head to head · open source
devdocs vs cheat
devdocs has 39,596 GitHub stars, 2,656 forks, 196 open issues and last shipped yesterday. cheat has 13,486 stars, 851 forks, 34 open issues and last shipped 6 months ago. devdocs leads on adoption by 194% (39,596 vs 13,486 stars). devdocs is written in Ruby under MPL-2.0; cheat is written in Go under MIT. devdocs has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, cheat 6%. devdocs was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (documentation), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| devdocs | cheat | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 40K | ★ 13K |
| License | MPL-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Ruby | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-05-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.7K | ⑂ 851 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick devdocs if
- You weight community size — 40K stars and counting
- You want the MPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Ruby
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick cheat if
- You want the cheat feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and cheat fits your workflow better
About devdocs
DevDocs — API Documentation Browser DevDocs combines multiple developer documentations in a clean and organized web UI with instant search, offline support, mobile version, dark theme, keyboard shortcuts, and more. DevDocs was created by Thibaut Courouble and is operated by freeCodeCamp. We are currently searching for maintainers Please reach out to the community on Discord if you would like to join the team! Keep track of development news: Join the contributors chat room on Discord Watch the repository on GitHub Table of Contents: Quick Start · Vision · App · Scraper · Commands · Contributing · Documentation ·…
read the full devdocs overview →
About cheat
cheat cheat allows you to create and view interactive cheatsheets on the command line. It was designed to help remind \ nix system administrators of options for commands that they use frequently, but not frequently enough to remember. Use cheat with [cheatsheets][]. Example The next time you're forced to disarm a nuclear weapon without consulting Google, you may run: You will be presented with a cheatsheet resembling the following: Installing For installation and configuration instructions, see [INSTALLING.md][]. Usage To view a cheatsheet: To edit a cheatsheet: To view the configured cheatpaths: To list all…
read the full cheat overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is devdocs or cheat more popular?
devdocs has 39,596 GitHub stars and cheat has 13,486. devdocs has the larger community by that measure.
Are devdocs and cheat free?
Both are open source. devdocs is licensed under MPL-2.0 and cheat under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between devdocs and cheat?
devdocs is written in Ruby and cheat in Go. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, devdocs or cheat?
Choose devdocs if you want the larger community (39,596 stars) or its MPL-2.0 licence terms. Choose cheat if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.