Docusaurus

Markdown in, React documentation site out

Docusaurus builds a static documentation site from Markdown and MDX files. Every route gets its own HTML page at build time, and the result then runs as a React single-page app with client-side navigation. Meta released it because it supports the many open source projects Meta runs. The classic template ships docs with a sidebar, a blog, free-form pages and a light or dark theme.

MDX components, frozen doc versions and per-locale builds

• MDX: React components go straight into the Markdown (tabs, admonitions), and the live-codeblock theme renders code examples readers can edit on the page.
• Doc versions: docusaurus docs:version 1.1.0 copies the current docs into versioned_docs/. Each frozen version is served next to the work in progress, which lives under /docs/next/ by default.
• Translations: each locale has its own translation files, kept in Git or synced through Crowdin. Generic theme labels such as "Next" and "Previous" already ship translated into many languages.
• Swizzling: a theme component can be ejected (copied) or wrapped inside the site's src/theme folder, so the theme itself never needs a fork.
• Docusaurus Faster: the reworked build stack (Rspack, SWC, LightningCSS) has been stable since 3.10 as an opt-in, and v4 turns it on by default.

Node 20 floor, Algolia search, v3 line closed

The project claims documentation sites as its focus. Its introduction page lines it up against other generators: VitePress targets the same ground but runs on Vue; MkDocs, a Python tool, is called a good option for anyone who needs neither a single-page app nor React; GitBook is free only for open source and non-profit teams, while Docusaurus is free for everyone.

Version 3.10 needs Node.js 20 or later. The main branch, already numbered 4.0.0 in its package.json, raises the floor to Node.js 24.21.

Official search means Algolia DocSearch, a hosted third-party service. It is free for developer documentation and technical blogs once an application is approved. A private site, or one behind a firewall, has to run its own crawler. Local search plugins exist, but the community maintains them, not the core team. Starlight, by contrast, ships Pagefind full-text search by default.

The docs advise most sites to skip versioning. It lengthens builds and adds complexity to the codebase. The guide reserves it for high-traffic sites whose docs change a lot between releases, and recommends keeping fewer than ten versions.

Each locale is a separate single-page app. The dev server starts one locale at a time. Translated slugs and automatic locale detection are listed as non-goals.

Ejected components can break on upgrade. Components the theme marks as unsafe may change in incompatible ways between minor versions, so the docs recommend wrapping over ejecting.

3.10 was announced as the last release of the v3.x line. Published on 7 April 2026, it adds future.v4 flags that let a site opt into v4's breaking changes ahead of time. The latest patch, 3.10.2, came out on 10 July 2026, and commits still land on the repository, the most recent on 23 October 2026.