Fumadocs is a React.js documentation framework that gives you a Next.js-grade docs site with native MDX, full-text search, OpenAPI rendering and Twoslash code blocks in the time it would take you to scaffold a single page in Docusaurus. We rate it 88/100 — if you are building documentation for a developer product on Next.js, React Router, TanStack Start or Waku, Fumadocs is the framework with the best balance of beautiful defaults and headless customisation in the entire React ecosystem.

What is Fumadocs?

Fumadocs is an open-source documentation framework, MIT-licensed, written by independent developer Fuma Nama. The project's first commit landed on July 3, 2023, and the team shipped the major v16 release on October 22, 2025, with the 16.2 follow-up landing in early 2026. It now sits at over 11,750 stars on GitHub and is one of the canonical references in the React docs space alongside Nextra and Astro Starlight.

What makes Fumadocs different is its layered architecture. Instead of shipping a single opinionated theme, it splits cleanly into fumadocs-core (data, search, navigation primitives), fumadocs-mdx (a content collection layer for MDX), and fumadocs-ui (a polished default theme built on Shadcn UI patterns). You can drop in the full UI for a five-minute setup, or treat it as headless and rebuild every component — both paths are first-class. Public adopters now include v0 by Vercel, Ultracite and the Next.js docs themselves.

Fumadocs banner showing the documentation framework's typography and layout system — Fumadocs ships a polished default theme built on the Geist font stack and Shadcn UI patterns — this is the out-of-the-box look before any customisation.

Key Features of Fumadocs

Multi-framework support: Officially supports Next.js (App Router), TanStack Start, React Router and Waku from a single content layer. The same MDX files render unchanged across frameworks.
Native MDX with Content Collections: The fumadocs-mdx package generates a typed content layer at build time. Every frontmatter field becomes a TypeScript type — misspelt slugs fail the build, not in production.
Built-in OpenAPI rendering: fumadocs-openapi converts a Swagger or OpenAPI 3 spec into full reference pages with try-it consoles, schema viewers and code samples in seven languages. Nextra has nothing equivalent.
TypeScript Twoslash code blocks: Hover any token in a code sample and Twoslash shows the inferred type as a tooltip — the same UX as the TypeScript playground, embedded in your docs.
Search out of the box: Ships with Orama for client-side full-text search at zero cost, plus official adapters for Algolia and Mixedbread (semantic) when scale demands it.
Aggressive performance defaults: v16 raised the default content width to 1600px, switched the recursive schema viewer to client-side rendering for smaller initial bundles, and made useShiki Suspense-based.
Headless mode: Use fumadocs-core alone, ignore the UI package, and compose every component yourself with Tailwind, vanilla CSS or your own design system.

Fumadocs OpenAPI documentation page rendering with schema viewer and code samples — The Fumadocs OpenAPI module turns a single OpenAPI spec into a full reference site with try-it consoles, schema trees and multi-language code samples.

What Users Say About Fumadocs

Sentiment on Product Hunt and the Next.js subreddit is consistently positive, with two recurring themes. The most-upvoted Product Hunt comments call out the visual polish — multiple commenters describe it as "the prettiest docs theme out of the box" — and the OpenAPI integration, which devs say replaces Stoplight or Redoc setups they had previously cobbled together. On Reddit's r/nextjs, threads about converting existing Next.js sites to Fumadocs report 5-minute setups and praise the typed MDX content layer.

The recurring complaints are real. Migration pain across major versions is the biggest one: the v16 upgrade deprecated and removed the fumadocs-core/sidebar module, renamed several APIs (Algolia's document option became indexName) and required a Next.js 16 baseline — users with older sites describe non-trivial upgrades. The second complaint is documentation depth: with three packages and dozens of plugins, finding the right entry point takes effort. The third is bus factor — despite the growing contributor list, the core is still mostly one developer, which makes some teams nervous.

Fumadocs Pricing

Fumadocs is fully free and open source under the MIT license. There is no hosted product, no paid tier, no telemetry and no sign-up. You install it from npm, run it on your own infrastructure, and own everything — including search indexes and analytics.

Plan	Price	What's Included
Open Source (MIT)	$0	Every package: fumadocs-core, fumadocs-ui, fumadocs-mdx, fumadocs-openapi, fumadocs-twoslash, fumadocs-typescript and all CLI tooling.

According to the npm download charts, the project pulls roughly 150,000 downloads per month as of early 2026 — smaller than Nextra (about 800K) but growing roughly 3× year-over-year, the fastest of the major React docs frameworks.

Who Should Use Fumadocs?

Best for: Teams shipping a developer product on Next.js, React Router, TanStack Start or Waku that need beautiful default docs without writing CSS from scratch — especially anyone documenting an HTTP API, where the OpenAPI module pays for itself in a single afternoon. Solo devs and small teams will get the most leverage because the headless option scales down to a one-page guide as cleanly as it scales up to a 500-page reference.

Not ideal for: Sites that need zero JavaScript on content pages — Astro Starlight still wins on Core Web Vitals because it ships nothing client-side by default. Also overkill for a single README-style guide where a Markdown file in your repo would do.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

The most beautiful default theme in the React docs space — consistently praised on Product Hunt.
OpenAPI rendering, Twoslash and search are first-party, not third-party plugins.
True headless mode — ship just fumadocs-core if you want full UI control.
Multi-framework support across Next.js, TanStack Start, React Router and Waku from one content layer.
Open source under MIT, no hosted lock-in.

Cons:

Major-version migrations require care — v16 was a significant breaking release, and Next.js 16 is now a hard baseline.
Surface area is large: three packages and several plugins create a learning curve.
Bus-factor concern — core development is still concentrated on a small number of contributors.
ESM-only, so legacy CommonJS toolchains will struggle.

Alternatives to Fumadocs

The closest alternatives are Nextra v4, the more opinionated Next.js docs framework with about 5× the npm volume but no built-in OpenAPI support, and Astro Starlight, which wins decisively on raw performance because it ships zero JavaScript by default. Docusaurus remains the safe enterprise choice but feels dated next to Fumadocs's UI. If you're already on the React-Router stack, the Astro ecosystem is the main contender; if you're on Next.js and care about visual polish, Fumadocs is the one to beat.

Verdict: Is Fumadocs Worth It?

For developer product teams on Next.js or any modern React framework, Fumadocs is genuinely the easiest way to ship a docs site that looks like it was designed by Vercel — because, in v0's case, it literally was. The 88/100 score reflects that the defaults are best-in-class and the OpenAPI story is unmatched, but the breaking-change cadence and one-developer bus factor keep it out of the 90+ tier reserved for libraries with multi-year stability. If you can live with annual migration work in exchange for the prettiest docs in the ecosystem, switch to Fumadocs today.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Fumadocs free?: Yes, Fumadocs is fully free and open source under the MIT license. There is no paid tier, no hosted version and no telemetry — you install it from npm and own every part of the stack.
What frameworks does Fumadocs support?: Fumadocs officially supports Next.js (App Router), TanStack Start, React Router and Waku. The same MDX content layer renders across all four. v16 requires Next.js 16 or later for the Next.js integration.
How does Fumadocs compare to Nextra?: Nextra has roughly 5× the npm download volume and a more opinionated theme, but Fumadocs has built-in OpenAPI rendering and TypeScript Twoslash that Nextra lacks. Fumadocs is also the faster-growing of the two, with about 3× year-over-year npm growth in early 2026.
Is Fumadocs open source?: Yes, Fumadocs is MIT-licensed and developed in the open at github.com/fuma-nama/fumadocs. Pull requests, issues and feature discussions all happen on the public repo.
Does Fumadocs have OpenAPI support?: Yes, the fumadocs-openapi package converts an OpenAPI 3 or Swagger spec into full reference documentation with try-it consoles, schema viewers and multi-language code samples — a feature that competitors like Nextra do not ship out of the box.

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