Documentation Generators - A curated list: MkDocs, Docsify, Vuepress

This article presents a curated list with modern, open-source documentation generators useful when we want to explain in deep how a software product can be used by others. All tools are free, actively supported and heavily used in production.

Documenting a product software is a recommended practice even for small projects and becomes a necessity once the product is getting bigger (more modules, features) and used by many users. Good documentation triggers a faster adoption of your product and might decrease the required LIVE support and 1-1 assistance with your users.

• MkDocs - Python based
• Docsify - Vue based
• Docute - Vue based
• Vuepress - Vue based
• Docusaurus - powered by React

This curated list with documentation generators might developers to write and maintain faster and easier the documentation for their products. Let's go!

MkDocs

Simple, Python-based documentation generator that uses Markdown format for input files - BSD-2-Clause License.

Official information - MkDocs is a fast, simple and downright gorgeous static site generator that's geared towards building project documentation. Documentation source files are written in Markdown, and configured with a single YAML configuration file.

Github metrics

• 11k Stars, 1.6k Forks, Latest commit 5days old
• 120 open issues and 17 pulls requests
• Used by 9k users, 160 Contributors

PROS (advantages of using MkDocs)

• Easy to set up, well documented
• Fast in development and also in production
• Default Search feature by Lunr, Algolia can be integrated with ease
• Components via Markdown-Include

CONS (disadvantages)

• No Multilanguage support
• Hardcoded footer - can be hacked but unsupported by default
• Few themes available

Docsify

A modern Vue-based documentation generator that renders the files without a translation phase. In other words, the docs are rendered as a classic SPA.

Official Information - A magical documentation site generator.

Docsify generates your documentation website on the fly. Unlike GitBook, it does not generate static html files. Instead, it smartly loads and parses your Markdown files and displays them as a website. To start using it, all you need to do is create an index.html

Github metrics

• 16k Stars, 4k Forks, Latest commit 20h ago (not so relevant maybe)
• 113 open issues and 33 pulls requests
• Used by 1.6k users, 154 contributors

PROS

• No statically built html files
• Simple and lightweight
• Smart full-text search plugin
• Multiple themes
• SSR support
• Internationalization

CONS

• The users should be familiar with Vue, Nodejs, and related tools

Docute

Docute is basically a JavaScript file that fetches Markdown files and renders them as a single-page application.

It's totally runtime-driven so there's no server-side components involved which also means there's no build process. You only need to create an HTML file and a bunch of Markdown documents and your website is almost ready!

Docsify and Docute are pretty much the same, but with different UI and different usages.

Docute (60kB) is 3 times bigger than Docisfy (20kB), because we use Vue, Vue Router and Vuex while Docsify uses vanilla JavaScript under the hood.

Github metrics

• 3k Stars, 400 Forks, Latest commit 6months ago
• 71 open issues and 11 pulls requests
• Used by 24 users, 16 contributors

Vuepress

Vue-powered Static Site Generator with a minimal setup with markdown-centered project structure.

VuePress generates pre-rendered static HTML for each page, and runs as an SPA once a page is loaded.

Github metrics

• 18k Stars, 3.6k Forks, Latest commit 20h ago (not so relevant maybe)
• 300+ open issues and 100 pulls requests
• Used by 13k users, 350 contributors

PROS

• No statically built html files
• Simple and lightweight
• Internationalization
• Vue can be used in Markdown files

Docusaurus

This generator is built using React to build the UI and Markdown/MDX as input format.

Github metrics

• 20k Stars, 2.4k Forks, Latest commit 18h ago (not so relevant maybe)
• 160 open issues and 18 pulls requests
• Used by 6k users, 500 contributors

PROS

• You want a modern Jamstack documentation site
• You want a single-page application (SPA) with client-side routing
• You want the full power of React and MDX

Thanks for Reading! For more resources, feel free to access:

• Free Admin Dashboards - provided by AppSeed
• Free React Dashboards - a popular article published on Dev.to