Fern vs Mintlify
Fern
buildwithfern.com
Mintlify
mintlify.comSide by side
| Figure | Fern | Mintlify |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | $450/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | Yes |
| Open source | Yes | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 2 | 4 |
| Spec score · Technical Documentation Software | 8.8 (#3) | 8.9 (#2) |
| Spec score · Knowledge base software | 8.8 (#17) | 9.1 (#6) |
| Spec score · Technical Writing Platforms | 8.8 (#4) | 9.0 (#1) |
| Spec score · Developer Documentation Software | 8.7 (#5) | 9.0 (#2) |
| Spec score · Api Docs | 8.8 (#5) | 9.1 (#2) |
| Spec score · AI Documentation Generators | 8.7 (#8) | 8.9 (#5) |
| Publishing audience | both | Mintlify says its collaborative editor is intended for engineers, product managers, customer support, marketing, and writers contributing to documentation. |
| CLI requirements | The current CLI installation documentation requires Node.js 22 or newer and supports npm or Homebrew installation. | The npm CLI requires Node.js 20.17 or newer; Node 25 and newer are unsupported. |
| Content analytics | Yes | Yes |
| Custom domain | Yes | Yes |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Integrations | Listed integrations include PostHog, Google Analytics, Segment, Mixpanel, FullStory, Intercom, Postman, and Context7. | Listed integrations include Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, Mixpanel, Twilio Segment, Heap, Amplitude, Fathom, HubSpot Breeze Intelligence, LogRocket, Pirsch, Plausible and PostHog. |
| Rating on G2 | 5.0 out of 5 from 1 review. | 4.6 out of 5 from 19 reviews |
| Self-hosting | Fern lists self-hosting as an Enterprise capability for deploying on dedicated infrastructure. | Self-hosting is listed as an Enterprise capability, while static export is available through the CLI. |
| SSO support | Yes | Yes |
| Support | The Enterprise plan includes dedicated support and an uptime SLA. | Support is offered by email and in-product chat, with a stated response target of two business days; a Slack agent is also available for connected workspaces. |
| What it does | Fern turns API definitions and Markdown into hosted documentation sites, SDKs, and command-line tools. | Mintlify is a documentation platform that creates, maintains and publishes developer documentation and API references. |
Plans
In their own words
Mintlify
Mintlify is a documentation and knowledge platform built for developers and AI agents. Its GitHub App deploys documentation when repository changes are pushed, and its API playground can be generated from OpenAPI or AsyncAPI schemas. Mintlify also generates a search MCP server that lets AI clients such as Claude, Cursor, Goose, and ChatGPT search and retrieve site content. Documentation sites can embed Intercom or Front support widgets through the integrations field in docs.json. The collaborative editor is intended for contributors across engineering, product, customer support, marketing, and writing. Starter costs nothing and includes five editor seats, a custom domain, web editor, authentication, MCP server, and API playground. Pro costs $450 a month, billed monthly, and includes unlimited editor seats, 10,000 credits per month, and $0.01 per credit in overages. Mintlify Desktop is in beta for macOS, Windows, and Linux, with stated minimum operating-system requirements. Mintlify says sensitive organizational and user data is encrypted at rest with AES256-GCM and that it responds to support requests within two business days.