Host your Sphinx documentation at your own address
make html gives you a folder of HTML. Drop _build/html in and your Python project's docs are live over HTTPS in seconds.
Drop your _build/html folder here
Any other file works too — up to 25.0 MB, or 100.0 MB for a whole site
Free to use, live at your-name.99helpers.site in about ten seconds.
Why the docs are still on someone's laptop
Sphinx has documented Python projects for two decades, and its HTML builder produces a self-contained folder with navigation, cross-references and a search index. Read the Docs is the usual home for it, but plenty of builds — internal APIs, a client handover, a fork's docs — need somewhere simpler and more private.
What a Sphinx build gives you
- A _build/html folder with every page, rendered from reStructuredText or Markdown
- A JavaScript search index that runs entirely in the browser
- Theme assets under _static, and cross-reference data in objects.inv
- genindex, py-modindex and the other generated reference pages
Build it, then upload it
- Build command
make html- Folder to upload
_build/html/- Base path
- Sphinx writes relative links between pages, so the build works at any address with no path setting to change.
Internal docs can't go on a public service
Plenty of Sphinx builds document something that isn't public, which rules out the default hosted options.
Docs built in CI end up as artifacts
A pipeline builds the HTML, zips it, and it sits in an artifacts tab where nobody reads it.
A folder of HTML isn't a link
Emailing a zip and asking people to open index.html locally is how documentation goes unread.
Publishing a Sphinx site
- 1
Build the HTML
Run make html (or sphinx-build -b html . _build/html). Sphinx writes the full site to _build/html.
- 2
Upload the html folder
Drag _build/html in, or a zip of what's inside it, and choose an address. index.html sits at the top level, which is what's served.
- 3
Share the link
The docs are live over HTTPS in seconds, with search and navigation working. Publish again to the same address whenever you rebuild.
Worth knowing
- Sphinx's search is a JavaScript index in the build, so it works on static hosting with nothing running server-side.
- The _static folder has to keep its name and position — upload the whole html folder rather than picking files out of it.
- objects.inv is published with the rest, so other projects can still intersphinx against your docs.
- For private API docs, set a password when you publish; the pages are then kept out of search results too.
- Large API references can run to hundreds of files; the limit is 500 files and 100 MB per site.
Questions
- Do you run Sphinx for me?
- No. You build the HTML yourself, locally or in CI, and upload the result, which is why it's live seconds later.
- Does the search box work?
- Yes. Sphinx builds a search index into the output and searches it in the browser, so no server is involved.
- Which folder do I upload?
- _build/html — the folder containing index.html, _static and the rest of the generated pages.
- Can I publish from CI?
- Yes. The REST API takes a token, so your pipeline can publish the freshly built HTML to the same address after each run.
- Can I keep it private?
- Yes, with a password set at publish time. It's the simplest way to share internal documentation with a client or a team.
Publish the Sphinx build you already have
Drop the folder in at the top of this page and see the link for yourself. You only make an account once it's ready to go live.
Hosting sites from other tools
Hosting guides by file type
Every site gets its own address on 99helpers.site — see static site hosting for every generator, how website hosting works here or free file hosting for any file type.