head to head · open source
wiki vs cheat
wiki has 28,937 GitHub stars, 3,314 forks, 182 open issues and last shipped yesterday. cheat has 13,456 stars, 853 forks, 34 open issues and last shipped 4 months ago. wiki leads on adoption by 115% (28,937 vs 13,456 stars). wiki is written in Vue under AGPL-3.0; cheat is written in Go under MIT. wiki has attracted 11% as many forks as stars, cheat 6%. 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 | cheat | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 29K | ★ 13K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Vue | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-05-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.3K | ⑂ 853 |
| 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 cheat if
- You want the cheat feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and cheat 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 cheat
cheat is an MIT licensed, Go written command line tool for nix system administrators that creates and displays interactive cheatsheets, so that options for commands used frequently but not frequently enough to remember stay one command away.
read the full cheat overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is wiki or cheat more popular?
wiki has 28,937 GitHub stars and cheat has 13,456. wiki has the larger community by that measure.
Are wiki and cheat free?
Both are open source. wiki is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and cheat under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between wiki and cheat?
wiki is written in Vue and cheat in Go. 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 cheat?
Choose wiki if you want the larger community (28,937 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose cheat if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.