head to head · open source
mkdocs vs gollum
mkdocs has 22,497 GitHub stars, 2,658 forks, 192 open issues and last shipped 12 months ago. gollum has 14,336 stars, 1,560 forks, 91 open issues and last shipped 11 months ago. mkdocs leads on adoption by 57% (22,497 vs 14,336 stars). mkdocs is written in Python under BSD-2-Clause; gollum is written in Ruby under MIT. mkdocs has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, gollum 11%. gollum was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (documentation, markdown), 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 | gollum | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 22K | ★ 14K |
| License | BSD-2-Clause | MIT |
| Written in | Python | Ruby |
| Last push | 2025-10-20 | 2025-11-24 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.7K | ⑂ 1.6K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick mkdocs if
- You weight community size — 22K stars and counting
- You want the BSD-2-Clause 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
MkDocs is a static site generator for Python developers and technical writers who want project documentation written in Markdown and served as plain HTML files.
read the full mkdocs 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 or gollum more popular?
mkdocs has 22,497 GitHub stars and gollum has 14,336. mkdocs has the larger community by that measure.
Are mkdocs and gollum free?
Both are open source. mkdocs is licensed under BSD-2-Clause and gollum under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between mkdocs and gollum?
mkdocs 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 or gollum?
Choose mkdocs if you want the larger community (22,497 stars) or its BSD-2-Clause licence terms. Choose gollum if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.