Doxygen vs JSDoc
Doxygen
doxygen.nlJSDoc
jsdoc.appSide by side
| Figure | Doxygen | JSDoc |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | — |
| Free plan | Yes | — |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Windows | Yes | — |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | — |
| API | — | Yes |
| Self-hosted | — | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 0 |
| Spec score · Documentation Generators | 7.8 (#11) | 7.2 (#27) |
| Spec score · API Documentation Tools | 8.0 (#9) | 7.3 (#21) |
| Configuration | Doxygen provides more than 100 configurable options for fine-tuning output. | Configuration files can use JSON or, in supported versions, a CommonJS module exporting a configuration object. |
| License | Doxygen is licensed under the GNU General Public License and is provided without express or implied warranty. | The JSDoc generator is free software licensed under Apache License 2.0. |
| Purpose | Doxygen is a documentation generator that creates documentation from source-code comments and parses classes, functions and variables. | JSDoc is an API documentation generator for JavaScript that scans source code comments and generates an HTML documentation website. |
| Support | Users are directed to Stack Overflow and the doxygen users mailing list, while commercial feature or bug-fix support has limited capacity. | The project README directs users to the JSDoc Users mailing list and Stack Overflow questions tagged `jsdoc` for help. |
Plans
In their own words
Doxygen
Doxygen is a free documentation generator that turns source-code comments into reference material, parsing items such as classes, functions and variables. It supports C/C++, Lex, Java, Python, VHDL, PHP IDL, C#, Fortran, Objective-C 2.0 and some D sources. Output can be generated as HTML, PDF through LaTeX, Word through RTF or structured XML for external tools. Graphviz’s dot tool can add include-dependency, collaboration, call, directory-structure and class-hierarchy diagrams. Doxywizard provides a graphical interface for editing settings and running the generator on Windows, Linux and macOS; Doxygen also works on many Unix flavors. It supports HTML Help, docsets, Qt-Help and Eclipse Help, with more than 100 configurable options. The tool runs without registration and does not collect personal or usage data. It is self-hosted and licensed under the GNU General Public License, without express or implied warranty. Help is listed through Stack Overflow and the doxygen users mailing list; commercial feature and bug-fix support has limited capacity.