head to head · open source
Docs vs schemaspy
Docs has 16,838 GitHub stars, 639 forks, 370 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. schemaspy has 3,724 stars, 357 forks, 303 open issues and last shipped 7 months ago. Docs leads on adoption by 352% (16,838 vs 3,724 stars). Docs is written in Python under MIT; schemaspy is written in HTML under LGPL-3.0. Docs has attracted 4% as many forks as stars, schemaspy 10%. Docs 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
| Docs | schemaspy | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 17K | ★ 3.7K |
| License | MIT | LGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Python | HTML |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-03-05 |
| Forks | ⑂ 639 | ⑂ 357 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Docs if
- You weight community size — 17K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick schemaspy if
- You want the schemaspy feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the LGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches HTML
- You evaluated both and schemaspy fits your workflow better
About Docs
Docs is an open source collaborative text editor for creating, editing, and sharing documents in real time. It lives in the open source documentation and knowledge base ecosystem, and it is built with Django and React for web native use. The repository describes Docs as a web native editor made for teams that need clean documents and sub documents without surrendering data to a hosted service.
About schemaspy
SchemaSpy is a standalone Java based database metadata analyzer that reverse engineers an existing database schema and produces a browsable HTML report with entity relationship diagrams, for database administrators and developers who need to understand a data model they did not design.
read the full schemaspy overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Docs or schemaspy more popular?
Docs has 16,838 GitHub stars and schemaspy has 3,724. Docs has the larger community by that measure.
Are Docs and schemaspy free?
Both are open source. Docs is licensed under MIT and schemaspy under LGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Docs and schemaspy?
Docs is written in Python and schemaspy in HTML. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Docs or schemaspy?
Choose Docs if you want the larger community (16,838 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose schemaspy if its feature set, stack or LGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.