Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

mdbook VS Bookdown

Compare mdbook VS Bookdown and see what are their differences

mdbook logo mdbook

Gitbook alternative in Rust

Bookdown logo Bookdown

The bookdown package is a free and open-source R package built on top of R Markdown to make it really easy to write books and long-form articles/reports.
  • mdbook Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-11-07
  • Bookdown Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-05-24

mdbook features and specs

  • Easy to Use
    mdBook is designed to be user-friendly, allowing users to create and manage books using Markdown with minimal setup.
  • Customization
    It offers a range of customization options, including themes and configuration options, enabling users to tailor it to their preferences.
  • Lightweight and Fast
    As a Rust-based tool, mdBook is lightweight and fast in performance, making it suitable for handling large projects with ease.
  • Open Source
    Being open-source, mdBook encourages contributions and allows users to adapt the tool for their specific needs.
  • Integration with Continuous Integration (CI) Systems
    The platform allows for seamless integration with CI systems, facilitating automated builds and deployments.

Possible disadvantages of mdbook

  • Limited Advanced Features
    While great for straightforward documentation, mdBook may lack more advanced features needed for highly complex or unique publishing needs.
  • Learning Curve for Customization
    Although customization is a pro, the initial learning curve to truly customize the tool to its full potential can be steep for some users.
  • Dependent on Markdown
    Its reliance on Markdown can be a limitation if users require advanced styling or scripting capabilities not inherently supported by Markdown.
  • Rust Dependency
    Users need to have Rust installed to use mdBook, which might be cumbersome for users unfamiliar with Rust or not utilizing it for other projects.

Bookdown features and specs

No features have been listed yet.

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to mdbook and Bookdown)
Documentation As A Service & Tools
Documentation
77 77%
23% 23
Knowledge Base
77 77%
23% 23
Knowledge Management
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare mdbook and Bookdown

mdbook Reviews

Best Gitbook Alternatives You Need to Try in 2023
Mdbook is a command-line tool for creating online portals from Markdown files. It is built in Rust and focuses on being easy to use and fast. It also supports various output formats like HTML, PDF, and ePub. It also allows you to add custom themes to give your books a unique look.
Source: www.archbee.com

Bookdown Reviews

We have no reviews of Bookdown yet.
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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Bookdown seems to be more popular. It has been mentiond 3 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

mdbook mentions (0)

We have not tracked any mentions of mdbook yet. Tracking of mdbook recommendations started around Mar 2021.

Bookdown mentions (3)

  • I am still new to R-Studio and I am trying to add titles to my graphs. Can anyone help?
    Most publications I work with frown on graph titles in preference to captions. If you use Rmarkdown with the bookdown package you can build documents that embed your graphs with captions that you can cross reference in your text. Despite the title, it is great for papers as well as books. https://bookdown.org/home/. Source: over 3 years ago
  • Using rshiny to displace research output
    It’s just that you need to run a Linux server to host a shiny app. You can’t complete to a webpage. But you can use BookDown. https://bookdown.org/home/. Source: over 3 years ago
  • Best practices for reproducible R code (for a PhD dissertation in the humanities)?
    Just an fyi that these are not mutually exclusive. You can use a custom latex template for the pandoc pdf translation while still using rmarkdown for your actual writing. Details here. Also, for something dissertation length you might want to look into the bookdown package; related. Source: over 3 years ago

What are some alternatives?

When comparing mdbook and Bookdown, you can also consider the following products

GitBook - Modern Publishing, Simply taking your books from ideas to finished, polished books.

MkDocs - Project documentation with Markdown.

ReadTheDocs - Spend your time on writing high quality documentation, not on the tools to make your documentation work.

Docusaurus - Easy to maintain open source documentation websites

pandoc - Pandoc is a Haskell library for converting from one markup format to another, and a command-line...

Sphinx Search - Sphinx is an open source full text search server, designed with performance, relevance (search quality), and integration simplicity in mind. Sphinx lets you either batch index and search data stored in files, an SQL database, NoSQL storage.