Read the Docs vs. GitBook comparison

GitBook is a proprietary documentation platform built around a hosted block-based editor. If your docs team prefers editing in a WYSIWYG instead of a Git workflow, GitBook has a focused story.

Read the Docs takes a different approach: your tools, your content, your terms. Write in any doc tool your team already uses, versioned in the same Git repository as your code and reviewed in pull requests like any other change. Publish on a platform trusted by engineering teams at AMD and Canonical, and by open source projects like Jupyter and Flask — over 15 years of reliable documentation hosting.

No proprietary editor. No per-seat pricing. Business and Enterprise plans for commercial teams, with a free Community tier for open source.


Build your site on the cloud Generate your site's content on the cloud
Deploy previews Solve style issues before deploying
Search Always find what you are looking for
Multiple versions Publish multiple versions of your documentation
Page analytics Understand how people browse your documentation
Redirects Redirect users to the right page
Translations Serve translated versions of your docs
Private documention Give access only to trusted people
Preview changes from forked repositories Visualize edits from external collaborators
Static hosting Publish any static content
Visual diff on deploy previews Visualize differences directly on the rendered version
Custom 404 pages Style 404 pages with context-related information
Custom "robots.txt" Improve your SEO by telling bots how to explore your site
Search analytics Explore what people search for in your docs
Open Source No lock in and contribute back
Documentation tool agnostic Use the documentation tool your team prefers (Sphinx, MkDocs, Docusaurus, etc)
Custom theme Style the documentation as you like

Try it out

.readthedocs.yaml

version: 2
build:
  os: "ubuntu-22.04"
  tools:
    nodejs: "18"
    # You can also specify other tool versions:
    # python: "3"
  commands:
      # "docs/" was created following the Docusaurus tutorial:
      # npx create-docusaurus@latest docs classic
      #
      # Install Docusaurus dependencies
      - cd docs/ && npm install
      # Build the site
      - cd docs/ && npm run build
      # Copy generated files into Read the Docs directory
      - mkdir --parents $READTHEDOCS_OUTPUT/html/
      - cp --recursive docs/build/* $READTHEDOCS_OUTPUT/html/

Write in the doc tool your team already uses, keep your content in Git, and publish on an open platform with no vendor lock-in.

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Read the Docs is the open platform for technical documentation

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Keep your tools. Keep your content.