head to head · open source
BookStack vs schemaspy
BookStack has 19,050 GitHub stars, 2,422 forks, 3 open issues and last shipped today. schemaspy has 3,724 stars, 357 forks, 303 open issues and last shipped 7 months ago. BookStack leads on adoption by 412% (19,050 vs 3,724 stars). BookStack is written in PHP under MIT; schemaspy is written in HTML under LGPL-3.0. BookStack has attracted 13% as many forks as stars, schemaspy 10%. BookStack 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
| BookStack | schemaspy | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 19K | ★ 3.7K |
| License | MIT | LGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | PHP | HTML |
| Last push | 2026-09-20 | 2026-03-05 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.4K | ⑂ 357 |
| 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 schemaspy if
- You want the schemaspy feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the LGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches HTML
- You evaluated both and schemaspy fits your workflow better
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 →
About schemaspy
SchemaSpy is a standalone Java based database metadata analyzer that reverse engineers an existing database schema and produces a browsable HTML report with entity relationship diagrams, for database administrators and developers who need to understand a data model they did not design.
read the full schemaspy overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is BookStack or schemaspy more popular?
BookStack has 19,050 GitHub stars and schemaspy has 3,724. BookStack has the larger community by that measure.
Are BookStack and schemaspy free?
Both are open source. BookStack is licensed under MIT and schemaspy under LGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between BookStack and schemaspy?
BookStack is written in PHP and schemaspy in HTML. 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 schemaspy?
Choose BookStack if you want the larger community (19,050 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose schemaspy if its feature set, stack or LGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.