head to head · open source
jekyll vs docfx
jekyll has 51,745 GitHub stars, 10,304 forks, 258 open issues and last shipped 21 days ago. docfx has 4,447 stars, 890 forks, 452 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. jekyll leads on adoption by 1,064% (51,745 vs 4,447 stars). jekyll is written in Ruby under MIT; docfx is written in C# under MIT. jekyll has attracted 20% as many forks as stars, docfx 20%. docfx was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (markdown, static-site-generator), 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
| jekyll | docfx | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 52K | ★ 4.4K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | Ruby | C# |
| Last push | 2026-10-13 | 2026-11-01 |
| Forks | ⑂ 10K | ⑂ 890 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick jekyll if
- You weight community size — 52K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Ruby
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick docfx if
- You want the docfx feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches C#
- You evaluated both and docfx fits your workflow better
About jekyll
Jekyll [ ][ruby gems] [ ][ci workflow] [ruby gems]: [ci workflow]: [appveyor]: Jekyll is a simple, blog aware, static site generator perfect for personal, project, or organization sites. Think of it like a file based CMS, without all the complexity. Jekyll takes your content, renders Markdown and Liquid templates, and spits out a complete, static website ready to be served by Apache, Nginx or another web server. Jekyll is the engine behind GitHub Pages, which you can use to host sites right from your GitHub repositories. Philosophy Jekyll does what you tell it to do — no more, no less. It doesn't try to outsmart…
read the full jekyll overview →
About docfx
Build your docs with docfx Getting Started Contributing Roadmap License .NET Foundation Build your technical documentation site with docfx, with landing pages, markdown, API reference docs for .NET, REST API and more. As you may have heard docfx has been transitioned to be a .NET Foundation project. Microsoft Learn no longer uses docfx and do not intend to support the project since Nov 2022. Docfx is planned to continue as a community driven project. We hope to produce future releases with new features and enhancements to support existing and new use cases. We also would like to invite any interested parties to…
read the full docfx overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is jekyll or docfx more popular?
jekyll has 51,745 GitHub stars and docfx has 4,447. jekyll has the larger community by that measure.
Are jekyll and docfx free?
Both are open source. jekyll is licensed under MIT and docfx under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between jekyll and docfx?
jekyll is written in Ruby and docfx in C#. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, jekyll or docfx?
Choose jekyll if you want the larger community (51,745 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose docfx if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.