head to head · open source
wiki vs zk
wiki has 28,938 GitHub stars, 3,314 forks, 182 open issues and last shipped today. zk has 2,801 stars, 189 forks, 24 open issues and last shipped 6 days ago. wiki leads on adoption by 933% (28,938 vs 2,801 stars). wiki is written in Vue under AGPL-3.0; zk is written in Go under GPL-3.0. wiki has attracted 11% as many forks as stars, zk 7%. wiki was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (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.
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Side by side
| wiki | zk | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 29K | ★ 2.8K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Vue | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-12 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.3K | ⑂ 189 |
| 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 zk if
- You want the zk feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and zk 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 zk
A plain text note taking assistant Description zk is a command line tool helping you to maintain a plain text Zettelkasten or personal wiki. Looking for a quick usage example? Or want to see it in action? Checkout Shivan's video, Note taking System ALL Programmers Should Consider . Join us on Matrix for general, support and development discussion: \ zk org:pub.solar. Highlights Creating notes from templates Advanced search and filtering capabilities including tags, links and mentions Integration with your favorite editors: Any LSP compatible editor zk emacs for Emacs zk nvim for Neovim 0.8+ zk vscode for Visual S…
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Frequently asked questions
Is wiki or zk more popular?
wiki has 28,938 GitHub stars and zk has 2,801. wiki has the larger community by that measure.
Are wiki and zk free?
Both are open source. wiki is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and zk under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between wiki and zk?
wiki is written in Vue and zk 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 zk?
Choose wiki if you want the larger community (28,938 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose zk if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.