head to head · open source
Docs vs utopia
Docs has 16,838 GitHub stars, 639 forks, 370 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. utopia has 9,245 stars, 1,035 forks, 27 open issues and last shipped today. Docs leads on adoption by 82% (16,838 vs 9,245 stars). Docs is written in Python under MIT; utopia is written in Rust under Apache-2.0. Docs has attracted 4% as many forks as stars, utopia 11%. utopia was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (knowledge-base), 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 | utopia | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 17K | ★ 9.2K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-20 |
| Forks | ⑂ 639 | ⑂ 1.0K |
| 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 utopia if
- You want the utopia feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and utopia 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 utopia
Utopia is the world's first open source enterprise world model: a self hosted knowledge substrate with a bitemporal graph and an ontology at its base layer, built by DeepLethe for teams that need agent memory, governed knowledge, and a trustworthy decision core running on hardware they control.
read the full utopia overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Docs or utopia more popular?
Docs has 16,838 GitHub stars and utopia has 9,245. Docs has the larger community by that measure.
Are Docs and utopia free?
Both are open source. Docs is licensed under MIT and utopia under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Docs and utopia?
Docs is written in Python and utopia in Rust. 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 utopia?
Choose Docs if you want the larger community (16,838 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose utopia if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.