Is leafwiki free to use?

leafwiki is open source under the MIT licence. There is no licence fee and no seat count — you can self-host it or, where the project offers one, pay a vendor for a managed version instead.

What does leafwiki do?

LeafWiki - Self-hosted wiki. Single Go binary, SQLite, Markdown on disk. No external database required.

What is leafwiki written in?

leafwiki is primarily written in Go. Its source is publicly available at https://github.com/perber/leafwiki, and it has 1,135 GitHub stars.

leafwiki: Open Source Documentation & Knowledge Base

leafwiki is a free, open source documentation & knowledge base project written in Go and released under MIT. It has 1,135 GitHub stars, 83 forks and 41 open issues, and was last pushed 35 hours ago. On this registry it ranks #69 of 91 tracked projects in Documentation & Knowledge Base, with 5 head-to-head comparisons available.

🌿 LeafWiki

Self-hosted wiki. Single Go binary. SQLite + Markdown stored on disk.

For engineers and self-hosters who want structured, long-lived documentation. No Node.js, no Redis, no Postgres — just a binary and a data directory.

LeafWiki

If you've looked at Wiki.js or Outline and thought "this is too much to operate for what I need" — this could fit for you.

→ Try it without installing: demo.leafwiki.com · Ctrl+E edit · Ctrl+S save · resets hourly
→ If it fits, a star helps others find it.

docker run -p 8080:8080 -v ~/leafwiki-data:/app/data \
  ghcr.io/perber/leafwiki:latest \
  --jwt-secret=yoursecret --admin-password=yourpassword --allow-insecure=true

→ All install options (Docker Compose, Linux installer, binary)

Features
Good fit / not a fit
Install
Operating Modes
Dev Setup
Configuration
Keyboard Shortcuts
External Edits & Resync
Sorting Pages
Support this project
Contributing

Features

Operations:

Single Go binary — no external database, no runtime dependencies
Markdown on disk — page content is readable outside the app, backup is cp -r (stop the app first)
Runs on Linux, macOS, Windows, Raspberry Pi (x86_64 and ARM64)
Reverse-proxy friendly with --base-path
Reverse-proxy authentication via trusted HTTP header (v0.10+)
API keys for programmatic and agent access, admin-managed, read-only — in development, not yet ready for use
Three access modes: fully internal, public read with login-only editing, or open editing without login (see Operating Modes)
Roles: admin, editor, viewer

Core functionality:

Tree navigation — explicit hierarchy, not flat note feeds
Manual page ordering — sort order is explicit, not driven by filename (see Sorting Pages)
Full-text search across titles and content, with tag-based filtering
Tags on pages — searchable and filterable across the wiki
Backlinks and link status per page (incoming, outgoing, broken links), with a dedicated admin view for auditing broken links
Built-in Markdown editor with live preview, keyboard shortcuts, and autocomplete for internal page links
Optimistic locking for concurrent edits
Markdown: tables, task lists, footnotes, callouts (:::info / :::warning), collapsible blocks (:::collapsible / :::collapsed), Mermaid diagrams, KaTeX math blocks ($$...$$, inline $...$ not supported), sanitized inline HTML

Customization:

Custom stylesheet (--custom-stylesheet, v0.8.5+)
Inject HTML/JS into `` for analytics or custom CSS
Branding: logo, favicon, site name
Dark mode and mobile-friendly UI
Translated UI — ships in English, German, and Spanish; --default-language picks the default. Contributions of other languages are very welcome — see docs/i18n.md

Opt-in via feature flags:

Revision history (--enable-revision)
Automatic link rewriting when pages are renamed or moved (--enable-link-refactor)
Email via SMTP for password reset and user invitations (--smtp-host, v0.13.0)
Git backup — push wiki content to a remote Git repository via SSH or HTTP(S) (--git-backup, v0.11.3, experimental)

Markdown import:

ZIP-based importer for editors and admins
Supports Obsidian-style wiki link rewriting on import
Best results with a reasonably clean folder structure; not a fully automatic converter for all source formats

Mobile:

Good fit / not a fit

Good fit:

Personal wikis, engineering notebooks, and runbooks
Internal team or homelab documentation
Existing Markdown or Obsidian vaults that need a structured wiki UI
Small teams that want tree navigation over flat note feeds
Self-hosted environments with low operational overhead

Probably not a fit:

Organizations needing complex enterprise permissions or approval workflows
Real-time collaborative editing
Teams looking for a Confluence or Notion replacement

LeafWiki is intentionally narrower than those systems. That focus is part of the value.

Prefer not to run your own server? Free hosted beta — 10 spots, starting September 2026. Get a beta spot → and help shape the hosted version.

Install

Docker

docker run -p 8080:8080 \
    -v ~/leafwiki-data:/app/data \
    ghcr.io/perber/leafwiki:latest \
    --jwt-secret=yoursecret \
    --admin-password=yourpassword \
    --allow-insecure=true

--allow-insecure=true is required for plain HTTP. Omit it when serving over HTTPS (make sure your reverse proxy forwards X-Forwarded-Proto: https).

Non-root:

docker run -p 8080:8080 \
    -u 1000:1000 \
    -v ~/leafwiki-data:/app/data \
    ghcr.io/perber/leafwiki:latest \
    --jwt-secret=yoursecret \
    --admin-password=yourpassword \
    --allow-insecure=true

The data directory must be writable by the specified user.

Docker Compose

services:
  leafwiki:
    image: ghcr.io/perber/leafwiki:latest
    container_name: leafwiki
    user: 1000:1000
    ports:
      - "8080:8080"
    environment:
      - LEAFWIKI_JWT_SECRET=yourSecret
      - LEAFWIKI_ADMIN_PASSWORD=yourPassword
      - LEAFWIKI_ALLOW_INSECURE=true  # Required for plain HTTP. Omit for HTTPS (ensure `X-Forwarded-Proto: https` is forwarded).
    volumes:
      - ${HOME}/leafwiki-data:/app/data
    restart: unless-stopped

Linux installer

sudo /bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/perber/leafwiki/main/install.sh)"

Installs LeafWiki as a system service. Tested on Ubuntu, Debian, and Raspbian.

Update:

sudo /bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/perber/leafwiki/main/update.sh)"

Only works if you installed with the script above. Not compatible with Docker or binary installs.

Non-interactive mode:

cp .env.example .env
# Edit .env with your configuration
sudo ./install.sh --non-interactive --env-file ./.env

Security: in interactive mode, environment variables are written in plain text to /etc/leafwiki/.env. Restrict access to that file.

Deployment examples:

Binary

chmod +x leafwiki
./leafwiki --jwt-secret=yoursecret --admin-password=yourpassword --allow-insecure=true

The server binds to 127.0.0.1:8080 by default. To expose it on the network:

./leafwiki --jwt-secret=yoursecret --admin-password=yourpassword --host=0.0.0.0 --allow-insecure=true

Default data directory is ./data. Change with --data-dir.

Build from source

Requires Go and Node.js. make build compiles the UI, embeds it, and produces a self-contained leafwiki binary (same as release/Docker builds). Use HTTP (http://localhost:8080/), not HTTPS, unless you terminate TLS in front of LeafWiki.

git clone https://github.com/perber/leafwiki.git
cd leafwiki
git switch --detach v0.13.0   # or any tag / main
make build
./leafwiki --disable-auth --host=127.0.0.1 --data-dir ./data --allow-insecure=true

For API-only local development with Vite, use make build-api (or make run) ins