head to head · open source
wiki vs mkdocs-material
wiki has 28,937 GitHub stars, 3,314 forks, 182 open issues and last shipped yesterday. mkdocs-material has 27,452 stars, 4,147 forks, 1 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. wiki leads on adoption by 5% (28,937 vs 27,452 stars). wiki is written in Vue under AGPL-3.0; mkdocs-material is written in Python under MIT. wiki has attracted 11% as many forks as stars, mkdocs-material 15%. wiki was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (documentation), 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 | mkdocs-material | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 29K | ★ 27K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Vue | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-15 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.3K | ⑂ 4.1K |
| 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 mkdocs-material if
- You want the mkdocs-material feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and mkdocs-material 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 mkdocs-material
Material for MkDocs is a documentation framework built on top of MkDocs, the static site generator for project documentation. It lives in the Python ecosystem and is distributed as a theme plus an accompanying set of plugins, so authors write documentation in Markdown and MkDocs builds it into a static site that the theme renders. The project is licensed under MIT, has existed for eleven years, and is maintained as an open source project with more than 27,000 stars and over 4,000 forks on GitHub.
read the full mkdocs-material overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is wiki or mkdocs-material more popular?
wiki has 28,937 GitHub stars and mkdocs-material has 27,452. wiki has the larger community by that measure.
Are wiki and mkdocs-material free?
Both are open source. wiki is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and mkdocs-material under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between wiki and mkdocs-material?
wiki is written in Vue and mkdocs-material in Python. 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 mkdocs-material?
Choose wiki if you want the larger community (28,937 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose mkdocs-material if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.