Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Pygments VS Docusaurus

Compare Pygments VS Docusaurus and see what are their differences

Pygments logo Pygments

Generic syntax highlighter suitable for use in code hosting, forums, wikis or other applications...

Docusaurus logo Docusaurus

Easy to maintain open source documentation websites
  • Pygments Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-15
  • Docusaurus Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-22

Pygments features and specs

  • Wide Language Support
    Pygments supports a broad range of programming languages and file formats, making it highly versatile for developers working in diverse environments.
  • High-Quality Output
    The library produces highly readable and aesthetically pleasing highlighted code, which is crucial for documentation and presentation.
  • Easy Integration
    Pygments is designed to integrate easily with a variety of web frameworks, content management systems, and text editors.
  • Customization Options
    Users can customize styles, themes, and output formats to meet specific needs, providing flexibility for different aesthetic requirements.
  • Active Community
    A strong, active community contributes to its continuous development and improvement, ensuring it stays updated with the latest languages and features.

Possible disadvantages of Pygments

  • Performance Overhead
    For large codebases or high-frequency requests, using Pygments can introduce performance overhead, potentially slowing down applications.
  • Dependency Management
    As with any library, integrating Pygments means managing its dependencies and ensuring compatibility with other project components.
  • Complexity in Advanced Use
    While basic usage is straightforward, more advanced features and customizations can introduce complexity, requiring a deeper understanding of the library.
  • Limited Built-In Features
    Pygments primarily focuses on syntax highlighting, so additional functionality (like code execution or detailed analysis) has to be handled by other tools or custom development.

Docusaurus features and specs

  • Easy Setup
    Docusaurus offers an easy and quick setup process, making it accessible for users to get started quickly. It provides a template to kickstart documentation projects efficiently.
  • Customizable
    It is highly customizable with options to add custom themes, plugins, and translations, allowing users to tailor their documentation to specific needs and visual styles.
  • React-Based
    Built on React, it enables developers familiar with React to seamlessly create documentation components and extend functionalities using React's ecosystem.
  • Versioning
    Docusaurus supports documentation versioning, making it easier to maintain and access historical versions of documentation for different releases of a project.
  • Extensive Plugin Ecosystem
    Offers a wide array of plugins to enhance functionalities, such as search capabilities, SEO, and integrations with other tools and services.
  • Good Performance
    Optimized for performance, providing fast load times and a smooth user experience for accessing documentation.
  • Active Community
    Docusaurus has an active and supportive community that contributes plugins, themes, and offers help, making it easier to find solutions to common problems.

Possible disadvantages of Docusaurus

  • Steep Learning Curve for Non-React Developers
    Developers not familiar with React may find it challenging to customize or extend Docusaurus documentation due to the React-based nature of the tool.
  • Limited Out-of-the-Box Features
    While highly customizable, the basic setup can feel limited, and users often need to add plugins and custom code to meet their specific requirements.
  • Dependency Management
    Being React-based, it comes with Node.js and NPM dependencies, which may add some overhead for managing and updating dependencies.
  • Static Site Limitations
    As a static site generator, it may be less suitable for dynamic content that requires frequent real-time updates or complex backend integrations.
  • Complex Configuration
    For projects requiring extensive customization, the configuration can become complex and harder to manage, potentially requiring more effort and expertise.

Analysis of Docusaurus

Overall verdict

  • Docusaurus is generally considered a good choice for creating documentation websites, especially for open source projects. Its structured approach, alongside its powerful customization options, makes it suitable for both small and large scale documentation needs.

Why this product is good

  • Docusaurus is a popular open-source project developed by Facebook for creating, deploying, and maintaining open source project websites with ease. It is praised for its simplicity, flexibility, and rich feature set, including built-in support for versioning, localization, search, and theming. It is built on React, which allows developers to extend and customize their documentation site extensively.

Recommended for

    Docusaurus is recommended for developers and project maintainers who need to create and manage comprehensive documentation for open source projects or internal tools. It is particularly valuable for those who prefer a React-based approach and need features like versioning and localization out of the box.

Pygments videos

No Pygments videos yet. You could help us improve this page by suggesting one.

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Docusaurus videos

F8 2019: Using Docusaurus to Create Open Source Websites

More videos:

  • Review - Build and deploy Docusaurus
  • Review - Docusaurus - Docs dan Blog Final

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Pygments and Docusaurus)
Documentation
5 5%
95% 95
Customer Feedback
100 100%
0% 0
Documentation As A Service & Tools
App Reviews
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 Pygments and Docusaurus

Pygments Reviews

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Docusaurus Reviews

Best Gitbook Alternatives You Need to Try in 2023
In conclusion, there are several alternatives to Gitbook that are available out there. Each one has its own set of advantages and disadvantages, and the best choice will depend on your specific needs and project requirements. Consider giving Archbee, Notion, Bookstack, and Docusaurus a try to see which works best for you. Remember, you can choose the right tool to get your...
Source: www.archbee.com
Best 25 Software Documentation Tools 2023
Docusaurus is an open-source documentation tool specifically designed for creating documentation for software projects, with a focus on documentation websites and easy integration with version control systems.
Source: www.uphint.com
19 Best Online Documentation Software & Tools for 2023
Docusaurus is an open-source online documentation tool that is powered by MDX. You can maintain different versions of your documentation so that it is in sync with your projectโ€™s stages. You can also translate your docs into a language your end-users prefer by using tools like Git and Crowdin. Furthermore, with Docusaurus, you donโ€™t have to worry about the design and...
10 static site generators to watch inย 2021
Built using React, it supports writing content in MDX so that JSX and React components can be embedded into markdown, but also aims to remain easy to learn and use by providing sensible defaults and the ability to override if the developer has need. Recently releasing a major update with Docusaurus 2 beta, many of its principles were inspired by Gatsby but it is more focused...
Source: www.netlify.com
20 Best Web Project Documentation Tools
Save time and focus on your projectโ€™s documentation. Simply write docs and blog posts with Markdown and Docusaurus will publish a set of static html files ready to serve.
Source: bashooka.com

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Docusaurus seems to be a lot more popular than Pygments. While we know about 215 links to Docusaurus, we've tracked only 10 mentions of Pygments. 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.

Pygments mentions (10)

  • Ask HN: Printing Code to Paper?
    Some starter ideas[0] beyond spacing/line numbers. BNF format is used to describe a programming language. treesitter as a text editor plug in makes use of a language BNF description to be able to know how to parse & format a given lanuage in a text editor (aka pygments[1], gnu source code hightlights, [2] neovim with treesitter[3]). Aka searching google "treesitter work with microsoft notepade" --- [0] :... - Source: Hacker News / about 1 year ago
  • Marcel the Shell
    I suspect Pygments will be to your liking. https://pygments.org/. - Source: Hacker News / almost 2 years ago
  • Blog in django
    It's not clear exactly what you want, but if you mean syntax highlighting, you could use pygments https://pygments.org/. Source: over 2 years ago
  • I'm looking for a way to display live changes to a text file with Python
    Https://pygments.org/ - never tried it though. Source: over 2 years ago
  • Markdown, Asciidoc, or reStructuredText - a tale of docs-as-code
    Sphinx is incredibly powerful and can offer a table of contents, automatic links for functions, automatic code highlighting using Pygments, and other capabilities using built-in or third-party extensions. If you'd like to use (a flavor of) Markdown with Sphinx, you can do so using MyST-parser - a Sphinx and Docutils extension to parse MyST. - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
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Docusaurus mentions (215)

  • React Won by Default โ€“ and It's Killing Front End Innovation
    Https://docusaurus.io If you think that's sluggish, that's a you problem. - Source: Hacker News / 19 days ago
  • I Tried 15 of the Best Documentation Tools โ€” Hereโ€™s What Actually Works in 2025
    Backed by Meta, Docusaurus is a developer favorite for building open-source project docs and developer portals. Itโ€™s a static site generator that brings Markdown and React together, providing smooth versioning and localization. - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
  • Create fast, modern API docs using Docusaurus
    Docusaurus is a powerful static site generator built by Meta and designed specifically for documentation websites. Itโ€™s React-based, which means you get a lot of flexibility in how you customize your site, and it comes with features that make API documentation much easier to manage:. - Source: dev.to / 5 months ago
  • How we built our docs site
    We looked into a few different providers including GitBook, Docusaurus, Hashnode, Fern and Mintlify. There were various factors in the decision but the TLDR is that while we manage our SDKs with Fern, we chose Mintlify for docs as it had the best writing experience, supported custom React components, and was more affordable for hosting on a custom domain. Both Fern and Mintlify pull from the same single source of... - Source: dev.to / 5 months ago
  • How to Migrate Technical Documentation: Tools, Checklist, and Tips
    Docusaurus is an open-source documentation site generator built by Meta, designed for creating optimized, fast, and customizable websites using React. It supports markdown files, versioning, internationalization (i18n), and integrates well with Git-based workflows. Its React architecture allows for deep customization and dynamic components. Docusaurus is ideal for developer-focused documentation with a need for... - Source: dev.to / 5 months ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing Pygments and Docusaurus, you can also consider the following products

prism.js - Prism is a lightweight, extensible syntax highlighter, built with modern web standards in mind.

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

Shiki - A beautiful syntax highlighter based on TextMate grammar, accurate and powerful.

ReadMe - A collaborative developer hub for your API or code.

Re-Highlight - Re-Highlight is a powerful text syntax highlighting library.

Doxygen - Generate documentation from source code