Asciidoctor vs MkDocs
Asciidoctor
asciidoctor.orgMkDocs
mkdocs.orgSide by side
| Figure | Asciidoctor | MkDocs |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | — |
| Free plan | Yes | — |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | — |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | — |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 0 |
| Spec score · Documentation Generators | 8.9 (#1) | 7.6 (#17) |
| Integrations | The project ecosystem includes Maven and Gradle plugins, browser extensions, an IntelliJ plugin, and tools such as Asciidoctor Diagram. | MkDocs documentation can be deployed to GitHub Pages and hosted on Amazon S3. |
| License | The processor is open source software available under the MIT license. | MkDocs is distributed under the BSD license, which permits redistribution and use in source and binary forms subject to its conditions. |
| Purpose | Asciidoctor parses AsciiDoc source and converts it into publishable formats such as HTML 5 and PDF. | MkDocs is a static site generator geared toward building project documentation from Markdown and a single YAML configuration file. |
| Requirements | The documented Ruby implementations are CRuby 2.3–3.3, JRuby 9.1–9.4, and TruffleRuby (GraalVM). | MkDocs requires a recent version of Python and pip. |
| Support | The documentation directs users seeking real-time community support to the project chat’s #users stream. | The project directs users to GitHub Discussions and GitHub Issues for help. |
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.
MkDocs
MkDocs is a static site generator for project documentation written in Markdown, with project settings held in a YAML file. It produces static HTML that can be published to GitHub Pages, Amazon S3, or another static-file host. Its development server provides a local preview and refreshes it when documentation changes; generated sites also include search that can link to matching sections. The command-line tools cover creating a project, serving a preview, building the site, checking dependencies, and deploying to GitHub Pages. MkDocs uses Python-Markdown and requires a recent Python version and pip. The built-in mkdocs and readthedocs themes are available alongside third-party and custom themes, while plugins, Markdown extensions, and configuration options allow further changes. The built-in mkdocs theme supports several locales, including English, German, Spanish, French, Japanese, and Chinese. MkDocs is free, available for Linux, macOS, Windows, and self-hosted use, and distributed under the BSD license. Third-party themes and plugins run their authors’ code without sandboxing.