head to head · open source
gollum vs WikiDocs
gollum has 14,325 GitHub stars, 1,560 forks, 91 open issues and last shipped 10 months ago. WikiDocs has 520 stars, 63 forks, 10 open issues and last shipped 6 days ago. gollum leads on adoption by 2,655% (14,325 vs 520 stars). gollum is written in Ruby under MIT; WikiDocs is written in TypeScript under MIT. gollum has attracted 11% as many forks as stars, WikiDocs 12%. WikiDocs was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (markdown, 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| gollum | WikiDocs | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 14K | ★ 520 |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | Ruby | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2025-11-24 | 2026-09-14 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.6K | ⑂ 63 |
| 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 WikiDocs if
- You want the WikiDocs feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and WikiDocs 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 WikiDocs
WikiDocs is a databaseless, flat file wiki written in TypeScript that keeps every page as a portable Markdown file, built for individuals and teams who want to own their knowledge base instead of renting one from a database or cloud service.
read the full WikiDocs 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 WikiDocs more popular?
gollum has 14,325 GitHub stars and WikiDocs has 520. gollum has the larger community by that measure.
Are gollum and WikiDocs free?
Both are open source. gollum is licensed under MIT and WikiDocs under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between gollum and WikiDocs?
gollum is written in Ruby and WikiDocs 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 WikiDocs?
Choose gollum if you want the larger community (14,325 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose WikiDocs if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.