Need advice about which tool to choose?Ask the StackShare community!
Read the Docs vs ReadMe.io vs Swagger UI: What are the differences?
Introduction:
In the realm of documentation management, tools like Read the Docs, ReadMe.io, and Swagger UI play vital roles. Each of these tools has unique features and functionalities that cater to different needs and preferences.
Hosting Platform: Read the Docs primarily focuses on hosting documentation for open-source projects and is community-driven, allowing easy collaboration and version control. In contrast, ReadMe.io offers a platform for hosting API documentation, creating interactive API explorers, and managing developer portals, making it ideal for companies with multiple APIs. On the other hand, Swagger UI is more of a design-driven tool that helps to auto-generate interactive API documentation from OpenAPI Specification files, making it suitable for showcasing RESTful APIs.
Customization Options: Read the Docs provides a template-based system to customize the look and feel of documentation websites, offering control over branding and layout design. In comparison, ReadMe.io offers extensive customization options, including themes, styles, and layouts, allowing users to create visually appealing and user-friendly documentation. Swagger UI, being more focused on API documentation, provides customization options for displaying API endpoints and parameters in a structured and interactive manner.
Feature Set: Read the Docs is renowned for its version control capabilities, automatic builds, and built-in search functionality, making it a preferred choice for open-source projects with frequent updates. ReadMe.io, on the other hand, emphasizes features such as interactive API explorers, API key management, and metrics for tracking API usage, catering to the needs of companies providing APIs. Swagger UI is recognized for its ability to render API documentation dynamically from OpenAPI Specification files, facilitating developers in understanding and interacting with APIs seamlessly.
Collaboration Tools: While Read the Docs offers basic collaboration features like multiple contributors and version control through Git integration, ReadMe.io provides advanced collaboration tools such as comment threads, feedback collection, and user roles, enhancing communication and feedback loops among team members and external users. Swagger UI is more oriented towards showcasing API functionality and structure, lacking extensive collaboration features beyond basic documentation updates.
Integration Capabilities: Read the Docs seamlessly integrates with popular version control systems like GitHub and Bitbucket, streamlining the documentation update process and ensuring synchronization with code changes. ReadMe.io offers integrations with various tools and platforms, including Slack, GitHub, and Jira, enabling seamless collaboration and workflow automation for API documentation management. Swagger UI focuses on integration with OpenAPI Specification files, allowing developers to auto-generate interactive API documentation from standard API description formats.
In Summary, the key differences between Read the Docs, ReadMe.io, and Swagger UI lie in their hosting platform focus, customization options, feature sets, collaboration tools, and integration capabilities, catering to diverse needs in documentation management.
From a StackShare Community member: "I just started working for a start-up and we are in desperate need of better documentation for our API. Currently our API docs is in a README.md file. We are evaluating Postman and Swagger UI. Since there are many options and I was wondering what other StackSharers would recommend?"
I use Postman because of the ease of team-management, using workspaces and teams, runner, collections, environment variables, test-scripts (post execution), variable management (pre and post execution), folders (inside collections, for better management of APIs), newman, easy-ci-integration (and probably a few more things that I am not able to recall right now).
I use Swagger UI because it's an easy tool for end-consumers to visualize and test our APIs. It focuses on that ! And it's directly embedded and delivered with the APIs. Postman's built-in tools aren't bad, but their main focus isn't the documentation and also, they are hosted outside the project.
I recommend Postman because it's easy to use with history option. Also, it has very great features like runner, collections, test scripts runners, defining environment variables and simple exporting and importing data.
Pros of Read the Docs
- GitHub integration13
- Free for public repos7
- Automated Builds2
Pros of ReadMe.io
- Great UI18
- Easy15
- Customizable10
- Cute mascot10
- Looks great and is fun to use8
- It's friggin awesome5
- Make sample API calls inside the docs3
Pros of Swagger UI
- Open Source49
- Can execute api calls from the documentation34
- Free to use29
- Customizable19
- Easy to implement in .Net14
- Mature, clean spec13
- API Visualization12
- Coverage9
- Scaffolding6
- Easy to use6
- Vibrant and active community5
- Elegant4
- Adopted by tm forum api3
- Clear for React2
- Api1
- Can deploy API to AWS API Gateway and AWS Lambda1
Sign up to add or upvote prosMake informed product decisions
Cons of Read the Docs
Cons of ReadMe.io
- Support is awful4
- No backup and restore capability3
- Important parts of the CSS are locked2
- Document structure is severely restricted2
- Full of bugs2
- No notifications of edits by other users2
- Supports only two documents plus a blog1
- Does not support pre-request scripts1
- Random pages display content of other pages instead1
- Review and comment functionality is hard to work with1
- Navigation in user-facing copy is spotty1
- All admins have full editing rights1
Cons of Swagger UI
- Need to learn YAML and RAML3
- Documentation doesn't look that good2
- Doesn't generate code snippets in different languages1
- You don’t actually get in-line error highlighting1
- Does not support hypermedia1
Sign up to add or upvote consMake informed product decisions
What is Read the Docs?
What is ReadMe.io?
What is Swagger UI?
Need advice about which tool to choose?Ask the StackShare community!
What companies use Read the Docs?
What companies use ReadMe.io?
What companies use Swagger UI?
Sign up to get full access to all the companiesMake informed product decisions
What tools integrate with ReadMe.io?
What tools integrate with Swagger UI?
Sign up to get full access to all the tool integrationsMake informed product decisions
Blog Posts
+6
+30
+25