Eco-friendly Docs
Estimates for the climate impact of the web industry range from between 2% and 4% of global carbon emissions, roughly equivalent to the emissions of the airline industry. There are many complex factors in calculating the ecological impact of a website, but this guide includes a few tips for reducing the environmental footprint of your docs site.
According to the Website Carbon Calculator, Starlight is cleaner than 99% of web pages tested, producing 0.01g of CO₂ per page visit.
Comparisons
Curious how other docs frameworks compare? These tests with the Website Carbon Calculator compare similar pages built with different tools.
| Framework | CO₂ per page visit |
|---|---|
| Starlight | 0.01g |
| VitePress | 0.05g |
| Docus | 0.05g |
| Sphinx | 0.07g |
| MkDocs | 0.10g |
| Nextra | 0.11g |
| docsify | 0.11g |
| Docusaurus | 0.24g |
| Read the Docs | 0.24g |
| GitBook | 0.71g |
Power Consumption
How a web page is built can impact the power it takes to run on a user’s device. By using minimal JavaScript, Starlight reduces the amount of processing power a user’s phone, tablet, or computer needs to load and render pages.
Be mindful when adding features like analytics tracking scripts or JavaScript-heavy content like video embeds as these can increase the page power usage. If you need analytics, consider choosing a lightweight option like Cabin, Fathom, or Plausible. Embeds like YouTube and Vimeo videos can be improved by waiting to load the video on user interaction. Packages like astro-embed can help for common services.