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Alex Spinov
Alex Spinov

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Mintlify Has a Free API — Beautiful Documentation That Writes Itself

#documentation #webdev #devtools #opensource

What if your documentation looked as polished as Stripe's — with API playground, analytics, and AI search — out of the box?

Mintlify is a documentation platform that generates beautiful docs from Markdown with zero design work.

Why Mintlify

  • Stripe-quality design — polished out of the box, no CSS needed
  • API playground — interactive API testing embedded in docs
  • AI search — natural language search across your docs
  • Analytics — see which pages get read, where users drop off
  • OpenAPI integration — auto-generate API reference from your spec
  • Version control — docs live in your git repo
  • Free tier — for open-source projects

Quick Start 

npx mintlify@latest init
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Write docs in MDX:

---
title: "Getting Started"
description: "Set up your project in 5 minutes"
---

## Installation

<CodeGroup>
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bash npm
npm install my-sdk

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bash yarn
yarn add my-sdk

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bash pnpm
pnpm add my-sdk

</CodeGroup>

## Authentication

<ParamField header="Authorization" type="string" required>
  Your API key, prefixed with `Bearer `
</ParamField>

<RequestExample>
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bash cURL
curl -X GET https://api.example.com/users \
-H "Authorization: Bearer sk_test_123"

</RequestExample>
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json

API Reference from OpenAPI 

# mint.json
{
  "openapi": "https://api.example.com/openapi.json",
  "api": {
    "playground": { "mode": "simple" }
  }
}
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Mintlify auto-generates API reference pages with interactive playground — users can try endpoints directly in the docs.

Real Use Case

A developer tools company spent 3 months building custom docs with Next.js + MDX. The result looked basic, lacked search, and had no analytics. After migrating to Mintlify, they had Stripe-quality docs in 2 days. Documentation page views increased 3x because users could actually find what they needed.

When to Use Mintlify

  • API documentation (especially with OpenAPI specs)
  • Developer tools and SDKs
  • Open-source project docs
  • Any docs where design quality and search matter

Get Started

Visit mintlify.com — free for open source, git-based workflow.

Need custom data pipelines or scraping solutions? Check out my Apify actors or email me at spinov001@gmail.com for custom solutions.

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