head to head · open source
devdocs vs utoipa
devdocs has 39,596 GitHub stars, 2,656 forks, 196 open issues and last shipped yesterday. utoipa has 4,141 stars, 416 forks, 248 open issues and last shipped 14 days ago. devdocs leads on adoption by 856% (39,596 vs 4,141 stars). devdocs is written in Ruby under MPL-2.0; utoipa is written in Rust under Apache-2.0. devdocs has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, utoipa 10%. 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 | utoipa | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 40K | ★ 4.1K |
| License | MPL-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Ruby | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-20 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.7K | ⑂ 416 |
| 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 utoipa if
- You want the utoipa feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and utoipa 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 utoipa
utoipa Auto generated OpenAPI documentation Pronounced /u:ˈtoʊ:i.pɑ/ or /u:ˈtoʊˌaɪ.piˈeɪ/ whatever works better for you. Want to have your API documented with OpenAPI? But don't want to be bothered with manual YAML or JSON tweaking? Would like it to be so easy that it would almost be utopic? Don't worry: utoipa is here to fill this gap. It aims to do, if not all, then most of the heavy lifting for you, enabling you to focus on writing the actual API logic instead of documentation. It aims to be minimal , simple and fast . It uses simple proc macros which you can use to annotate your code to have items…
read the full utoipa overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is devdocs or utoipa more popular?
devdocs has 39,596 GitHub stars and utoipa has 4,141. devdocs has the larger community by that measure.
Are devdocs and utoipa free?
Both are open source. devdocs is licensed under MPL-2.0 and utoipa under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between devdocs and utoipa?
devdocs is written in Ruby and utoipa in Rust. 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 utoipa?
Choose devdocs if you want the larger community (39,596 stars) or its MPL-2.0 licence terms. Choose utoipa if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.