head to head · open source
devdocs vs dokka
devdocs has 39,596 GitHub stars, 2,656 forks, 196 open issues and last shipped yesterday. dokka has 3,817 stars, 504 forks, 675 open issues and last shipped 15 days ago. devdocs leads on adoption by 937% (39,596 vs 3,817 stars). devdocs is written in Ruby under MPL-2.0; dokka is written in Kotlin under Apache-2.0. devdocs has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, dokka 13%. 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| devdocs | dokka | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 40K | ★ 3.8K |
| License | MPL-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Ruby | Kotlin |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.7K | ⑂ 504 |
| 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 dokka if
- You want the dokka feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Kotlin
- You evaluated both and dokka 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 dokka
Dokka Dokka is an API documentation engine for Kotlin. Just like Kotlin itself, Dokka supports mixed language projects. It understands Kotlin's KDoc comments and Java's Javadoc comments. Dokka can generate documentation in multiple formats, including its own modern HTML format, multiple flavors of Markdown, and Java's Javadoc HTML. Some libraries that use Dokka for their API reference documentation: kotlinx.coroutines Bitmovin Hexagon Ktor OkHttp Gradle You can run Dokka using Gradle, Maven or from the command line. It is also highly pluggable. Documentation Comprehensive documentation for Dokka is available on…
read the full dokka overview →
More in Content & Publishing
Related comparisons
More Documentation & Knowledge Base projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Documentation & Knowledge Base field.
Frequently asked questions
Is devdocs or dokka more popular?
devdocs has 39,596 GitHub stars and dokka has 3,817. devdocs has the larger community by that measure.
Are devdocs and dokka free?
Both are open source. devdocs is licensed under MPL-2.0 and dokka under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between devdocs and dokka?
devdocs is written in Ruby and dokka in Kotlin. 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 dokka?
Choose devdocs if you want the larger community (39,596 stars) or its MPL-2.0 licence terms. Choose dokka if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.