moves easily between Open Publishing Space and Open Reader, and between the course hubs with a few adjustments, so you can start free and move later. Grav CMS Projects at a Glance shows them all side by side.
| Feature | Open Publishing Space Free | Helios Open Reader |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | Free, MIT license | Free skeleton, plus a one-time Premium Helios theme license ($50 per site) |
| Grav | Grav 2 (Quark 2) and 1.7 (Quark) | Grav 2 |
| Best for | One or several open guides or books, with a blog and other pages alongside them | A dedicated reading site, with one or several publications |
| Reading | Section cards, parts, reading progress, Keep My Place, an “On this page” list (with the Page TOC plugin), and a Previous/Next bar on phones | The same, plus a table of contents beside pages and a Previous/Next bar on all screen sizes |
| Search | Site search, plus a search box for each guide (/ jumps to it) | Site-wide search (/ or ⌘K) |
| Pressbooks conversion | Yes, with the Pressbooks Converter (beta) | Yes, with the Pressbooks Converter (beta) |
| Markdown for reuse | A “This page as Markdown (.md)” link below the page content, plus an optional full text version of each guide (Grav 2 version) | The same link in the page footer, plus an optional full text version of each publication |
| LMS embedding | Yes | Yes |
| Feature | Open Course Hub & MultiCourse Hub Free | Helios Course Hub |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | Free, MIT license | Free skeleton, plus a one-time Premium Helios theme license ($50 per site) |
| Grav | Grav 2 and 1.7 | Grav 2 |
| Courses | One (Course Hub) or several (MultiCourse Hub) | One or several in a single install, set up automatically |
| Modules | Modules at the centre of each course, with an optional course blog | Modules at the centre of each course |
| Design | 2026 Modern, with a tinted NavBar in each course’s colour | Helios’s app-like layout, with sidebar navigation and a table of contents on pages |
| LMS course conversion | Yes, with the Common Cartridge Converter (beta): modules for Course Hub, or a whole course for MultiCourse Hub | Yes, with the Common Cartridge Converter (beta) |
| LMS embedding | Yes | Yes |
Both share plain Markdown files, a browser-based Admin panel, optional Git Sync, Dark Mode, and the same content shortcodes and GitHub-style alerts, which is what lets content move between them.
Under the hood: Open Publishing Space uses the Quark 2 Open Publishing theme (Grav 2) or Quark Open Publishing (Grav 1.7); Open Course Hub and Open MultiCourse Hub use the Bootstrap4 Open Matter theme; Helios Open Reader and Helios Course Hub are plugins for the Grav Premium Helios theme. For a side-by-side comparison, see Free or Grav Premium Helios? Compare in Detail below