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Docutils vs Sphinx: catalog facts
Docutils	Sphinx
Free Free and open source.	Free Free and open source under the BSD 2-Clause licence.
Windows, macOS, Linux, Command line	Windows, macOS, Linux, Command line
Reference implementation of reStructuredText Outputs HTML, LaTeX, man pages, OpenDocument and XML	Strong cross-referencing, including across projects Outputs HTML, PDF via LaTeX, ePub and Texinfo
reStructuredText is less widely known than Markdown Support is mainly through mailing lists	reStructuredText has a learning curve Requires a Python environment
Downloadable app	Downloadable app
Open source	Open source
License: Public domain, BSD-2-Clause, GPL-3.0-or-later and Python-2.0 (mixed)	License: BSD-2-Clause
No account needed	No account needed
Works offline	Works offline
Official website Full listing and sources Checked October 1, 2026	Official website Full listing and sources Checked October 1, 2026

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