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Docusaurus

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MkDocs

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Docusaurus vs MkDocs: What are the differences?

Docusaurus vs MkDocs: Key Differences

Docusaurus and MkDocs are popular documentation site generators that help create and maintain websites. While they serve a similar purpose, there are key differences between the two:

  1. Customization: Docusaurus offers a more opinionated approach with a pre-built design system, allowing for easy customization through themes and plugins. On the other hand, MkDocs provides a simpler and more flexible templating system, giving users more control over the site's appearance.

  2. Plugin Ecosystem: Docusaurus has a wider range of plugins available to extend functionality, including features like internationalization and analytics integration. MkDocs, while not as extensive, still offers several useful plugins but may require more manual configuration for advanced features.

  3. Documentation Structure: Docusaurus is built to handle large documentation sites with multiple sections and versions, making it ideal for projects with complex documentation needs. MkDocs, on the other hand, is better suited for smaller projects with a simpler structure, where a single documentation file may be sufficient.

  4. Built-in Search: Docusaurus includes a powerful built-in search functionality that indexes the site's content, allowing users to easily search and find specific information. MkDocs, while offering search through third-party plugins, lacks the built-in search capability and may require additional configuration for advanced search features.

  5. Community and Support: Docusaurus has a larger community and a more active development team, providing faster updates and timely support. MkDocs also has an active community but may have slightly slower updates and responses to issues.

  6. Integration with external tools: Docusaurus is developed and maintained by Facebook, which means it integrates seamlessly with other Facebook-developed tools and workflows. MkDocs, being an open-source project, can be integrated with various external tools and services through plugins but may require more configuration and setup.

In summary, Docusaurus offers more pre-built customization options and extensive plugins, making it suitable for large and complex documentation sites. MkDocs provides a simpler and more flexible templating system, ideal for smaller projects with simpler documentation needs.

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Pros of Docusaurus
Pros of MkDocs
  • 8
    Open Source
  • 7
    Self Hosted
  • 3
    Free to use
  • 3
    React
  • 3
    Easy customization
  • 3
    Jamstack
  • 3
    MDX
  • 3
    I18n
  • 2
    Versioning
  • 5
    Speed
  • 4
    Gitlab integration
  • 3
    Extensibility
  • 2
    Themes

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Cons of Docusaurus
Cons of MkDocs
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    • 1
      Build time increases exponentially as site grows

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    - No public GitHub repository available -

    What is Docusaurus?

    Docusaurus is a project for easily building, deploying, and maintaining open source project websites.

    What is MkDocs?

    It builds completely static HTML sites that you can host on GitHub pages, Amazon S3, or anywhere else you choose. There's a stack of good looking themes available. The built-in dev-server allows you to preview your documentation as you're writing it. It will even auto-reload and refresh your browser whenever you save your changes.

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    What companies use Docusaurus?
    What companies use MkDocs?
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    What tools integrate with Docusaurus?
    What tools integrate with MkDocs?

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    What are some alternatives to Docusaurus and MkDocs?
    Confluence
    Capture the knowledge that's too often lost in email inboxes and shared network drives in Confluence instead – where it's easy to find, use, and update.
    Gitbook
    It is a modern documentation platform where teams can document everything from products, to APIs and internal knowledge-bases. It is a place to think and track ideas for you & your team.
    VuePress
    A minimalistic static site generator with a Vue-powered theming system, and a default theme optimized for writing technical documentation. It was created to support the documentation needs of Vue's own sub projects.
    Hugo
    Hugo is a static site generator written in Go. It is optimized for speed, easy use and configurability. Hugo takes a directory with content and templates and renders them into a full html website. Hugo makes use of markdown files with front matter for meta data.
    Sphinx
    It lets you either batch index and search data stored in an SQL database, NoSQL storage, or just files quickly and easily — or index and search data on the fly, working with it pretty much as with a database server.
    See all alternatives