At GitBook, part of our mission is to lift up and support open source projects. Not just because it’s where we started as a company. Because we believe that open source knowledge will empower the next generation of developers to build amazing products.

So today, we’re announcing a new free docs site plan that’s designed specifically for open source projects. It’s designed to help open source developers and teams create incredible documentation for their project for free — and earn funding every time someone views it.

What is a Sponsored site?

Let’s start with the basics — docs sites are how you publish documentation in GitBook. You write your content, add it to a docs site, add the customizations you want, then publish it to the world. Simple!

We have a few docs site plans to choose from depending on your requirements and budget, and those are great for most users. But for open source documentation, we’ve also created a new Sponsored site plan with all the features you need — including customization, data insights and integrations. And it’s completely free.

The Sponsored site puts a small, relevant ad in the corner of your project’s docs — and you keep the ad revenue. Every view will earn you money, and you can use it to fund ongoing development of your project, or for whatever else you choose.

Most importantly, we believe strongly in ethical advertising. So we guarantee that the ads in your docs will never track or retarget your users.

We also know that some of you really don’t like the idea of ads on your docs. We understand, so you’ll always have the option to publish your docs as a free Basic site, or a Premium site with more features. The choice is entirely yours.

It’s also really important for us to stress that GitBook isn’t taking a cent from ads on open source projects — you keep it all. This is just one small way for us to say thank you to all the OSS project maintainers and contributors who do such incredible work.

Why are we doing this?

The short answer is: we want to give back to the open source community, and we want everyone’s docs to be great. And we think GitBook is the best platform to help you build incredible docs.

We know you could easily add your docs to your project in GitHub as a README.md file. Or even build your own docs platform and host them there.

But docs in GitHub are hard to navigate, and don’t always present information in a useful, organized format. And custom documentation platforms take time and effort to maintain — time you could be spending on your OSS project.

We want to simplify things. Write great docs in GitBook, sync them with your GitHub repository, and simply select the Sponsored site plan in the app to create your site. There’s no application and no need to contact support — just choose a plan, add some customizations and publish your docs. Then once your site is approved, watch the money in your account slowly tick up.

Git Sync is the game-changer

To create and publish your open source docs for free, you can sign up for a Free core plan to create or import your content and access GitBook’s editing tools, then set up Git Sync in your GitBook organization.

With Git Sync, you can sync your documentation to a GitHub or GitLab repository, and any changes you make in one will sync with the other. So if you already have documentation in GitHub, for example, you could sync your repo with GitBook to add all that content to a docs site in minutes.

Even better — if there are people who help maintain your project’s documentation, they can create their own branch, make some edits to your docs, then open a pull request and as for a review when their changes are ready.

In GitBook, you’ll be notified that you have changes to review, and can check them in the GitBook editor, open a preview to see the changes in context, then merge them when you’re happy. It’s all built into the GitBook app and available with our Free plan at no extra cost.

That means you only need one free GitBook user for your project’s documentation, and everyone else can contribute through GitHub or GitLab. So great docs don’t have to cost you a penny.

Our commitment to open source

Along with this new docs site plan, we recently announced a new open source fund. This is another way for us to show our support to open source development teams doing work that’s integral to GitBook and many other products.

You can read more about the fund in our recent blog post, including which projects we’re sponsoring and how much we’re giving each year.

How do you get the Sponsored plan?

Right now we’re progressively rolling out the Sponsored plan, testing and approving documentation manually to make sure everyone who wants it can set up their ad revenue account. If you want to publish your docs using this plan soon, create a GitBook account and register your interest now. We’ll notify you when it’s available to you.

Once the rollout is complete, the Sponsored plan will be available to all, and you’ll be able to select it yourself when you create a site within the app. All self-serve, with no application and no need to contact support.

Head over to the open source page on our site to find out more about everything we’ve talked about here and see all the features included with a Sponsored site. If you want to try it out and see how your docs look, you can sign up using your GitHub account on that page, too.

Thank you again to all open source maintainers and contributors for your amazing work. We hope to see your docs looking great in GitBook soon.

→ Explore how GitBook can power your open source project

→ Learn more about our sponsored plan

→ Get started with GitBook for free