Here’s a sarcastic version of the original text with hastags at the beginning:
**Hey there, documentation enthusiasts! Are you tired of sifting through pages of API documentation to find the right platform for your modern documentation experience? Well, I’ve got you covered! In this review, I take a dive into four top-notch documentation platforms that you can’t afford to miss: **Fern! 
**, Mintlify 
**, ReadMe 
**, and Redocly 
**. Here’s
The right documentation platform can significantly impact developer experience, team productivity, and documentation quality. In this review, I focus on four modern documentation platforms: Fern, Mintlify, ReadMe, and Redocly. For readability and brevity, I include a condensed comparison of how these platforms differ across key areas that are vital to a modern documentation experience in 2025. These categories are API support, editor experience, enterprise readiness, AI features, and support for analytics.
I chose these four platforms because they represent different approaches towards building a documentation platform. For example, Fern and Redocly are built in a more “repository-first” way, whereas Mintlify and, in particular, Readme are built to be more visual, in an “extension-first” way for collaboration.
Hopefully, this review will help narrow down your choice, without having to spend hours and hours combing through each documentation site (like I have). For readers who want to read deeper breakdowns of edge cases, including my own testing notes, check out my full report, which is linked at the end of this review.
Overview
| Platform | API Specs Supported | Editor Type | API Docs | Enterprise Highlights | AI Features | Analytics Highlight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fern | OAS, AsyncAPI, OpenRPC, gRPC, Postman | WYSIWYG + Git sync | Real auth | SLA, migration, self-host, full security/legal reviews | Ask AI, AI Search, MCP | Page feedback with Slack/email integration |
| Mintlify | OAS, AsyncAPI | WYSIWYG + Git sync | Mock | Migration, 99.99% uptime SLA | Ask AI, AI Search, MCP | Search analytics including low-confidence queries |
| ReadMe | OAS, Postman, limited GraphQL | WYSIWYG (Git sync in Refactored) | Real auth | CSM, migration | Ask AI, AI Search, MCP | API usage dashboard |
| Redocly | OAS, AsyncAPI, GraphQL, SOAP | Code editor + Git | Mock | SLA, self-host, full security/legal reviews | AI Search | Report logging for code examples |
Choosing a Platform
When deciding between platforms, start by identifying your team’s priorities and how they align with each platform’s strengths:
Before reading this review, consider these questions:
- What API formats do you need to support now and in the future?
- Does your team prefer a visual editor, a code editor, or both?
- Are you okay with mock API calls, or do you need real authentication in your API documentation?
- Which enterprise features matter most now: SLAs, migration, self-hosting, or security reviews?
- Is AI-powered search and Q&A a priority for your audience?
Fern
Fern supports the broadest range of API specifications in this review, including OpenRPC, gRPC, and Postman Collections. The platform can generate both documentation and SDKs, which cuts down on tool switching, if you need both. Fern renders documentation from Markdown or MDX.
Editor: WYSIWYG with Git workflows and Git sync. Allows CSS, JS, and React custom components. Supports distinct tabs, sections, pages, and API references.
API docs: Real authentication, auto-populated examples, and environment switching for readers. Maintainers can set custom navigation ordering for generated documentation.
Enterprise: Migration services, self-hosting, custom SLAs, and security and legal reviews. Pricing is variable.
AI: Notable features include Ask AI, AI Search, and MCP server support. Usage limits vary by plan.
Analytics: Multi-option “Was this page helpful?” feedback, integrated with Slack and email for real-time alerts.
Best fit: Enterprise or developer-heavy teams needing broad specification coverage, for when you have robust SDK integrations or need full enterprise support.
Mintlify
Mintlify focuses on performance, design, and AI-readiness. Themes are visually polished out of the box and easy to customize. Mintlify renders documentation via MDX.
Editor: WYSIWYG with Git sync, Tailwind CSS support, mock “try it” API. Supports MDX overrides for generated examples.
API docs: Mock-based environment. Maintainers can override generated examples to improve clarity or accuracy.
Enterprise: Migration packages, 99.99% uptime SLA, and custom pricing. Includes content backups.
AI: Full set of AI features with a variety of model support. Integrated into the platform rather than an add-on.
Analytics: Multi-tab dashboard for overview metrics, feedback, and search analytics. The low-confidence search metric highlights where search results fail.
Best fit: Teams wanting strong design, performance, built-in AI features, and analytics-driven improvement.
ReadMe
ReadMe is designed for building developer hubs with strong collaboration features. The platform is accessible for non-technical users but also supports Git workflows through its Refactored product. Documentation can be authored in WYSIWYG or synced from Git.
Editor: WYSIWYG visual editor, Git sync available in Refactored. Supports OAS, Postman Collections, and limited GraphQL.
API docs: Real authentication with environment switching. Auto-generates examples.
Enterprise: Includes a customer success manager, migration tools, and set enterprise-level pricing.
AI: Ask AI and AI Search are built in. Owlbot AI is available as an add-on, making it cheaper to try AI features without moving to a higher tier.
Analytics: Comprehensive — API usage dashboards showing calls, endpoints, and errors, plus documentation usage metrics like views and search queries.
Best fit: Teams with mixed technical and non-technical contributors that are interested in robust collaboration tools and API tracking systems.
Redocly
Redocly builds on the open source Redoc API reference generator and is aimed at developer-led teams. It supports a wide range of API specs, and is the only platform that includes SOAP support. Documentation is rendered with Markdoc, a superset of Markdown, with tutorials on their website.
Editor: Code editor only with Git integration for GitHub, GitLab, and Azure DevOps. Supports CSS, JS, and React custom components.
API docs: Mock server with request history. Allows maintainers to define custom ordering of documentation.
Enterprise: SLAs, self-hosting options, data storage location choice, and complete security and legal reviews.
AI: AI Search is included. The documentation is the most transparent of the platforms in terms of how AI data is handled.
Analytics: Unique to Redocly is the report icon on code examples. All feedback captures both platform and user agent.
Best fit: Developer-heavy teams that prefer code-first authoring and are looking for broad specification coverage and hosting flexibility.
Conclusion
There’s no substitute for trying these platforms yourselves. With that said, here’s my pick for the best overall modern documentation platform in 2025.
| Platform | Why? |
|---|---|
| Fern | Fern is a robust API documentation platform with extensive language support and strong enterprise partnering. The reason I believe Fern wins today is because of the breadth of protocol support, the breadth of supported languages, the many callouts for dedicated enterprise support, and the mix of major platform features that achieve a difficult balance between technical and non-technical contributors. |
And lastly, here are my runner-up picks, and where I believe they each add unique value.
| Platform | Why? |
|---|---|
| Mintlify | Mintlify is platform-rich with artificial intelligence features and easy-to-swap design templating and the best pick, per value, for hobbyist documentation support — however, from reading product documentation, the platform does not itself note premium glove support for setup, migration, and other parts of the documentation process in parity with the other platforms, ostensibly resulting in less enterprise value. |
| ReadMe | ReadMe is a feature-rich collaboration platform with strong add-on value, particularly for a no-git experience, and unique enterprise support (offering writers and designers). However, the main platform continues to target a non-technical audience, resulting in the platform playing catch-up on major features with its Refactored product, which I believe delivers less main, modernized product value. |
| Redocly | Redocly is a developer-focused API platform, focused on developers as maintainers, with strong enterprise support. However, the product line, while affordable in a mix-and-match way, is set apart into too many disparate modules (and product names) and may turn away non-technical contributors as developer-first becomes developer-only. |
Though I chose Fern as the winner of today’s review, these platforms have parity with each other on many major features. As you experiment, consider the features you will actually use day to day, the seats you need for your current (and/or expanding) team, and check all of these requirements against each platform’s respective plan page so that you know exactly what is free and what is at cost. I recommend simulating a documentation deployment so that you can better understand how a code or visual-based editor, like the ones mentioned today, can fit into your team’s documentation workflow.
For more information, including linked quickstarts, ready-to-go repository examples, specifics of AI models per platform (and in some cases, per feature), community thoughts, and my thoughts about setup and pricing, check out my article, Modern documentation platforms, for the full review.
