Comparison with Other Tools

How does oxdoc compare with other TypeScript/JavaScript documentation tools?

Feature Comparison

Feature	oxdoc	TypeDoc	JSDoc	documentation.js	deno doc	ESDoc
TypeScript support	Yes	Yes	No	Partial	Yes	No
JSDoc extraction	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Doc coverage	Built-in	Plugin	No	No	No	Built-in
Doc testing	Built-in	No	No	No	No	No
Coverage badge (SVG)	Built-in	Plugin	No	No	No	No
API diff / change detection	Built-in	No	No	No	No	No
HTML output	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Markdown output	Yes	No	No	Yes	No	No
llms.txt (AI-friendly)	Yes	No	No	No	No	No
JSON output	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	No
Source links in HTML	Yes	Yes	No	No	Yes	No
Plugin system	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No	Yes
Watch mode	Yes	Yes	No	No	No	No
Native speed (Rust)	Yes	No	No	No	Yes	No
Actively maintained	Yes	Yes	Yes	Low	Yes	No

Performance Comparison

vs TypeDoc

TypeDoc relies on the full TypeScript Compiler (tsc), which means it loads the entire type system, resolves all type references, and builds a complete program graph. This gives TypeDoc deep type information but comes at a significant performance cost.

oxdoc uses OXC parser (Rust NAPI) for syntax-only parsing — no type checking, native Rust execution, and batch processing for memory efficiency.

Measured on macOS (Apple Silicon), Node.js v22, median of 3 runs. TypeDoc 0.28 with --skipErrorChecking.

Metric (es-toolkit, 603 files)	oxdoc	TypeDoc 0.28	Speedup
JSON Generation	0.24s	1.70s	7x faster
HTML Generation	0.25s	2.53s	10x faster
Peak Memory	131MB	470MB	3.6x less

Metric (radashi, 162 files)	oxdoc	TypeDoc 0.28	Speedup
JSON Generation	0.13s	1.12s	8.6x faster
Peak Memory	84MB	272MB	3.2x less

vs JSDoc

JSDoc is the classic documentation generator for JavaScript. It doesn't support TypeScript natively and lacks modern features like documentation coverage checking and doc testing. Performance is moderate for JavaScript-only projects.

vs deno doc

deno doc is also Rust-based (uses SWC internally) and offers comparable parsing speed. However, it lacks:

• Documentation coverage measurement
• Doc testing
• Coverage badge generation
• API change detection
• Plugin system
• Multiple output formats (Markdown, llms.txt)

vs ESDoc

ESDoc was one of the few tools with built-in documentation coverage, but the project is no longer maintained (last significant update was years ago). It only supports JavaScript, not TypeScript.

When to Use What

Use Case	Recommended Tool
Large TS/JS projects needing speed	oxdoc
Need deep type resolution & inference	TypeDoc
JavaScript-only, legacy projects	JSDoc
Deno projects	deno doc
Angular/NestJS projects	Compodoc
CI doc quality gates (coverage + testing)	oxdoc
API change detection in PRs	oxdoc
AI/LLM-optimized documentation	oxdoc

What TypeDoc Does Better

To be fair, TypeDoc has advantages in specific areas:

• Deep type resolution — TypeDoc resolves type aliases, follows imports, and expands complex types. oxdoc extracts signatures as-written in source code.
• Mature plugin ecosystem — TypeDoc has a large ecosystem of community plugins.
• Cross-file type linking — TypeDoc can link type references across files.

These trade-offs are by design: oxdoc prioritizes speed and simplicity over type-system depth.