head to head · open source
BookStack vs nebula
BookStack has 19,122 GitHub stars, 2,433 forks, 3 open issues and last shipped yesterday. nebula has 12,463 stars, 1,342 forks, 678 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. BookStack leads on adoption by 53% (19,122 vs 12,463 stars). BookStack is written in PHP under MIT; nebula is written in C++ under Apache-2.0. BookStack has attracted 13% as many forks as stars, nebula 11%. BookStack was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| BookStack | nebula | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 19K | ★ 12K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | PHP | C++ |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-09-08 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.4K | ⑂ 1.3K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick BookStack if
- You weight community size — 19K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick nebula if
- You want the nebula feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches C++
- You evaluated both and nebula fits your workflow better
About BookStack
BookStack A platform for storing and organising information and documentation. Details for BookStack can be found on the official website at Installation Instructions Documentation Demo Instance Screenshots BookStack Blog Issue List Community Discussions Support Options 📚 Project Definition BookStack is an opinionated documentation platform that provides a pleasant and simple out of the box experience. New users to an instance should find the experience intuitive and only basic word processing skills should be required to get involved in creating content on BookStack. The platform should provide advanced power…
read the full BookStack overview →
About nebula
English 中文 A distributed, scalable, lightning fast graph database NebulaGraph Introduction NebulaGraph is a popular open source graph database that can handle large volumes of data with milliseconds of latency, scale up quickly, and have the ability to perform fast graph analytics. NebulaGraph has been widely used for social media, recommendation systems, knowledge graphs, security, capital flows, AI, etc. See our users. The following lists some of NebulaGraph features: Symmetrically distributed Storage and computing separation Horizontal scalability Strong data consistency by RAFT protocol OpenCypher compatible…
read the full nebula overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is BookStack or nebula more popular?
BookStack has 19,122 GitHub stars and nebula has 12,463. BookStack has the larger community by that measure.
Are BookStack and nebula free?
Both are open source. BookStack is licensed under MIT and nebula under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between BookStack and nebula?
BookStack is written in PHP and nebula in C++. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, BookStack or nebula?
Choose BookStack if you want the larger community (19,122 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose nebula if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.