head to head · open source
mkdocs-material vs cheat
mkdocs-material has 27,452 GitHub stars, 4,147 forks, 1 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. cheat has 13,456 stars, 853 forks, 34 open issues and last shipped 4 months ago. mkdocs-material leads on adoption by 104% (27,452 vs 13,456 stars). mkdocs-material is written in Python under MIT; cheat is written in Go under MIT. mkdocs-material has attracted 15% as many forks as stars, cheat 6%. mkdocs-material 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
| mkdocs-material | cheat | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 27K | ★ 13K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | Python | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-15 | 2026-05-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.1K | ⑂ 853 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick mkdocs-material if
- You weight community size — 27K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick cheat if
- You want the cheat feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and cheat fits your workflow better
About mkdocs-material
Material for MkDocs is a documentation framework built on top of MkDocs, the static site generator for project documentation. It lives in the Python ecosystem and is distributed as a theme plus an accompanying set of plugins, so authors write documentation in Markdown and MkDocs builds it into a static site that the theme renders. The project is licensed under MIT, has existed for eleven years, and is maintained as an open source project with more than 27,000 stars and over 4,000 forks on GitHub.
read the full mkdocs-material overview →
About cheat
cheat is an MIT licensed, Go written command line tool for nix system administrators that creates and displays interactive cheatsheets, so that options for commands used frequently but not frequently enough to remember stay one command away.
read the full cheat overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is mkdocs-material or cheat more popular?
mkdocs-material has 27,452 GitHub stars and cheat has 13,456. mkdocs-material has the larger community by that measure.
Are mkdocs-material and cheat free?
Both are open source. mkdocs-material is licensed under MIT and cheat under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between mkdocs-material and cheat?
mkdocs-material is written in Python and cheat in Go. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, mkdocs-material or cheat?
Choose mkdocs-material if you want the larger community (27,452 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose cheat if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.