Chyrp Lite is a free, open-source PHP blogging engine you self-host. See its features, themes, extensions, and server requirements before installing it.
Researched and fact-checked by Bartu Cavusoglu · Updated July 18, 2026
Chyrp Lite is a free, open-source, ultra-lightweight blogging engine written in PHP. It is a fork of the original Chyrp project (copyrighted from 2008), created in 2014 by contributor Daniel Pimley after development on the original Chyrp had slowed, with an emphasis on keeping the codebase small and efficient.
As a self-hosted tool distributed under the BSD license, Chyrp Lite has no company, pricing tiers, or hosted service behind it: it is maintained by volunteer open-source contributors and downloaded and installed directly onto a user's own PHP-capable web server.
Content is organized through a system of Feathers (post types) covering text, photo, quote, link, video, audio, and multi-file uploads, and Pages for static content, letting a single install function as a traditional blog, a tumblelog, or a general-purpose publishing site.
It ships with six built-in themes built on the Twig template engine, a MetaWeblog XML-RPC API for remote publishing compatible with WordPress clients, and a user rights model for managing multiple authors, all running on a minimal PHP plus MySQL or SQLite stack.
Chyrp Lite is completely free. There is no paid tier, subscription, or hosted plan; users download the open-source software and self-host it on their own server, whether shared PHP hosting, a VPS, or cloud infrastructure they manage themselves.
Yes. Chyrp Lite is free, open-source software distributed under the BSD license. There are no paid plans; you self-host it on your own server.
Chyrp Lite requires a PHP-capable web server and either a MySQL or SQLite database, making its hosting requirements minimal compared to larger CMS platforms.
Chyrp Lite is a fork created in 2014 after development on the original Chyrp project (started in 2008) slowed down. It focuses on a smaller, more efficient codebase while continuing active development.
Yes. Chyrp Lite implements a WordPress-compatible MetaWeblog XML-RPC API, so it can be used with existing blogging client software for remote publishing.
Yes, through its Feathers system, which supports text, photo, quote, link, video, audio, and multi-file uploader post types.