2,518 stars · MIT-0, which is the MIT licence with the attribution requirement removed · 16.0.0 (2025-10-27), confirmed on PyPI; the repository publishes no GitHub releases at all · Track this in Scout
Turns the comments already written inside a Python project into a reference website, with no configuration file.
▶Repo detailsthe review · specs · pros & cons · install
What it does
pdoc reads a Python module and generates a documentation website from what is already there. It understands plain Markdown in the comments, and it reads type annotations, so the types appear in the output without being written twice. It recognises the two common comment styles, numpydoc and Google. It links a name mentioned in one explanation to that name's own page. It respects __all__, the list a module uses to say what is public, and it inherits explanations and types from parent classes so they are not repeated. A built-in web server reloads the page as you edit. The output is standalone HTML with no further dependencies, so it can be copied anywhere. The project describes its goal as doing one thing well, and names its own limit: for substantially more complex documentation needs it recommends Sphinx instead. Version 16.0.0 reached PyPI on 27 October 2025 and code was committed on 1 July 2026, which is the ordinary pattern of a finished tool being maintained rather than a stalled one.
Why it matters
Who it suits. Anyone with a Python project whose comments are better than its documentation, which is most of them. It suits a small library that needs a reference page and does not need a handbook. It suits a project where nobody wants to maintain a second copy of the same explanations. Skip it if you need a guided manual with tutorials and a navigation tree: that is entry 12's job, and pdoc says so itself.
Verdict. Run it once today on an existing project, because the whole trial costs five minutes and there is no configuration file to write. The output is plain and clear, and because it generates standalone HTML you can put it anywhere, including a GitHub Pages site, without a build system. The licence deserves a note: MIT-0 is the MIT licence with the attribution clause removed, which puts it as close to public domain as a licence gets, so even the templates can be reused with no conditions. Set expectations correctly on scope. Three and a half months between the newest release and the newest code is not neglect, it is a small tool that is finished; but a project that explicitly points elsewhere for complex needs will not grow into sphinx-doc/sphinx. Use it for the reference pages and entry 12 for the prose, which is a common and sensible pairing.
- No configuration file. One command produces a complete site from comments that already exist.
- Reads type annotations and inherits explanations from parent classes, so nothing is written twice.
- MIT-0, which removes even the requirement to credit the author, and standalone HTML output you can host anywhere.
- Reference documentation only. There is no structure for guides, tutorials or a handbook.
- The project itself points at Sphinx for anything complex, so it is a deliberate dead end past a certain size.
- Python only, and Python 3.10 or newer.
- sphinx-doc/sphinx
At 8,000 stars and a BSD 2-Clause licence, the long-established documentation generator that produces HTML, PDF and EPUB; far more capable, and it needs configuration and a markup language of its own.
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mkdocstrings/mkdocstringsAt 2,100 stars and ISC, generates the same kind of reference pages but inside an MkDocs site, so the reference and the handbook live together.
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python3 -m venv venv source venv/bin/activate pip install pdoc