head to head · open source
Docs vs cheat
Docs has 16,829 GitHub stars, 634 forks, 370 open issues and last shipped yesterday. cheat has 13,456 stars, 853 forks, 34 open issues and last shipped 4 months ago. Docs leads on adoption by 25% (16,829 vs 13,456 stars). Docs is written in Python under MIT; cheat is written in Go under MIT. Docs has attracted 4% as many forks as stars, cheat 6%. Docs 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
| Docs | cheat | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 17K | ★ 13K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | Python | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-05-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 634 | ⑂ 853 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Docs if
- You weight community size — 17K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- 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 Docs
Docs is an open source collaborative text editor for creating, editing, and sharing documents in real time. It lives in the open source documentation and knowledge base ecosystem, and it is built with Django and React for web native use. The repository describes Docs as a web native editor made for teams that need clean documents and sub documents without surrendering data to a hosted service.
About cheat
cheat is an MIT licensed, Go written command line tool for nix system administrators that creates and displays interactive cheatsheets, so that options for commands used frequently but not frequently enough to remember stay one command away.
read the full cheat overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Docs or cheat more popular?
Docs has 16,829 GitHub stars and cheat has 13,456. Docs has the larger community by that measure.
Are Docs and cheat free?
Both are open source. Docs is licensed under MIT and cheat under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Docs and cheat?
Docs is written in Python 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, Docs or cheat?
Choose Docs if you want the larger community (16,829 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose cheat if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.