If you're choosing a developer documentation tool in 2025, Readme and Mintlify are the two most popular options.

While they both share the goal of making docs easier to maintain, they take different approaches when it comes to developer workflows and AI readiness.

Criteria for evaluating an API documentation tool

There are a few key factors to weigh when making your decision:

1. AI innovation

Your tool needs to keep pace with how AI is reshaping both creation and consumption of documentation, from generating content to enabling users (and LLMs) to find answers quickly. AI-forward documentation won't just support your product: it becomes a strategic advantage.

2. Performance and usability for end users

Documentation is part of product. How fast it loads, how intuitive it feels, and how easy it is to search—all of these details impact the user experience and their impression of your brand.

3. Flexible editing for non-technical teammates

A documentation tool should support both docs-as-code and WYSIWYG no-code editing, so that cross-functional teammates like product, marketing, or support can contribute to docs.

4. Developer experience with docs-as-code support

If your developers are writing and maintaining docs, Git-based workflows need to be the default. They should not have to spend time learning a new web UI and leaving their preferred workflows.

With those in mind, here's how Mintlify and Readme compare.

AI innovation: Mintlify wins

Integrating documentation and AI is quickly becoming tablestakes. For both automating workflows and feeding documentation into LLMs, Mintlify is leading the industry for innovation.

Mintlify

• Agent suggestions to proactively improve documentation quality by surfacing gaps, inconsistencies, and opportunities for updates
• Automatically generates and hosts llms.txt and llms-full.txt to optimize for LLM ingestion
• Automatically generates MCP servers so LLMs can interact with your content and APIs
• Ultra fast AI chat that understands context across your entire documentation
• AI content assistance such as translations, writing updates, & link checking

Readme

• Offers an AI chat in beta

The world is quickly moving toward LLMs reading your docs as often as humans. Mintlify's AI-native infrastructure gives you a meaningful advantage here.

Developer experience: Mintlify wins

Mintlify is built from the ground up with a docs-as-code workflow so developers can stay in their preferred tools, whereas Readme optimizes for non-technical teammates.

Mintlify

• Bi-directional git sync to edit docs, through your local environment or a WYSIWYG web editor
• Local hosting to preview changes ahead of committing
• Preview deployments for staging changes in GitHub

Readme

• Recently introduced bi-directional git sync in beta

If your team already lives in Git, Mintlify saves developer time by making documentation maintenance feel like part of their everyday workflows.

Collaboration with non-developers: Readme wins

For teams with heavy involvement from cross-functional teammates like product, support, or marketing, Readme offers more functionality for no-code contributors.

Mintlify

• Offers a WYSIWYG editor with bi-directional git sync

Readme

• Robust WYSIWYG experience with control over layout, colors, and fonts without any code
• Can build simple landing pages through the UI
• Offers collaboration features like Staging Environments or Suggested Edits to leave comments directly in Readme, without going into GitHub

If your docs are primarily edited by non-technical teammates, Readme's visual interface and collaboration tools may be the preferred option.

Design and performance: Mintlify wins

Both platforms are capable of creating structured docs out-of-the-box. But if you care about speed, polish, and responsiveness, Mintlify pulls ahead.

Mintlify

• Pages load instantly, even for large sites. Good for both user experience and SEO.
• Offers beautiful themes and interactive components out-of-the-box
• Auto-generated API playground is fast, interactive, and mirrors the design that developers expect, even with complex data structures like nested objects

Readme

• Solid visual structure with support for custom branding
• Recipes allow for step-by-step code block tutorials

If your priority is giving users a modern, interactive experience, Mintlify is often the preferred tool.

Which should you choose: Mintlify vs. Readme?

Both tools help you ship better documentation, but they cater to different types of teams.

If your docs are mainly written and maintained by engineers, or if you care about performance and AI-readiness, Mintlify is built to support you. It fits naturally into existing developer workflows, prioritizes usability and performance, and gives you tools that help both humans and LLMs get answers faster.

If your team is primarily non-technical and wants maximum control over layout or landing pages without touching code, Readme may be the more approachable option.

If you want to see why customers like Anthropic, Cursor, and Zapier partnered with Mintlify, you can try it out for free today.