head to head · open source
devdocs vs gollum
devdocs has 39,461 GitHub stars, 2,643 forks, 196 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. gollum has 14,327 stars, 1,560 forks, 91 open issues and last shipped 10 months ago. devdocs leads on adoption by 175% (39,461 vs 14,327 stars). devdocs is written in Ruby under MPL-2.0; gollum is written in Ruby under MIT. devdocs has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, gollum 11%. devdocs was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (documentation, documentation-tool), 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 | gollum | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 39K | ★ 14K |
| License | MPL-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Ruby | Ruby |
| Last push | 2026-09-15 | 2025-11-24 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.6K | ⑂ 1.6K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick devdocs if
- You weight community size — 39K 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 gollum if
- You want the gollum feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Ruby
- You evaluated both and gollum fits your workflow better
About devdocs
DevDocs is an API documentation browser that combines multiple developer documentations into a single, clean and organized web UI with instant search, offline support, a mobile version, a dark theme and keyboard shortcuts, and it is aimed at developers who need to read and search API and reference documentation quickly.
read the full devdocs overview →
About gollum
Gollum is a simple wiki system built on top of Git. A Gollum wiki is simply a Git repository of a specific nature: its contents are human editable text or markup files, pages may be organized into directories in any way the author chooses, and other content such as images, PDFs, and headers or footers for pages can also be included. Pages may be written in a variety of markups, edited either with a favourite editor (changes become visible after committing) or through the built in web interface, and displayed in all versions or reverted. The project lives in the Ruby ecosystem, is distributed under the MIT license…
read the full gollum overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is devdocs or gollum more popular?
devdocs has 39,461 GitHub stars and gollum has 14,327. devdocs has the larger community by that measure.
Are devdocs and gollum free?
Both are open source. devdocs is licensed under MPL-2.0 and gollum under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between devdocs and gollum?
devdocs is written in Ruby and gollum in Ruby. 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 gollum?
Choose devdocs if you want the larger community (39,461 stars) or its MPL-2.0 licence terms. Choose gollum if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.