head to head · open source
gollum vs open-knowledge
gollum has 14,325 GitHub stars, 1,560 forks, 91 open issues and last shipped 10 months ago. open-knowledge has 4,258 stars, 281 forks, 38 open issues and last shipped yesterday. gollum leads on adoption by 236% (14,325 vs 4,258 stars). gollum is written in Ruby under MIT; open-knowledge is written in TypeScript under GPL-3.0. gollum has attracted 11% as many forks as stars, open-knowledge 7%. open-knowledge 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| gollum | open-knowledge | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 14K | ★ 4.3K |
| License | MIT | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Ruby | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2025-11-24 | 2026-09-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.6K | ⑂ 281 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick gollum if
- You weight community size — 14K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Ruby
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick open-knowledge if
- You want the open-knowledge feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and open-knowledge fits your workflow better
About gollum
Gollum is a simple wiki system built on top of Git. A Gollum wiki is simply a Git repository of a specific nature: its contents are human editable text or markup files, pages may be organized into directories in any way the author chooses, and other content such as images, PDFs, and headers or footers for pages can also be included. Pages may be written in a variety of markups, edited either with a favourite editor (changes become visible after committing) or through the built in web interface, and displayed in all versions or reverted. The project lives in the Ruby ecosystem, is distributed under the MIT license…
read the full gollum overview →
About open-knowledge
OpenKnowledge is a markdown IDE and LLM wiki tool in the Content & Publishing / Documentation & Knowledge Base category. It is written in TypeScript, licensed under GPL 3.0, and listed on GitHub with 4214 stars, 275 forks, and 38 open issues. It is an AI native editor for knowledge bases, LLM wikis, specs, and notes, and it is described as private, local, and free.
read the full open-knowledge overview →
More in Content & Publishing
Related comparisons
More Documentation & Knowledge Base projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Documentation & Knowledge Base field.
Frequently asked questions
Is gollum or open-knowledge more popular?
gollum has 14,325 GitHub stars and open-knowledge has 4,258. gollum has the larger community by that measure.
Are gollum and open-knowledge free?
Both are open source. gollum is licensed under MIT and open-knowledge under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between gollum and open-knowledge?
gollum is written in Ruby and open-knowledge in TypeScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, gollum or open-knowledge?
Choose gollum if you want the larger community (14,325 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose open-knowledge if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.