Swagger UI
API docs from OpenAPI specs
The Lens
Swagger UI turns your OpenAPI spec into a live, interactive documentation page where anyone can try your API without writing code. Paste a spec file, get a browsable, testable doc site.
This is the standard. Apache 2.0, used by basically every team that documents APIs. You drop it into your project, point it at your OpenAPI JSON or YAML, and your docs are live. It renders every endpoint, shows request/response schemas, and lets users hit your API right from the browser.
The free version does everything most teams need. SmartBear (the company behind Swagger) sells SwaggerHub for hosted collaboration, versioning, and team management starting around $75/mo per user, but that's the platform, not the UI component. The open source UI itself has zero paywalls.
The catch: it only works with OpenAPI specs. If your API isn't documented in that format, you need to write the spec first (or use a code-first tool that generates it). And the default styling looks like 2018. Functional, not pretty. Redoc looks better out of the box if aesthetics matter to you.
Free vs Self-Hosted vs Paid
fully freeSwagger UI is fully open source under Apache 2.0. No paid features, no gated functionality. You self-host it as a static asset or embed it in your app.
SmartBear sells SwaggerHub (the platform) separately: $75/mo per user for team collaboration, API versioning, and hosted docs. But SwaggerHub is a separate product. The UI renderer itself is completely free.
Self-hosting cost: essentially zero. It's a JavaScript bundle you serve as static files. No backend, no database, no server process.
The UI is free forever. You only pay if you want SmartBear's hosted SwaggerHub platform.
Similar Tools
About
- Stars
- 28,729
- Forks
- 9,257
Explore Further
More tools in the directory
Get tools like this delivered weekly
The Open Source Drop — the best new open source tools, analyzed. Free.
