Documentation · pricing
Read the Docs pricing
Read the Docs publishes a single tier. Below is what it costs, what it covers, and how that compares with the documentation tools listed alongside it.
- Entry price
- Free
- Model
- Free for open source; paid business plans for private documentation
- Tiers
- 1
- Free tier
- Yes
Read the Docs plans, side by side
Every published tier in ascending order of price, with the number of features each one lists. An absence here means the record does not itemise it, not that the tier lacks it.
| Plan | Price | Features listed | Step up from the tier below |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | Free | 2 | Entry tier |
Where Read the Docs stops being free
Free, Free
- Core functionality
- Public projects
No paid tier on record
Read the Docs lists a free tier and no priced tier above it in the record we hold.
What the product covers
The full Read the Docs feature record, grouped as the catalogue groups it. This is the product as a whole; the record does not map every feature onto a specific tier.
Other
- Build on commit
- Version by branch and tag
- Pull request previews
- Free for open source
People bring Read the Docs in for open-source projects needing free hosted versioned documentation, teams wanting docs rebuilt automatically on every commit, reviewing documentation changes in a pull request before merge. If that is not the job you are buying for, the alternatives to Read the Docs are worth a look before you commit to a tier.
How that compares in Documentation
Too few documentation tools in this directory publish a starting price to quote a meaningful median, so the table below is a like-for-like list rather than a ranking.
| Tool | Entry price | Model | Rated | Head to head |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Read the Docs (this page) | Free | Free for open source; paid business plans for private documentation | - | |
| Redocly | On request | Free open-source CLI and Redoc renderer; paid plans for the portal, published on the vendor site | - | vs Read the Docs |
| Sphinx | Free | Open source, no licence fee | - | vs Read the Docs |
| MkDocs | Free | Open source, no licence fee | - | vs Read the Docs |
| GitBook | Free | Free tier with paid team plans; see vendor for current rates | - | vs Read the Docs |
| Grammarly | Free, then $12/month | - | - | vs Read the Docs |
Ratings are aggregated from third-party sources and imported with each catalogue entry, they are not reviews hosted on Softwr. How each figure is used is set out on the Read the Docs badges page.
Before you pay for Read the Docs
Three things this page cannot tell you, and all three change the bill. The record carries a price and a billing period but not the unit - per-seat and flat-rate pricing are indistinguishable in this data, so a five-person team may be looking at five times the figure above. It carries no annual rate, so any discount for paying yearly is not something this page can quote. And it carries no trial length.
What it can tell you is the shape of the ladder: a single tier at Free. Because there is a free tier, the cheapest way to answer the rest is to use it before paying anything.
Read the Docs runs on web, cloud, and is published by Read the Docs of Portland, Oregon, United States. The full record is on the Read the Docs review, and the rest of the category is under best documentation tools.
Read the Docs pricing questions
- How much does Read the Docs cost?
- Read the Docs publishes a single tier, Free, at Free.
- Does Read the Docs have a free plan?
- Yes. The Free tier costs nothing and covers core functionality, public projects.
- Which documentation tools can I use without paying?
- 4 of the 5 documentation tools listed alongside Read the Docs have a free tier: Sphinx, MkDocs, GitBook, Grammarly.
- What am I actually paying for with Read the Docs?
- The record lists 4 features across 1 area: other. In practice it is brought in for open-source projects needing free hosted versioned documentation, teams wanting docs rebuilt automatically on every commit, reviewing documentation changes in a pull request before merge.
- Does Read the Docs charge per user?
- The record carries a price and a billing period for each of its 1 tiers, but not the unit that price is charged in. Per-seat and flat-rate billing look identical in this data, so check the vendor's page before budgeting for a team.
- Are these Read the Docs prices current?
- They are what the catalogue entry holds, refreshed when the entry is. Vendors change pricing without notice and nobody at Softwr re-verifies each tier by hand, so treat this as a structured summary and the vendor's own pricing page as the authority.
- What should I compare Read the Docs against before paying?
- The closest documentation tools in this directory are Redocly, Sphinx, MkDocs, GitBook. Each has a side-by-side comparison with Read the Docs covering price, platforms and features.