head to head · open source
BookStack vs zk
BookStack has 19,122 GitHub stars, 2,433 forks, 3 open issues and last shipped yesterday. zk has 2,863 stars, 199 forks, 24 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. BookStack leads on adoption by 568% (19,122 vs 2,863 stars). BookStack is written in PHP under MIT; zk is written in Go under GPL-3.0. BookStack has attracted 13% as many forks as stars, zk 7%. BookStack was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (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
| BookStack | zk | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 19K | ★ 2.9K |
| License | MIT | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | PHP | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-31 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.4K | ⑂ 199 |
| 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 zk if
- You want the zk feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and zk 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 zk
A plain text note taking assistant Description zk is a command line tool helping you to maintain a plain text Zettelkasten or personal wiki. Looking for a quick usage example? Or want to see it in action? Checkout Shivan's video, Note taking System ALL Programmers Should Consider . Join us on Matrix for general, support and development discussion: \ zk org:pub.solar. Highlights Creating notes from templates Advanced search and filtering capabilities including tags, links and mentions Integration with your favorite editors: Any LSP compatible editor zk emacs for Emacs zk nvim for Neovim 0.8+ zk vscode for Visual…
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Frequently asked questions
Is BookStack or zk more popular?
BookStack has 19,122 GitHub stars and zk has 2,863. BookStack has the larger community by that measure.
Are BookStack and zk free?
Both are open source. BookStack is licensed under MIT and zk under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between BookStack and zk?
BookStack is written in PHP and zk in Go. 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 zk?
Choose BookStack if you want the larger community (19,122 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose zk if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.