# Frequently Asked Questions

URL: /bengal/docs/0.4.3/about/faq/
Section: about
Tags: faq, help, support

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FAQ General Warning Does Bengal guarantee backwards compatibility? No. Bengal prioritizes correctness and clarity over long-term compatibility. Each release represents the best solution we know how to deliver. When existing behavior no longer reflects the best design, it may be changed or removed. Breaking changes produce clear error messages, not silent degradation. What this means for you: Read release notes before upgrading Expect to make changes when upgrading major versions Pin your version if you need stability See Project Philosophy for the full rationale. Star Is Bengal free? Yes! Bengal is open-source software released under the MIT License. You can use it for personal and commercial projects for free. Code What Python version does Bengal require? Python 3.14 or later. For best performance, use a free-threaded build (python3.14t) and set PYTHON_GIL=0 to enable true parallelism (PEP 703). See the Installation Guide for why and how to set it up. Technical Settings Can I use React/Vue/Svelte? Yes, but... Bengal is a Static Site Generator that outputs HTML. You can absolutely include compiled JS bundles (like React components) in your pages, but Bengal does not do server-side rendering (SSR) for JS frameworks. Use Bengal for the content structure and React for "Islands of Interactivity." Upload How do I host a Bengal site? Since Bengal outputs static HTML/CSS/JS (in the public/ folder), you can host it anywhere: GitHub Pages Netlify Vercel AWS S3 Apache/Nginx No database or Python server is required for hosting. Content & Theming File Can I use standard Markdown? Yes. Bengal supports standard Markdown (CommonMark). We also support GitHub Flavored Markdown (GFM) tables and task lists out of the box. Palette How do I add a new theme? You can install themes via pip or clone them into your themes/ directory. See the Themer Quickstart for details.

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