Encyclopedia.com vs Wikipedia
Encyclopedia.com
encyclopedia.com
Wikipedia
wikipedia.orgSide by side
| Figure | Encyclopedia.com | Wikipedia |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | Yes |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| iOS | — | Yes |
| Android | — | Yes |
| API | — | Yes |
| Self-hosted | — | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 2 |
| Spec score · Online Encyclopedias | 8.4 (#4) | 8.3 (#6) |
| Licence | The terms describe service content and tools as copyrighted or otherwise proprietary and owned, controlled, or licensed by Encyclopedia.com or licensors. | MediaWiki is free software licensed under GNU GPL version 2 or any later version. |
| Rating on Apple App Store | 4.1 out of 5 from 74 ratings for “Encyclopedia: 25,000+ topic” | 4.3 out of 5 from 6.3K ratings |
| Rating on Google Play | 4.3 out of 5 from about 2.11K reviews for “Encyclopedia by Farlex” | 4.3 out of 5 from 693K reviews |
| Support | The feedback page says users can submit a form but warns that the company cannot respond to all feedback. | The Android app listing provides the support email [email protected]. |
| What it does | Encyclopedia.com is a searchable online reference service aggregating material from published encyclopedias and reference books. | Wikipedia is a free online encyclopedia created and maintained through volunteer collaboration using MediaWiki. |
Plans
In their own words
Encyclopedia.com
Encyclopedia.com is a free web reference service with over 300,000 entries from published sources including Oxford University Press and the Columbia Encyclopedia. It also offers more than 50,000 topic summaries with related pictures, videos, and newspaper and magazine articles. The site says it continually updates partner content and allows searches across more than 200 encyclopedias and reference books. Users can search with keywords or browse alphabetically. Results are ordered by relevance according to how often a search term appears in an article. The FAQ gives citation details for The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition, including its 2008 publication information. The service is available on the web, and its privacy policy also refers to a mobile application named “Encyclopedia.” Terms allow personal searching, display, downloading, and printing, but prohibit systematic downloading or scraping without permission. The privacy policy describes collection of account, device, browsing, cookie, and session information, as well as an advertising affiliation with CMI Marketing, doing business as CafeMedia.
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia available on the web and through mobile apps, with editions in hundreds of languages, including editions with over one million articles. Volunteer editors create and revise content, check facts, cite sources, discuss entries, and moderate the encyclopedia. The Wikimedia Foundation hosts and protects Wikipedia, while editorial decisions are made by volunteers. The Foundation says the service is available without advertising or paywalls and is funded mainly by donations, not advertising, subscriptions, or sales of users’ personal data. The official Android app supports searching articles, changing languages, saving reading lists for offline use, and adjusting themes and text size. Its listing says the app has no ads, does not track or collect data, and encrypts data in transit. MediaWiki provides a REST API for interacting with installations including Wikipedia. The Foundation publishes a privacy policy, says it prioritizes speed, reliability, and availability during traffic spikes, and publishes transparency reports twice a year. Its financial statements are independently audited annually. Wikipedia is free at free.