head to head · open source
wiki vs BookStack
wiki has 28,937 GitHub stars, 3,314 forks, 182 open issues and last shipped yesterday. BookStack has 19,048 stars, 2,422 forks, 3 open issues and last shipped yesterday. wiki leads on adoption by 52% (28,937 vs 19,048 stars). wiki is written in Vue under AGPL-3.0; BookStack is written in PHP under MIT. wiki has attracted 11% as many forks as stars, BookStack 13%. BookStack was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (documentation, wiki), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
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
| wiki | BookStack | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 29K | ★ 19K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Vue | PHP |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.3K | ⑂ 2.4K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick wiki if
- You weight community size — 29K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Vue
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick BookStack if
- You want the BookStack feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- You evaluated both and BookStack fits your workflow better
About wiki
Wiki.js is a modern, lightweight wiki application built on NodeJS and distributed as open source under the AGPL 3.0 licence, aimed at teams and organisations that want to publish and maintain their own documentation and knowledge base rather than renting a hosted one.
About BookStack
BookStack is a self hosted documentation platform written in PHP on top of the Laravel framework, released under the MIT license. It is described by its maintainers as an opinionated platform for storing and organising information and documentation, and it is distributed as an open source project whose development is now managed on Codeberg. The project has existed for roughly eleven years and carries a substantial community footprint, with more than nineteen thousand stars and over two thousand forks recorded against its repository history.
read the full BookStack overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is wiki or BookStack more popular?
wiki has 28,937 GitHub stars and BookStack has 19,048. wiki has the larger community by that measure.
Are wiki and BookStack free?
Both are open source. wiki is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and BookStack under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between wiki and BookStack?
wiki is written in Vue and BookStack in PHP. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, wiki or BookStack?
Choose wiki if you want the larger community (28,937 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose BookStack if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.