Miradorly vs Mintlify: the difference is private-docs MCP

Mintlify is a genuinely good product, and I want to be fair about that up front. It's AI-first, the published sites look great, and the docs-as-code workflow is real. But there's one specific gap that matters enormously for agencies and teams sharing private docs with clients, and it changed our decision: Mintlify's MCP only works on public documentation.

The headline difference

Mintlify is a platform you build your docs site on. Miradorly is an overlay on the repo you already have. With Mintlify you adopt its framework, structure, and conventions. With Miradorly your markdown stays exactly where it is and renders as a portal — no migration, no second editor.

For public developer docs, the platform model is fine. For private client docs that a non-technical stakeholder needs to read and comment on, the overlay model is what fits.

The MCP gap that decided it for us

Both tools advertise MCP. The difference is where it works:

Mintlify confirms in its own documentation that the MCP server targets public docs. So if your client's AI agent needs to answer questions from private project documentation — the actual agency use case — Mintlify's MCP doesn't cover it.

Miradorly was built around this exact wedge: a role-aware MCP server over a private repo that returns only what each user's account can see, and never indexes files matched by .docignore.

# Same docs, scoped per account
claude mcp add miradorly https://mcp.miradorly.com/<your-workspace>

Pricing

Mintlify's paid plans begin around $79/mo plus per-seat charges and rise to roughly $250–300/mo on Pro — a number small teams on Hacker News have called too high. Miradorly is $29 or $79/mo flat. If you're a small studio, the difference is an order of magnitude.

Editor and migration

With Mintlify you commit to its framework — docs.json, its components, its build. That's a feature if you want a polished docs site and don't mind the structure. It's friction if your team already writes plain markdown in the repo and just wants it shared.

Miradorly renders standard Markdown + GFM, code blocks, Mermaid diagrams, and tables of contents straight from your repo. Push a commit, see it live. Nothing to adopt.

When Mintlify is the better choice

Choose Mintlify if:

• Your docs are public developer/API docs and you want a best-in-class published site.
• You're happy to author inside Mintlify's framework.
• API reference tooling is central to your use case.

Choose Miradorly if:

• Your docs are private and shared with clients or non-technical stakeholders.
• You need an MCP server that works on those private docs with role-aware access.
• You want to keep your existing editor and pay a flat, predictable price.

The one-line test

If your documentation is public and developer-facing, Mintlify is built for you. If it's private and client-facing, the MCP gap is the deciding factor — and that's the gap Miradorly exists to close.