head to head · open source
mkdocs-material vs gollum
mkdocs-material has 27,452 GitHub stars, 4,147 forks, 1 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. gollum has 14,327 stars, 1,560 forks, 91 open issues and last shipped 10 months ago. mkdocs-material leads on adoption by 92% (27,452 vs 14,327 stars). mkdocs-material is written in Python under MIT; gollum is written in Ruby under MIT. mkdocs-material has attracted 15% as many forks as stars, gollum 11%. 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 | gollum | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 27K | ★ 14K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | Python | Ruby |
| Last push | 2026-09-15 | 2025-11-24 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.1K | ⑂ 1.6K |
| 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 gollum if
- You want the gollum feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Ruby
- You evaluated both and gollum 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 gollum
Gollum is a simple wiki system built on top of Git. A Gollum wiki is simply a Git repository of a specific nature: its contents are human editable text or markup files, pages may be organized into directories in any way the author chooses, and other content such as images, PDFs, and headers or footers for pages can also be included. Pages may be written in a variety of markups, edited either with a favourite editor (changes become visible after committing) or through the built in web interface, and displayed in all versions or reverted. The project lives in the Ruby ecosystem, is distributed under the MIT license…
read the full gollum overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is mkdocs-material or gollum more popular?
mkdocs-material has 27,452 GitHub stars and gollum has 14,327. mkdocs-material has the larger community by that measure.
Are mkdocs-material and gollum free?
Both are open source. mkdocs-material is licensed under MIT and gollum under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between mkdocs-material and gollum?
mkdocs-material is written in Python and gollum 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, mkdocs-material or gollum?
Choose mkdocs-material if you want the larger community (27,452 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose gollum if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.