MkDocs vs Sphinx: What are the differences?

Introduction

MkDocs and Sphinx are both popular documentation generators for creating websites. While they serve a similar purpose, there are several key differences between the two.

1. Markup Language Support: MkDocs uses Markdown as its default markup language, making it straightforward and easy to use. On the other hand, Sphinx supports reStructuredText as its primary markup language, which is more powerful but has a steeper learning curve.

2. Themes and Customization: MkDocs provides a limited number of themes, but they are highly customizable using CSS and Jinja2 templates, allowing for a personalized look and feel. Sphinx, on the other hand, offers a wide range of themes and templates out of the box, providing more pre-built options for customization.

3. Plugin Ecosystem: MkDocs has a smaller plugin ecosystem compared to Sphinx, limiting the extensibility and functionality that can be added. Sphinx, being more mature and widely adopted, offers a vast collection of plugins that enhance its capabilities, such as automatic API documentation generation and support for different programming languages.

4. Documentation Structure: MkDocs follows a simple folder-based documentation structure, where each Markdown file corresponds to a single page on the website. Sphinx, on the other hand, supports a more complex documentation structure, allowing for the creation of multiple pages per file and more extensive hierarchies.

5. Build Process and Output: MkDocs generates static HTML files, making it easy to deploy and host on various platforms without any additional dependencies. Sphinx, on the other hand, generates HTML files as well but also provides options for generating other output formats, such as PDF and ePub, giving more flexibility for multi-format publishing.

6. Community and Support: MkDocs has a growing community and provides decent support, but it may not be as extensive as Sphinx's large community and active development. Sphinx benefits from being used in many large-scale projects and has a dedicated team that continuously improves and maintains it.

In Summary, MkDocs and Sphinx differ in their markup language support, theme customization options, plugin ecosystems, documentation structures, build processes, and community support. Choose MkDocs for a simpler and lightweight documentation generator with Markdown support, or opt for Sphinx if you require more advanced features, extensive customization options, and a larger community presence.