When you’re looking for the best product or API documentation tools in 2025, GitBook and Mintlify are two popular options that you might be considering.

Both GitBook and Mintlify make it easier to create, publish and update your docs with impressive design and version control options.

And when the alternative is building and maintaining your own custom documentation platform — with all time and effort that involves — it’s easy to see why these tools are so popular.

But which one is best for your workflow and team? Let’s find out.

How to choose the best documentation tool

There are a few important things to think about when it comes to picking the right documentation tool for your team:

• Editing experience – how easy is it for your team to edit and maintain the docs?

• Team workflows – does the docs process fit into existing tools and workflows?

• Built for SEO and AI – how good is the docs’ optimization out of the box?

• Design and performance – how do the docs look and feel?

• Analytics and metrics – how easy is it to track performance?

We’ll run through each of these feature areas in turn to explore how GitBook and Mintlify compare in detail.

Editing experience: how easy it is to create and update docs?

The editing experience is at the core of any documentation platform, so it’s essential that it works well for everyone on the team.

GitBook

• GitBook lets you set up a two-way sync between your docs and GitHub or GitLab, offering developers a docs-as-code workflow and familiar Markdown syntax.

• The GitBook editor offers a block-based WYSIWYG experience with Markdown support, allowing less technical users to contribute without learning complex new workflows or tools.

• However you choose to use GitBook, you get built-in version control, preview deployments, comments, a review and approval process for changes, and synced blocks that you can reuse across all your content.

• GitBook offers an open integrations platform, allowing users to build their own custom integrations. Its published docs platform is also open source, so users can contribute improvements and suggestions directly through the GitHub repository.

Mintlify

• Mintlify’s primary interface is a code editor. It also supports a two-way sync with GitHub and GitLab, including version control and a review and approval process.

• Mintlify recently launched a basic WYSIWYG editor, with limited functionality — although it should improve over time.

Your choice here will depend on your team make-up. But ultimately GitBook’s mix of docs-as-code and a familiar editing experience will make it a better fit for docs teams that aren’t entirely made up of developers.

Team workflows: how does the tool fit into existing workflows?

The documentation process should fit into everyone’s workflow — whether they’re developers, technical writers or support agents — without them needing to learn unfamiliar tools or processes.

GitBook

• Sync your GitBook docs with a Git repo and developers can edit the Markdown files right in their IDE, open pull requests and merge changes without ever opening the GitBook editor.

• GitBook’s Notion-like editor will be instantly familiar to less technical users, with Markdown support, drag-and-drop blocks, and inline formatting tools built-in.

• Built-in GitBook AI tools can write, rewrite, translate or proof content, while built-in analytics tools help you track how your documentation is performing.

• Anyone can customize the layout and appearance of their site using GitBook’s extensive tools — all accessible via a simple UI with a full preview of your changes before you push them live.

Mintlify

• Sync your docs with a Git repo to edit in an IDE or edit Markdown in the Mintlify app — a familiar workflow for developers.

• For less technical users, Mintlify’s web editor offers basic editing tools, but more advanced features are currently only accessible through code.

• Mintlify’s AI writer can suggest changes in a new pull request, and can catch MDX syntax issues, but cannot proof or edit your writing. AI translations are also available in Mintlify.

• Setting up, structuring, and customizing your docs site in Mintlify must be done entirely via code, making it harder for less technical users to create branded docs.

If your docs team is primarily made up of developers, Mintlify may just edge it here — as the majority of its workflows focus on developers. But for teams that mix developers with less technical users, GitBook’s combination of docs-as-code and visual interfaces means it supports a wider range of workflows.

Built for AI & SEO: how well do the tools optimize docs?

Docs are only useful if they’re easy to find and browse. That’s why search engine optimization is key — and it’s just as important that your docs can be easily ingested and interpreted by LLMs.

GitBook

• Publishing docs in GitBook automatically creates llms.txt and llms-full.txt files, making it easier for large language models to ingest.

• You can get an LLM-ready version of any docs page in GitBook by simply adding .md to the URL to access the Markdown file — ideal for LLM ingestion.

• GitBook automatically optimizes content for search engines by creating meta tags and a sitemap, offering responsive design, and more

Mintlify

• Like GitBook, Mintlify also offers llms.txt and llms-full.txt files for published docs.

• You can access the Markdown of any docs page from an on-page button or by adding .md to the URL — again, the GitBook and Mintlify are similar here.

• Generates an MCP server for published docs to make it easier for LLMs to interact with your documentation.

• Like GitBook, Mintlify automatically generates a sitemap and meta tags, offers responsive design and more. You can also optionally add custom meta tags.

Both GitBook and Mintlify offer a range of near-identical tools for aiding in LLM ingestion, meaning this one is a close call.

Design & performance: how do docs look and feel?

Your docs are part of your product. So it’s important the design matches your wider brand — as well as offering a fast, smooth browsing experience. Both GitBook and Mintlify generate clean, readable docs. But if you care about clean, structured design, extensive branding options and service stability, there’s a clear winner.

GitBook

• GitBook’s extensive customization interface give you granular control over your site’s colors, icons, logo, font and more — all while keeping pages optimized for readability and consistency.

• Fast load times across docs in GitBook — including pages with interactive API playgrounds, where you can test endpoints on the page.

• Published GitBook docs include AI chat trained on your documentation, so readers get instant, accurate answers.

• GitBook includes 14 built-in integrations with tools like Mermaid and RunKit, plus automatic embeds for things like Codepen, GitHub Gist and TypeForm, to add rich content to your pages. You can build your own integrations using GitBook’s API, too.

Mintlify

• Choose from six design themes, which you can customize using code to set custom colors, icons, logo, font and more.

• Pages load quickly and are responsive, with good readability.

• Includes an AI chat that is trained on your published docs to give readers answers, although in our tests using GitBook and Mintlfy’s own documentation, Mintlify’s AI Assistant was around 3x slower at returning responses compared to GitBook’s.

• Supports interactive API explorers and code blocks, but doesn’t offer simple on-page integrations.

Both GitBook and Mintlify let you publish clean, readable documentation that looks great. But if you want to offer your users a rich, beautiful and responsive experience, GitBook is the better choice.

Analytics & metrics: how easy is it to measure docs success?

Once your docs are live, how do you track performance? And how much depth can that data provide?

GitBook

• Built-in insights let you track traffic, user feedback, broken links, link clicks, API calls, and user AI queries about your docs in GitBook.

• You can view your GitBook docs data visually in graphs over different time periods, filter and group data by different attributes, and export it as a CSV for further analysis.

• Optional page ratings let end users leave direct feedback on individual pages — both as a thumbs up/down, and as written comments.

• GitBook includes integrations for popular analytics tools like Google Analytics, Fathom and HotJar to fit into your existing tech stack.

Mintlify

• Mintlify allows you to analyze and export user AI queries as a CSV.

• It also includes integrations with popular analytics tools like Google Analytics and Fathom.

If improving your docs based on user feedback and behavior is important to you, GitBook is the clear choice here — with more built-in tools along with the option to integrate with external platforms.

GitBook vs Mintlify: which platform should you choose?

GitBook and Mintlify share a number of common features. But they’re built with slightly different goals in mind.

If your docs team is made up entirely of technical folks who know how to code, Mintlify’s code-based approach will likely feel familiar, and will fit in with existing workflows. Developers can set up, customize and maintain docs entirely in code, while less technical users can use the basic WYSIWYG editor to make smaller changes. Mintlify’s MCP server generation may also appeal to some teams.

If you want to bring your entire team into the documentation process and give everyone an exceptional experience — from your team to your users — then GitBook is the better option. It combines a docs-as-code workflow with a block-based WYSIWYG editor and visual UI for site setup and customization. And built-in insights make it easy to find and fix gaps in your docs and track success.

While your choice may depend on more factors than we’ve explored here, these are important factors when choosing a documentation platform.

If you’d like to discover why Cisco, Nvidia, Carta, FedEx and more trust GitBook to publish their docs, you can get started for free today.