The Read the Docs
alternative for
builders on a budget.
Open-source documentation hosting. Dokly is a visual MDX editor with AI that generates whole doc sites, custom domains, auto-generated llms.txt, and flat pricing starting at $0.
14-day free trial · No card · Ship in 5 minutes
What is Dokly?
Dokly is a documentation platform for shipping beautiful MDX docs without git. Visual editor, AI writing, auto-generated llms.txt, and custom domains from $29/month. Built as a simpler Read the Docs alternative — Dokly Team is $99/month vs Read the Docs Advanced at $150/month.
Teams switching from Read the Docs to Dokly typically migrate in an afternoon. Pages are written in a WYSIWYG editor with slash commands and AI inline edits, with full MDX components — callouts, tabs, steps, code groups, accordions. Every published site is server-side rendered, ships with a machine-readable llms.txt manifest, and is indexed by ChatGPT, Claude, Cursor, and Perplexity. Pricing is flat: Free $0 · Starter $29/mo · Team $99/mo · Business $199/mo · Enterprise custom — no per-seat fees. Built with Next.js 15 and Supabase, with sub-100ms page loads via static generation and on-demand revalidation. Most teams ship their first docs site in under 10 minutes.
Read the Docs is a legend. Free hosting for open-source, Sphinx/MkDocs support, generations of Python docs live there. Respect.
Business tiers run $50–$250/month and the content format is still RST or Markdown-via-Sphinx. For modern frontend teams who want MDX and React, it's a rough fit.
Why teams pick Dokly over Read the Docs
Docs that write themselves.
Docs AI agents can actually read.
Start with a paragraph describing your product. Dokly AI scaffolds the whole site. Every page ships with llms.txt so ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Cursor can cite you.
Generate a whole doc site from a brief
Describe your product in a paragraph. Dokly drafts the full site structure — quickstart, guides, API reference — as real MDX pages you can edit.
Generate individual pages on demand
Need a new page? Hit 'Generate with AI' in the editor, describe what it should cover, and get a draft in seconds. Edit in place — it's just MDX.
Improve writing in place
Rewrite for clarity, tighten prose, fix tone. Highlight a paragraph and the AI edits exactly that — not the whole page.
llms.txt, auto-generated
Every Dokly site exposes an llms.txt and a read-only MCP endpoint, so ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Cursor can parse and cite your docs. No config, no plugin.
Your AI agent writes, you approve
On every plan, connect Claude Code, Cursor, or any MCP client. New pages arrive as drafts, edits to live pages wait for your approval, and each one comes with a git-style diff. Approve in the dashboard or the terminal.
More coming
Semantic linking between pages, AI-drafted changelogs from git diffs, automated translation, and an /llms-full.txt endpoint.
Dokly vs Read the Docs
We call the wins honestly — and the places Read the Docs is still stronger.
| Feature |  Dokly | Read the Docs |
|---|---|---|
| Free tier | Forever | Community (ads, OSS-only) |
| Entry paid plan | $29/mo (Starter) | $50/mo (Basic) |
| Mid paid plan | $199/mo (Business) | $150/mo (Advanced) |
| Top paid plan | Custom | $250/mo (Pro) |
| Content format | MDX | RST / Markdown (via Sphinx / MkDocs) |
| Build step | None | Sphinx build required |
| Visual editor | WYSIWYG MDX | None (edit in repo) |
| React components | Limited | |
| Default design | Modern 2026 | Sphinx classic / Furo |
| Custom domains | One per site (5 sites on Team) | 2–15 per tier |
| Versioned docsEmail support@dokly.co for beta access | Beta (contact us) | |
| Open-source project fitRTD wins for OSS | Paid | Free Community tier |
| llms.txt | Auto-generated | Manual |
The six features you'll use every day
Moving from Read the Docs
Honest take: there's no magic importer. It's a copy-paste job today. For most sites it takes an afternoon.
Convert RST to Markdown
Tools like pandoc or rst2md convert .rst to Markdown. Run it over your docs/ tree to get a clean Markdown base.
Paste into Dokly
Create a project and paste Markdown pages into the editor. Admonitions, code blocks, and links carry over cleanly.
Customize + launch
Pick a brand color, attach a domain on Starter or above, publish. Your docs look like 2026 instead of 2016.
Moving a large site? Email support@dokly.co — we'll help you move it.
Real numbers. No footnotes.
Pricing pulled from Read the Docs's own pricing page on Apr 24, 2026.
Dokly TeamDokly Team vs RTD Advanced. Against RTD Pro ($250/mo) annual savings grow to $1,812. RTD Basic ($50/mo) is cheaper than Dokly Team on price alone, though Dokly Starter ($29/mo, one site) undercuts it.
DoklyFlat ratePrices verified Apr 24, 2026 from about.readthedocs.com/pricing/.
Questions we actually get
Ready to ship docs in an afternoon?
Start your 14-day free trial, bring your MDX, flip your domain when you're ready. No sales call. Cancel anytime.