head to head · open source
docsify vs gollum
docsify has 31,513 GitHub stars, 5,789 forks, 94 open issues and last shipped yesterday. gollum has 14,327 stars, 1,560 forks, 91 open issues and last shipped 10 months ago. docsify leads on adoption by 120% (31,513 vs 14,327 stars). docsify is written in JavaScript under MIT; gollum is written in Ruby under MIT. docsify has attracted 18% as many forks as stars, gollum 11%. docsify was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (documentation, documentation-tool, markdown), 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
| docsify | gollum | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 32K | ★ 14K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | JavaScript | Ruby |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2025-11-24 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.8K | ⑂ 1.6K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick docsify if
- You weight community size — 32K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- 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 docsify
Docsify is a client side documentation site generator that turns one or more Markdown files into a website with no build process, aimed at developers and maintainers who want to publish documentation from a static host such as GitHub Pages.
read the full docsify 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 docsify or gollum more popular?
docsify has 31,513 GitHub stars and gollum has 14,327. docsify has the larger community by that measure.
Are docsify and gollum free?
Both are open source. docsify is licensed under MIT and gollum under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between docsify and gollum?
docsify is written in JavaScript 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, docsify or gollum?
Choose docsify if you want the larger community (31,513 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose gollum if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.