head to head · open source
wiki vs schemaspy
wiki has 28,946 GitHub stars, 3,314 forks, 182 open issues and last shipped today. schemaspy has 3,724 stars, 357 forks, 303 open issues and last shipped 7 months ago. wiki leads on adoption by 677% (28,946 vs 3,724 stars). wiki is written in Vue under AGPL-3.0; schemaspy is written in HTML under LGPL-3.0. wiki has attracted 11% as many forks as stars, schemaspy 10%. 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| wiki | schemaspy | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 29K | ★ 3.7K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | LGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Vue | HTML |
| Last push | 2026-09-20 | 2026-03-05 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.3K | ⑂ 357 |
| 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 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 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 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 →
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 wiki or schemaspy more popular?
wiki has 28,946 GitHub stars and schemaspy has 3,724. wiki has the larger community by that measure.
Are wiki and schemaspy free?
Both are open source. wiki is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and schemaspy under LGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between wiki and schemaspy?
wiki is written in Vue 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, wiki or schemaspy?
Choose wiki if you want the larger community (28,946 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose schemaspy if its feature set, stack or LGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.