head to head · open source
storybook vs dokka
storybook has 91,428 GitHub stars, 10,495 forks, 1,831 open issues and last shipped yesterday. dokka has 3,817 stars, 504 forks, 675 open issues and last shipped 15 days ago. storybook leads on adoption by 2,295% (91,428 vs 3,817 stars). storybook is written in TypeScript under MIT; dokka is written in Kotlin under Apache-2.0. storybook has attracted 11% as many forks as stars, dokka 13%. storybook 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
| storybook | dokka | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 91K | ★ 3.8K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Kotlin |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 10K | ⑂ 504 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick storybook if
- You weight community size — 91K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick dokka if
- You want the dokka feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Kotlin
- You evaluated both and dokka fits your workflow better
About storybook
Build bulletproof UI components faster Storybook is a frontend workshop for building UI components and pages in isolation. Thousands of teams use it for UI development, testing, and documentation. Find out more at storybook.js.org ! View README for: Table of contents 🚀 Getting Started 📒 Projects 🛠 Supported Frameworks & Examples 🔗Addons 🏅 Badges & Presentation materials 👥 Community 👏 Contributing 👨💻 Development scripts 💸 Sponsors 💵 Backers :memo: License Getting Started Visit Storybook's website to learn more about Storybook and to get started. Documentation Documentation can be found on Storybook's…
read the full storybook overview →
About dokka
Dokka Dokka is an API documentation engine for Kotlin. Just like Kotlin itself, Dokka supports mixed language projects. It understands Kotlin's KDoc comments and Java's Javadoc comments. Dokka can generate documentation in multiple formats, including its own modern HTML format, multiple flavors of Markdown, and Java's Javadoc HTML. Some libraries that use Dokka for their API reference documentation: kotlinx.coroutines Bitmovin Hexagon Ktor OkHttp Gradle You can run Dokka using Gradle, Maven or from the command line. It is also highly pluggable. Documentation Comprehensive documentation for Dokka is available on…
read the full dokka overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is storybook or dokka more popular?
storybook has 91,428 GitHub stars and dokka has 3,817. storybook has the larger community by that measure.
Are storybook and dokka free?
Both are open source. storybook is licensed under MIT and dokka under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between storybook and dokka?
storybook is written in TypeScript and dokka in Kotlin. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, storybook or dokka?
Choose storybook if you want the larger community (91,428 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose dokka if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.