MkDocs converts Markdown files into HTML pages, effectively creating a static website containing documentation.

[6] By early 2015, Read the Docs supported building documentation with MkDocs, in addition to Sphinx.

In the following years, the theme became very popular and in July 2020 the development model was changed to sponsorware, where the new features get released to the Insiders version first and become publicly available after funding goals are hit.

Alternatives, such as GitLab and Cloudflare Pages, offer first-party support for deploying MkDocs sites.

[11][12] Many companies use MkDocs with the Material theme to deploy their documentation, including Atlassian,[13] Google,[14] Microsoft,[15] and Red Hat.