head to head · open source
jekyll vs docfx
jekyll has 51,677 GitHub stars, 10,300 forks, 258 open issues and last shipped yesterday. docfx has 4,448 stars, 889 forks, 452 open issues and last shipped yesterday. jekyll leads on adoption by 1,062% (51,677 vs 4,448 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%. jekyll 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 | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 10K | ⑂ 889 |
| 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 is a blog aware static site generator written in Ruby and released under the MIT license. It takes content written in Markdown together with Liquid templates and renders a complete static website that can be served by Apache, Nginx, or any other web server. The project describes itself as a file based CMS without the complexity of a database backed one, and it is the engine behind GitHub Pages, which hosts sites directly from GitHub repositories. It lives in the Ruby ecosystem, is distributed as a gem, and has been developed for roughly eighteen years.
read the full jekyll overview →
About docfx
docfx is a static site generator for .NET API documentation, and it lives in the .NET ecosystem. The project is written in C , licensed under MIT, and published at dotnet.github.io/docfx. It is now a .NET Foundation project maintained by the community after Microsoft Learn stopped using it and ended support in November 2022. It builds technical documentation sites from landing pages, Markdown, .NET API reference docs, and REST API content.
read the full docfx overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is jekyll or docfx more popular?
jekyll has 51,677 GitHub stars and docfx has 4,448. 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 (51,677 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose docfx if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.