head to head · open source
docusaurus vs yard
docusaurus has 66,641 GitHub stars, 10,125 forks, 430 open issues and last shipped yesterday. yard has 2,011 stars, 435 forks, 14 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. docusaurus leads on adoption by 3,214% (66,641 vs 2,011 stars). docusaurus is written in TypeScript under MIT; yard is written in Ruby under MIT. docusaurus has attracted 15% as many forks as stars, yard 22%. docusaurus 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
| docusaurus | yard | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 67K | ★ 2.0K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | Ruby |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-08-25 |
| Forks | ⑂ 10K | ⑂ 435 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick docusaurus if
- You weight community size — 67K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- 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 docusaurus
Docusaurus Introduction Docusaurus is a project for building, deploying, and maintaining open source project websites easily. Short on time? Check out our 5 minute tutorial ⏱️! Tip : use docusaurus.new to test Docusaurus immediately in a playground. Simple to Start Docusaurus is built in a way so that it can get running in as little time as possible. We've built Docusaurus to handle the website build process so you can focus on your project. Localizable Docusaurus ships with localization support via CrowdIn. Empower and grow your international community by translating your documentation. Customizable While…
read the full docusaurus 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…
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Frequently asked questions
Is docusaurus or yard more popular?
docusaurus has 66,641 GitHub stars and yard has 2,011. docusaurus has the larger community by that measure.
Are docusaurus and yard free?
Both are open source. docusaurus is licensed under MIT and yard under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between docusaurus and yard?
docusaurus is written in TypeScript 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, docusaurus or yard?
Choose docusaurus if you want the larger community (66,641 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose yard if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.