StackShareStackShare
Follow on
StackShare

Discover and share technology stacks from companies around the world.

Follow on

© 2025 StackShare. All rights reserved.

Product

  • Stacks
  • Tools
  • Feed

Company

  • About
  • Contact

Legal

  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of Service
  1. Stackups
  2. DevOps
  3. Code Collaboration
  4. Documentation As A Service And Tools
  5. GitLab Pages vs Swagger UI

GitLab Pages vs Swagger UI

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Swagger UI
Swagger UI
Stacks2.1K
Followers1.8K
Votes207
GitHub Stars28.3K
Forks9.2K
GitLab Pages
GitLab Pages
Stacks246
Followers295
Votes11

GitLab Pages vs Swagger UI: What are the differences?

Introduction

GitLab Pages and Swagger UI are two popular tools used in web development. While both have similar functionalities, they have distinct differences that make them suitable for different purposes. In this Markdown code, we will outline the key differences between GitLab Pages and Swagger UI.

  1. Hosting: GitLab Pages is primarily used for hosting static websites directly from a GitLab repository. It provides a simple and convenient way to publish web pages without the need for complex server configurations. On the other hand, Swagger UI is not a hosting solution but rather a tool for documenting and testing APIs. It allows users to visualize and interact with RESTful APIs using a user-friendly interface.

  2. Purpose: GitLab Pages focuses on providing a platform for hosting web content, such as personal websites, project documentation, or landing pages. It is designed for general-purpose website hosting and can be used for various types of static content. Swagger UI, on the other hand, is specifically tailored for API documentation and testing. It offers features like API exploration, request/response visualization, and live API interaction.

  3. Integration: GitLab Pages is tightly integrated with GitLab, a web-based Git repository management tool. It means that the deployment and configuration of GitLab Pages are seamlessly integrated into the GitLab workflow. On the other hand, Swagger UI can be integrated with different frameworks or tools using OpenAPI (formerly known as Swagger) specifications. This allows developers to generate and display API documentation from their existing codebase.

  4. User Experience: GitLab Pages provides a straightforward way for users to publish their websites without requiring deep technical knowledge. It allows users to maintain a version-controlled repository and automatically deploys changes to their hosted website. Swagger UI focuses on enhancing the experience of API consumers and developers. It provides an interactive interface to explore API endpoints, make requests, and view responses directly within the browser.

  5. Configuration: GitLab Pages can be configured using a simple YAML file called .gitlab-ci.yml. This file allows users to define the build and deployment steps for their static website. Swagger UI, on the other hand, requires a separate JSON or YAML configuration file to define the API specification. This file contains information about the endpoints, request/response formats, and any additional settings specific to the API being documented.

  6. Customization: GitLab Pages allows users to customize their website's appearance by modifying the HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files in their repository. Users have full control over the design and layout of their website. Swagger UI also offers customization options, but they are focused more on the API documentation than the UI itself. Users can customize the branding, colors, and logo of the API documentation to align it with their branding.

In summary, GitLab Pages is a hosting solution for static websites, while Swagger UI is a specialized tool for API documentation and testing. GitLab Pages provides a seamless integration with GitLab and allows easy customization of web content. Swagger UI, on the other hand, offers features like interactive API exploration and visualization.

Share your Stack

Help developers discover the tools you use. Get visibility for your team's tech choices and contribute to the community's knowledge.

View Docs
CLI (Node.js)
or
Manual

Advice on Swagger UI, GitLab Pages

StackShare
StackShare

May 1, 2019

Needs advice

From a StackShare Community member: "I just started working for a start-up and we are in desperate need of better documentation for our API. Currently our API docs is in a README.md file. We are evaluating Postman and Swagger UI. Since there are many options and I was wondering what other StackSharers would recommend?"

382k views382k
Comments

Detailed Comparison

Swagger UI
Swagger UI
GitLab Pages
GitLab Pages

Swagger UI is a dependency-free collection of HTML, Javascript, and CSS assets that dynamically generate beautiful documentation and sandbox from a Swagger-compliant API

Host your static websites on GitLab.com for free, or on your own GitLab Enterprise Edition instance. Use any static website generator: Jekyll, Middleman, Hexo, Hugo, Pelican, and more

The UI works in any development environment, be it locally or in the web;Allow end developers to effortlessly interact and try out every single operation your API exposes for easy consumption;Quickly find and work with resources and endpoints with neatly categorized documentation;Cater to every possible scenario with Swagger UI working in all major browsers
-
Statistics
GitHub Stars
28.3K
GitHub Stars
-
GitHub Forks
9.2K
GitHub Forks
-
Stacks
2.1K
Stacks
246
Followers
1.8K
Followers
295
Votes
207
Votes
11
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 49
    Open Source
  • 34
    Can execute api calls from the documentation
  • 29
    Free to use
  • 19
    Customizable
  • 14
    Easy to implement in .Net
Cons
  • 3
    Need to learn YAML and RAML
  • 2
    Documentation doesn't look that good
  • 1
    Does not support hypermedia
  • 1
    You don’t actually get in-line error highlighting
  • 1
    Doesn't generate code snippets in different languages
Pros
  • 5
    Free
  • 4
    Integrated build and release pipeline
  • 2
    Allows any custom build scripts and plugins
Cons
  • 1
    Require Jekyll approach
  • 0
    Slow builds
Integrations
Node.js
Node.js
Git
Git
Microsoft Edge
Microsoft Edge
Safari
Safari
Firefox
Firefox
Google Chrome
Google Chrome
GitLab
GitLab
Jekyll
Jekyll
Hugo
Hugo
Middleman
Middleman
Hexo
Hexo
Brunch
Brunch
Octopress
Octopress
Pelican
Pelican

What are some alternatives to Swagger UI, GitLab Pages?

Postman

Postman

It is the only complete API development environment, used by nearly five million developers and more than 100,000 companies worldwide.

GitHub Pages

GitHub Pages

Public webpages hosted directly from your GitHub repository. Just edit, push, and your changes are live.

DomainRacer

DomainRacer

It is a blazing fast hosting solution that provides Customer Satisfaction driven Web Hosting services since 2016.

Netlify

Netlify

Netlify is smart enough to process your site and make sure all assets gets optimized and served with perfect caching-headers from a cookie-less domain. We make sure your HTML is served straight from our CDN edge nodes without any round-trip to our backend servers and are the only ones to give you instant cache invalidation when you push a new deploy. Netlify is also the only static hosting service with integrated continuous deployment.

Apiary

Apiary

It takes more than a simple HTML page to thrill your API users. The right tools take weeks of development. Weeks that apiary.io saves.

Vercel

Vercel

A cloud platform for serverless deployment. It enables developers to host websites and web services that deploy instantly, scale automatically, and require no supervision, all with minimal configuration.

ReadMe.io

ReadMe.io

It is an easy-to-use tool to help you build out documentation! Each documentation site that you publish is a project where there is space for documentation, interactive API reference guides, a changelog, and much more.

Surge

Surge

Surge makes it easy for developers to deploy projects to a production-quality CDN through Grunt, Gulp, npm.

Webflow

Webflow

Webflow is a responsive design tool that lets you design, build, and publish websites in an intuitive interface. Clean code included!

Divshot

Divshot

Divshot makes building and hosting front-end web applications simple. Build locally and deploy using a simple command-line interface. Divshot supports multiple environments, pushState routing, atomic deploys, and more.

Related Comparisons

Postman
Swagger UI

Postman vs Swagger UI

Mapbox
Google Maps

Google Maps vs Mapbox

Mapbox
Leaflet

Leaflet vs Mapbox vs OpenLayers

Twilio SendGrid
Mailgun

Mailgun vs Mandrill vs SendGrid

Runscope
Postman

Paw vs Postman vs Runscope