BookStack vs MediaWiki
BookStack
bookstackapp.com
MediaWiki
mediawiki.orgSide by side
| Figure | BookStack | MediaWiki |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | £37.50/mo | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | — | Yes |
| macOS | — | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 4 | 1 |
| Spec score · Knowledge Management Software | 9.0 (#2) | 8.3 (#13) |
| Spec score · Knowledge base software | 8.9 (#8) | 8.5 (#36) |
| Spec score · Wiki Software | 9.0 (#3) | 8.5 (#9) |
| API | The project describes a growing REST API for automation and importing content. | The REST API provides HTTP access to wiki content and functions, including searching, transforming pages, and accessing page history. |
| Publishing audience | both | both |
| Custom domain | Yes | Yes |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| SSO support | Yes | Yes |
| Support | Official paid support services are provided by HTTP Functions Ltd., while community support is available through discussions, Codeberg, Reddit, documentation and YouTube. | The MediaWiki site directs users with questions to its community support desk and offers documentation, FAQs, and community communication channels. |
| Version history | Yes | Yes |
Plans
BookStack
- BookStack self-hostedFree
- Community SupportFree
- Professional Support Plan£450 a year
- Enterprise Support Plan£4,500 a year
In their own words
BookStack
BookStack is a free, open-source platform for organizing and storing information on a self-hosted instance. It organizes content into Books, Chapters and Pages, with a WYSIWYG editor and an optional Markdown editor with live preview. Search works within a book or across books, chapters and pages, and users can link directly to paragraphs. The editor includes diagrams.net drawing capability. Authentication supports OIDC, SAML2 and LDAP, as well as social-based secondary authentication options. Built-in multi-factor authentication can be enforced by role and uses TOTP and static backup codes. Content exports include contained HTML, PDF, plain text, Markdown and Portable ZIP. The project describes a growing REST API for automation and importing content. The MIT-licensed software has no cost to download and install. Setup requires PHP 8.2 or newer, MySQL 8.0 or MariaDB 10.6 or newer, Git, Composer 2.2 or newer and a PHP-compatible web server. BookStack does not currently support shared PHP hosting. Community support is free but does not assure a response, support or resolution; paid support plans are also listed.
MediaWiki
MediaWiki is free, server-based wiki software for collecting, organizing, and sharing knowledge. Contributors edit pages in wikitext without needing HTML or CSS, and previous page versions remain available for reverting. Administrators can customize appearance and behavior with extensions; caching supports large, high-traffic wikis. Its REST API provides HTTP access to wiki content and functions such as search, page transformations, and history, with JSON or HTML output and extension-specific endpoints. MediaWiki is self-hosted under GNU GPL version 2 or later and is provided without warranty to the extent permitted by law. The latest stable version requires PHP 8.3.0 or later, a web server, and MariaDB 10.3.0+, MySQL 5.7.0+, PostgreSQL 10.0+, or SQLite 3.31.0+. Each release receives security updates for one year, and developers recommend subscribing to the low-traffic mediawiki-announce list. Third-party extensions may be unmaintained, vulnerable, incompatible with some versions, or unreliable together. Documentation, FAQs, community channels, and a support desk are available through the MediaWiki site.