Doxygen vs phpDocumentor

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.

phpDocumentor is a free, open-source, self-hosted tool for analyzing PHP source code and DocBlock comments to produce API documentation. It can generate UML diagrams, parse Markdown and reStructuredText, and insert API-documentation sections into reStructuredText material. The site says full-text search works offline and describes CI integration through a GitHub Action or Docker image. Installation options include Docker, Phive, and a PHAR file; standalone installation requires PHP 8.1.2 or newer plus mbstring, while PlantUML is optional. The official Docker image supplies dependencies locally. The project also offers Composer-installable components for parsing, rendering, type resolution, and PHP reflection. It runs on Linux and macOS. Its Docker Hub overview does not actively support direct Composer installation because dependency conflicts may occur. No paid plans are listed; the plan costs nothing.