head to head · open source
docsify vs yard
docsify has 31,513 GitHub stars, 5,789 forks, 94 open issues and last shipped yesterday. yard has 2,010 stars, 434 forks, 14 open issues and last shipped 24 days ago. docsify leads on adoption by 1,468% (31,513 vs 2,010 stars). docsify is written in JavaScript under MIT; yard is written in Ruby under MIT. docsify has attracted 18% as many forks as stars, yard 22%. docsify 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
| docsify | yard | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 32K | ★ 2.0K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | JavaScript | Ruby |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-08-25 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.8K | ⑂ 434 |
| 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 yard if
- You want the yard feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Ruby
- You evaluated both and yard 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 yard
YARD: Yay! A Ruby Documentation Tool Synopsis YARD is a documentation generation tool for the Ruby programming language. It enables the user to generate consistent, usable documentation that can be exported to a number of formats very easily, and also supports extending for custom Ruby constructs such as custom class level definitions. Below is a summary of some of YARD's notable features. Feature List 1. Builtin RDoc/Markdown Hybrid Support : YARD ships with a builtin markup renderer that supports both RDoc and Markdown formatting out of the box—no external gem required. You can freely mix RDoc style and Markdow…
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Frequently asked questions
Is docsify or yard more popular?
docsify has 31,513 GitHub stars and yard has 2,010. docsify has the larger community by that measure.
Are docsify and yard free?
Both are open source. docsify is licensed under MIT and yard under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between docsify and yard?
docsify is written in JavaScript and yard 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 yard?
Choose docsify if you want the larger community (31,513 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose yard if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.