DocFX vs Jupyter Book
DocFX
dotnet.github.ioJupyter Book
jupyterbook.orgSide by side
| Figure | DocFX | Jupyter Book |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | 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 | 1 |
| Spec score · Technical Documentation Software | 8.2 (#12) | 8.3 (#10) |
| Spec score · Technical Writing Platforms | 8.3 (#9) | 8.4 (#8) |
| Purpose | DocFX builds technical documentation sites from .NET assemblies, XML code comments, REST API Swagger files, and Markdown. | Jupyter Book creates computational narratives from notebooks or Markdown, executes code, and publishes the results to the web. |
| Support | The DocFX project is listed as supported by the .NET Foundation. | The project points users to its Discord community and GitHub Discussions, and directs most Jupyter Book 2 bug reports to the MyST repository. |
Plans
In their own words
DocFX
DocFX is a free static site generator for technical documentation. It builds documentation from .NET assemblies, XML code comments, REST API Swagger files and Markdown, and can produce rendered HTML pages, JSON models or PDFs. Static HTML output is placed in the `_site` folder for publication to hosting services such as GitHub Pages. DocFX can also be used as a NuGet library through the `Docfx.App` package and .NET APIs. It parses CommonMark-compliant Markdown with Markdig and supports additional extensions. Built-in templates include a modern option with dark mode and customization settings; users can also customize templates with CSS, JavaScript, Mustache templates and metadata. DocFX can generate git links for GitHub, GitLab, Azure Pipelines, AppVeyor, TeamCity and Jenkins. It requires .NET SDK 8.0 or higher. Node.js v20 or higher is optional generally, but required to create PDFs. Native reference documentation generation covers .NET and REST APIs; other languages need a custom API docs converter. PlantUML diagrams use a remote server by default, with local rendering available as a setting.
Jupyter Book
Jupyter Book is an open-source tool for publishing reusable, reproducible computational narratives. Authors can build websites, PDFs, and other formats using MyST Markdown and Jupyter notebooks, with cross-references, citations, figures, tables, equations, and executable code blocks. Code may run during a build to produce computed figures, tables, and values, although execution is off by default. Pages can include interactive widgets, browser execution through a remote kernel, or launch buttons for Binder and JupyterHub. Deployment options include GitHub Pages, ReadTheDocs, Netlify, Vercel, CurveNote, GitLab Pages, and custom hosting. Plugins can add directives, roles, and content transforms. Installation is available through PyPI, conda-forge, and npm, with several package-manager routes. Jupyter Book 2 uses the MyST Document Engine; version 1 is mostly in maintenance mode. The free plan costs nothing.