Asciidoctor vs ExDoc
Asciidoctor
asciidoctor.org
ExDoc
ex-doc.hexdocs.pmSide by side
| Figure | Asciidoctor | ExDoc |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | — |
| Free plan | Yes | — |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | — |
| Windows | Yes | — |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | — |
| API | Yes | — |
| Self-hosted | Yes | — |
| Plans published | 1 | 0 |
| Spec score · Documentation Generators | 8.9 (#1) | 7.0 (#30) |
| Build integrations | The project provides plugins that integrate Asciidoctor with Apache Maven, Gradle and Javadoc builds. | ExDoc can be used with Mix, Rebar, or from the command line. |
| Integrations | The project ecosystem includes Maven and Gradle plugins, browser extensions, an IntelliJ plugin, and tools such as Asciidoctor Diagram. | ExDoc can be used with Mix, Rebar3, or through its command line interface. |
| Intended users | The project describes its toolchain as serving people who write and publish AsciiDoc content across platforms and runtimes. | The project describes ExDoc as a tool for generating documentation for Erlang and Elixir projects. |
| License | The processor is open source software available under the MIT license. | ExDoc source code is released under the Apache 2 License, while generated contents may have different licenses based on rendering components. |
| Output formats | The core processor includes HTML 5, DocBook 5 and man page converters; PDF and EPUB 3 converters are provided separately. | It can generate offline accessible HTML, Markdown including llms.txt, and EPUB documents from API documentation. |
| Purpose | Asciidoctor parses AsciiDoc source and converts it into publishable formats such as HTML 5 and PDF. | ExDoc generates documentation for Erlang and Elixir projects. |
| Requirements | The documented Ruby implementations are CRuby 2.3–3.3, JRuby 9.1–9.4, and TruffleRuby (GraalVM). | The Mix setup requires Elixir v1.15 or later; the README describes Rebar3 use from Erlang/OTP 24 onward. |
Plans
In their own words
Asciidoctor
Asciidoctor is a free, open-source text processor and publishing toolchain for converting AsciiDoc files or strings into formats such as HTML5, DocBook, PDF, EPUB 3 and manual pages. Its core includes converters for HTML5, DocBook 5 and man pages; PDF and EPUB 3 conversion comes from separate gems. Documents can be processed through a command-line interface or Ruby API. Asciidoctor runs with Ruby, on the JVM through AsciidoctorJ, or in JavaScript environments through Asciidoctor.js, and supports Linux, macOS and Windows. The wider ecosystem includes Maven and Gradle plugins, browser and editor extensions, and diagram tools. Default HTML output includes a stylesheet and integrations such as Font Awesome, highlight.js, Rouge, Pygments and MathJax. It is distributed as a RubyGem, Docker image, Linux packages and macOS packages, and is licensed under MIT. Its security modes include SECURE, SAFE, SERVER and UNSAFE; safe modes do not sanitize generated output or provide a comprehensive security framework.