head to head · open source
Docs vs gollum
Docs has 16,963 GitHub stars, 688 forks, 370 open issues and last shipped yesterday. gollum has 14,338 stars, 1,560 forks, 91 open issues and last shipped 11 months ago. Docs leads on adoption by 18% (16,963 vs 14,338 stars). Docs is written in TypeScript under MIT; gollum is written in Ruby under MIT. Docs has attracted 4% as many forks as stars, gollum 11%. 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 | gollum | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 17K | ★ 14K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | Ruby |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2025-11-24 |
| Forks | ⑂ 688 | ⑂ 1.6K |
| 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 TypeScript
- 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 Docs
Chat on Matrix • Documentation • Try Docs • Contact us La Suite Docs: Collaborative Text Editing Docs, where your notes can become knowledge through live collaboration. Docs is an open source collaborative editor that helps teams write, organize, and share knowledge together in real time. What is Docs? Docs is an open source alternative to tools like Notion or Google Docs, focused on: Real time collaboration Clean, structured documents Knowledge organization Data ownership & self hosting Built for public organizations, companies, and open communities. Why use Docs? Writing Rich text & Markdown editing Slash…
About gollum
gollum A git based Wiki Gollum is a simple wiki system built on top of Git. A Gollum Wiki is simply a git repository of a specific nature: A Gollum repository's contents are human editable text or markup files. Pages may be organized into directories any way you choose. Other content can also be included, for example images, PDFs and headers/footers for your pages. Gollum pages: May be written in a variety of markups. Can be edited with your favourite editor (changes will be visible after committing) or with the built in web interface. Can be displayed in all versions, reverted, etc. Gollum strives to be…
read the full gollum overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Docs or gollum more popular?
Docs has 16,963 GitHub stars and gollum has 14,338. Docs has the larger community by that measure.
Are Docs and gollum free?
Both are open source. Docs is licensed under MIT and gollum under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Docs and gollum?
Docs is written in TypeScript 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, Docs or gollum?
Choose Docs if you want the larger community (16,963 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose gollum if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.