Docszero vs Mintlify: free plans, and the cliff after them

Mintlify’s free plan is good, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. Starter is $0 a month with five editor seats and a custom domain — more than GitBook or ReadMe give away, and more than Docszero gives away, since a custom domain on Docszero starts on Pro.

Two things decide between them anyway. The first is how you write: Mintlify is a code-first tool, where docs are MDX in a repository configured by a `docs.json` and deployed on push. The second is what happens when the free plan stops being enough — Mintlify’s next step is **$450 a month**, and Docszero’s is $19.99.

If you are an engineering team that already reviews docs in pull requests, Mintlify’s free tier is probably the best free documentation plan on the market, and this page will not talk you out of it.

Read that table honestly and Mintlify’s free plan beats ours on seats and on domains. Ours beats theirs on getting started: there is no repository to create, no `docs.json` to write and no CLI to install, and a Word document from legal is a valid input rather than a conversion job.

Free plans matter most in what they lead to. Mintlify’s published ladder goes from $0 straight to $450 a month; there is no small paid plan between them.

That is a twenty-seven times difference on the first paid plan, and it is the whole argument. If the free tier covers you, Mintlify is excellent and free. If you outgrow it — you want reader analytics, or a private site, or a second product — the next rung is $5,400 a year.

This is the real fork in the road, and price has nothing to do with it.

Mintlify is code-first

Docs are MDX files in your repository. Configuration is a `docs.json` you edit by hand. You preview locally with the CLI and publish by pushing. Reviews happen in pull requests, docs version with the code, and an engineer can fix a typo without leaving the editor they already have open.

Docszero is browser-first

Docs are Markdown you upload or write in a browser editor with the rendered page beside it. There is no config file, because we write it. Saves land on a private draft and the published site only changes when you press Publish. Every save is a version you can restore, and every build is a version you can roll back to.

Neither is the correct answer. If your writers are engineers who live in a repo, code-first is less friction, not more. If your writers are a founder, a support lead and someone in legal, a repository is a wall.

• Your docs belong in the same repository as the code, reviewed in the same pull requests.
• You want a custom domain without paying anything at all.
• You have five people writing and want them all on the free plan.
• You publish an OpenAPI reference and want a playground generated from it.
• You want MDX: React components inside your pages.

• The docs are not in a repository and you would rather they never had to be.
• Some of them are a Word document or a PDF that needs to become pages.
• You need what comes after the free plan to cost tens of dollars, not hundreds.
• You run docs for several products and want them all under one bill.
• You want reader numbers without a third-party script or a cookie banner.

Bringing Mintlify docs over

Your pages are already Markdown in a repository, which is the easiest possible starting point: zip the docs folder and upload it. MDX components are the one thing that will not survive, because Docszero builds plain Markdown — pages using them need those blocks written out. Everything else, images and links included, comes across.