Modern Documentation Systems: Docusaurus, Starlight, and Mintlify Compared

Modern Documentation Systems: Docusaurus, Starlight, and Mintlify Compared

Your documentation site is the first thing developers interact with before using your tool. If it's slow, poorly organized, or hard to search, they'll move on. If it looks like it was designed in 2015, they'll assume your tool was too.

The good news: modern documentation generators have gotten remarkably good. The bad news: there are too many of them, and the differences aren't obvious until you've committed to one and hit its limitations three months later.

This guide compares the three most capable documentation systems available right now -- Docusaurus, Starlight, and Mintlify -- through the lens of what actually matters when you're building and maintaining docs for a developer audience.

The Quick Comparison

Before diving into details, here's the high-level picture.

Docusaurus: The Established Standard

Docusaurus, built by Meta's open source team, has been the default choice for developer documentation since its 2.0 release. React Router, Redux, Jest, Babel, and hundreds of other projects use it. The ecosystem is mature, the documentation (ironically) is excellent, and the community has answers for most problems you'll encounter.

Getting Started

npx create-docusaurus@latest my-docs classic
cd my-docs
npm start

You get a working docs site in under a minute. The classic preset includes a blog, documentation pages, and a landing page. The file structure is straightforward:

my-docs/
├── docs/              # Documentation markdown files
│   ├── intro.md
│   └── tutorial/
│       ├── basics.md
│       └── advanced.md
├── blog/              # Blog posts
├── src/               # Custom React components and pages
│   ├── components/
│   └── pages/
├── static/            # Static assets
├── docusaurus.config.js
└── sidebars.js        # Sidebar navigation structure

Sidebar Configuration

Docusaurus sidebars can be auto-generated from filesystem structure or manually configured:

// sidebars.js
module.exports = {
  docs: [
    'intro',
    {
      type: 'category',
      label: 'Getting Started',
      items: ['installation', 'configuration', 'first-steps'],
      collapsed: false,
    },
    {
      type: 'category',
      label: 'API Reference',
      items: [
        {
          type: 'autogenerated',
          dirName: 'api', // Auto-generate from docs/api/ directory
        },
      ],
    },
  ],
};

Where Docusaurus Shines

Plugin ecosystem. Need Algolia search? There's an official plugin. OpenAPI docs? Multiple community options. Mermaid diagrams? Built-in MDX support. Docusaurus has plugins for nearly everything.

Versioning. Run npm run docusaurus docs:version 2.0 and Docusaurus snapshots your entire docs directory. Users can switch between versions from the navbar. This is critical for libraries with breaking changes between major versions.

MDX support. Every doc page is an MDX file, meaning you can embed React components directly:

import Tabs from '@theme/Tabs';
import TabItem from '@theme/TabItem';

<Tabs>
  <TabItem value="npm" label="npm">
    ```bash
    npm install my-library
    ```
  </TabItem>
  <TabItem value="yarn" label="yarn">
    ```bash
    yarn add my-library
    ```
  </TabItem>
</Tabs>

Where Docusaurus Falls Short

Bundle size. A default Docusaurus site ships ~200KB of JavaScript before your content loads. For a documentation site that's mostly static text, this is heavy.

Build times. At 100+ pages, builds start taking 15-30 seconds. At 500+ pages, you're waiting a minute or more. This slows down the write-preview-publish cycle.

React dependency. Everything is React. Custom components, theme overrides, page layouts -- all React. If your team works in Vue or Svelte, that's friction.

Starlight: The Performance Contender

Starlight is built on Astro, and it shows. Astro's "islands architecture" means pages are server-rendered static HTML by default, with JavaScript loaded only for interactive components. Documentation pages -- which are 95% static content -- ship almost zero JavaScript.

Getting Started

npm create astro@latest -- --template starlight
cd my-docs
npm run dev

Content lives in src/content/docs/:

my-docs/
├── src/
│   ├── content/
│   │   └── docs/
│   │       ├── index.mdx
│   │       ├── getting-started/
│   │       │   ├── installation.md
│   │       │   └── configuration.md
│   │       └── reference/
│   │           └── api.md
│   └── assets/        # Optimized images
├── astro.config.mjs
└── package.json

Configuration

Starlight is configured through astro.config.mjs:

import { defineConfig } from 'astro/config';
import starlight from '@astrojs/starlight';

export default defineConfig({
  integrations: [
    starlight({
      title: 'My Project',
      social: {
        github: 'https://github.com/my-org/my-project',
      },
      sidebar: [
        {
          label: 'Getting Started',
          items: [
            { label: 'Installation', slug: 'getting-started/installation' },
            { label: 'Configuration', slug: 'getting-started/configuration' },
          ],
        },
        {
          label: 'Reference',
          autogenerate: { directory: 'reference' },
        },
      ],
      // Built-in search powered by Pagefind
      // No external service required
    }),
  ],
});

Where Starlight Shines

Performance. A Starlight page loads in under 50KB of JavaScript. Lighthouse scores are 100 across the board out of the box. Pages feel instant because they essentially are -- static HTML with no JavaScript framework to hydrate.

Build speed. Astro's build pipeline is fast. 100 pages build in ~4 seconds. 500 pages in ~15 seconds. The Rust-based tooling underneath makes a tangible difference.

Built-in search. Starlight uses Pagefind, which generates a client-side search index at build time. No external service, no API keys, no ongoing cost. The search quality is surprisingly good -- fast full-text search with minimal bundle impact (~10KB).

Framework agnostic. Need an interactive component? Use React, Vue, Svelte, Solid, or Lit. Astro's island architecture lets you mix frameworks. Your docs are static, but that one interactive playground can be whatever technology makes sense.

Where Starlight Falls Short

Younger ecosystem. Starlight is newer than Docusaurus, so the plugin ecosystem is smaller. Community themes and extensions exist but there's less to choose from.

Versioning. No built-in versioning. The community plugin starlight-versions exists but it's not as seamless as Docusaurus's solution. If you need to maintain docs for multiple API versions simultaneously, this is a real limitation.

Less opinionated. This is both a strength and weakness. Docusaurus makes many decisions for you (blog structure, sidebar behavior, i18n setup). Starlight gives you more flexibility but requires more configuration for non-standard setups.

Mintlify: The Managed Option

Mintlify takes a different approach: it's a hosted documentation platform. You write MDX in a GitHub repository, and Mintlify handles building, hosting, search, and analytics. Stripe, Resend, Turso, and other developer-focused companies use it.

Getting Started

npx mintlify dev

Your content structure is defined in mint.json:

{
  "$schema": "https://mintlify.com/schema.json",
  "name": "My Project",
  "logo": {
    "dark": "/logo/dark.svg",
    "light": "/logo/light.svg"
  },
  "favicon": "/favicon.svg",
  "colors": {
    "primary": "#0D9373",
    "light": "#07C983",
    "dark": "#0D9373"
  },
  "navigation": [
    {
      "group": "Getting Started",
      "pages": ["introduction", "quickstart", "development"]
    },
    {
      "group": "API Reference",
      "pages": ["api-reference/overview"]
    }
  ],
  "api": {
    "baseUrl": "https://api.myproject.com"
  }
}

Where Mintlify Shines

API documentation. Mintlify's killer feature is interactive API playgrounds generated directly from OpenAPI specs. Drop in your openapi.yaml and you get try-it-out endpoints, request/response examples, and parameter documentation with zero additional work.

---
title: "Create User"
api: "POST /users"
---

Create a new user account.

<ParamField body="name" type="string" required>
  The user's full name
</ParamField>

<ParamField body="email" type="string" required>
  A valid email address
</ParamField>

This renders as an interactive endpoint that developers can actually call from the docs page.

Design quality. Mintlify sites look polished out of the box. The typography, spacing, dark mode, and component design are tuned for readability. If design isn't your team's strength, Mintlify handles it.

Analytics. Built-in analytics tell you which pages are most visited, where users drop off, and which search queries return no results. This is invaluable for prioritizing documentation improvements.

Zero ops. No build pipeline to maintain, no hosting to manage, no CDN to configure. Push to GitHub, and your docs update within seconds.

Where Mintlify Falls Short

Vendor lock-in. Your content is markdown (portable), but your components, configuration, and any custom functionality are Mintlify-specific. Migrating to another system means rewriting interactive elements.

Cost. The free tier covers basic needs, but analytics, custom domains, and advanced features require paid plans. For open source projects with tight budgets, this matters.

Limited customization. You can't fundamentally change the layout, add arbitrary pages, or build custom interactive experiences. Mintlify's component library is good but finite. If you need something it doesn't support, you're stuck.

Not self-hostable. Your documentation lives on Mintlify's infrastructure. For organizations with data residency requirements or strict security policies, this can be a blocker.

Real-World Decision Framework

The "right" tool depends on your constraints. Here's how to decide.

Choose Docusaurus if:

• You need documentation versioning for multiple API/library versions
• Your team already works in React
• You want maximum plugin ecosystem and community support
• You need internationalization (i18n) with full locale support
• You're an open source project (most OSS projects use Docusaurus, so contributors will be familiar with it)

Choose Starlight if:

• Performance and page load speed are priorities
• You want built-in search without external dependencies
• Your documentation is large (500+ pages) and build speed matters
• You want to use non-React frameworks for interactive components
• You prefer a smaller, more focused tool over a kitchen-sink solution

Choose Mintlify if:

• You have a REST/GraphQL API and want interactive documentation with minimal effort
• You'd rather pay for hosting than manage infrastructure
• Design quality is important and you don't have a dedicated designer
• You want built-in analytics to understand how developers use your docs
• You're a startup that needs professional-looking docs quickly

Migration Considerations

If you're migrating from an existing docs system, here's what to expect.

From GitBook to any of these: GitBook's markdown is close to standard, so content migration is straightforward. The main work is rebuilding navigation structure and any custom blocks.

From Docusaurus to Starlight: Content files need frontmatter adjustments (Starlight uses Astro content collections). Sidebar config needs rewriting. React components need replacement or wrapping as Astro islands. Budget 2-3 days for a medium site.

From any to Mintlify: Content migration is easy (it's all MDX). The work is in recreating custom components using Mintlify's built-in component library and restructuring navigation in mint.json.

From Mintlify to self-hosted: The hardest direction. Mintlify-specific components need replacement, and you lose the interactive API playground unless you rebuild it.

Setting Up Search

Search is make-or-break for documentation. Here's how each system handles it.

Starlight's Pagefind integration deserves special mention. It builds a search index at compile time that's served as static files -- no server, no third-party service, no API quota. Search results appear in ~20ms. For most documentation sites, this is the sweet spot of quality and simplicity.

Content Authoring Experience

All three systems use markdown/MDX, but the day-to-day authoring experience differs.

Docusaurus has the most flexible frontmatter, supports both .md and .mdx, and the hot-reload during development is fast. The editing loop (save file, see changes in browser) takes ~1 second.

Starlight benefits from Astro's content collections, which provide type-safe frontmatter validation. If you mis-type a frontmatter field, you get a build error instead of a silently wrong page. Development hot-reload is near-instant.

Mintlify offers mintlify dev for local preview, which works well. The real authoring benefit is that you can edit directly in their web editor if you prefer -- no local development setup needed.

The Bottom Line

If you asked me to pick one for a new project today without knowing anything about the team's constraints, I'd choose Starlight. The performance is best-in-class, the built-in search eliminates an entire category of integration work, and Astro's architecture is a better fit for documentation than a full client-side React framework.

But "best tool" and "right tool" are different things. If your docs need versioning, Docusaurus is the practical choice. If you want API playgrounds with zero effort, Mintlify wins. The important thing is picking one and writing good documentation -- a mediocre docs system with excellent content will always outperform a perfect docs system with sparse, outdated pages.