BlueSpice vs BookStack

Price, platforms and features side by side. The table says where each price was read and when.

BlueSpice

Open-source enterprise wiki built on MediaWiki

Free plan · from $1,620/yr

BookStack

Free self-hosted wiki organized into books, chapters and pages

Free plan · from £450/yr

Where they differ

BlueSpice starts at $1,620 per year for up to 25 users, cloud-hosted (about $5.40 per user / month). BookStack starts at £450 per year for an optional support plan; the software itself is free.
BlueSpice also covers forms.
BookStack also covers Markdown.

In commonFree planWebOpen sourceSelf-hostableWikiTemplatesDiagrams

	BlueSpice	BookStack
Pricing	Free plan	Free plan
Starts at	$1,620 per year for up to 25 users, cloud-hosted (about $5.40 per user / month)	£450 per year for an optional support plan; the software itself is free
Free plan	BlueSpice free is a community edition to download and run yourself: MediaWiki plus a visual editor, search and about 100 extensions. It has community support only and no approvals or workflows.	The whole application is free and MIT licensed, with no cost to download and install your own instance. Community support carries no assurance of a response.
Free trial	30-day free trial of BlueSpice pro in the cloud, for up to 25 users	None listed
Web
Made by	Hallo Welt! GmbH	Dan Brown
Price read from	bluespice.com	bookstackapp.com
Checked	Oct 9, 2026	Oct 5, 2026

BlueSpice

Organizations that want an open-source wiki with vendor support
Quality and compliance teams that need approvals and read confirmations
Companies that must keep documentation on their own servers or in German data centers
Teams already familiar with MediaWiki

BookStack

BlueSpice

The free edition is self-hosted only and lacks approvals, workflows, forms, central authentication and professional support.
Paid editions are yearly subscriptions sold in user tiers: 25 users is the smallest cloud tier and 50 the smallest for farm.
Cloud hosting adds a one-time setup fee, listed at $450, and single sign-on costs extra in the cloud.
The vendor's edition page quotes euros, from 4.50 € per user a month; dollar prices come from its price configurator.

BookStack

There is no official hosted version: you install and maintain it yourself, which takes some knowledge of hosting a PHP application and database.
It needs PHP 8.2 or later with MySQL 8.0 or MariaDB 10.6 or later, and shared PHP hosting is not supported.
Paid support is priced in pounds, at £450 or £4,500 a year before VAT; free community support has no assured response.

BlueSpice

Visual editor on MediaWiki: Pages are written in a visual editor or in wiki syntax and organized with subpages and hierarchical categories. BlueSpice pro ships with about 180 extensions.
Approvals and workflows: The pro edition adds drafts and approvals, workflows, read confirmations, reminders and page assignments for keeping controlled documents current.
Forms and semantic metadata: Structured data is captured through forms with semantic metadata support, which the vendor lists among the pro edition's additions.
Bookmaker and exports: The bookmaker compiles wiki pages into manuals or training material. Pages export to PDF with custom templates and to XML, CSV and Excel, and Word files can be imported.
Process diagrams: Processes and relationships are drawn inside the wiki with the draw.io extension or modelled as BPMN diagrams.
Cloud or on-premises: The cloud version is hosted in Germany with a daily backup kept for 7 days and 99.9% stated availability. On premises it is delivered as Docker containers or a virtual machine.

BookStack

Books, chapters and pages: All content sits in a three-level structure of books, chapters and pages, and pages can be re-sorted across books.
WYSIWYG and Markdown editors: Pages are written in a simple WYSIWYG editor by default. An optional Markdown editor shows a live preview as you write.
Search and paragraph links: Search works within a single book or across every book, chapter and page, and any paragraph can be linked to directly.
Built-in diagrams: The page editor has diagrams.net drawing built in, so diagrams can be created without leaving the documentation.
Roles, permissions and sign-in: A role and permission system locks down content and actions. Sign-in supports OIDC, SAML2 and LDAP besides email and password, and multi-factor authentication can be enforced per role.
Revisions and API: Page revisions and image management are built in, and each instance documents an API covering pages, chapters, books, shelves and attachments.

BlueSpice

BlueSpice freeFree
Self-hosted community edition: all MediaWiki features plus a visual editor, search, improved design and security, with community support.
BlueSpice pro$1,620
per year for up to 25 users, cloud-hosted, before tax
About $5.40 per user a month; $3,240 a year for up to 50 users. Adds approvals, workflows, forms and metadata, the bookmaker and professional support.
BlueSpice farm$6,120
per year for up to 50 users, before tax
About $10.20 per user a month. Everything in pro plus multiple wikis, search across them, content transfer and multilingual content.
BlueSpice indigoCustom
Custom offer for non-standard contract and purchasing terms, separate compliance requirements and customer-specific deployments.

BookStack

BookStack (self-hosted)Free
The full application on your own server, with community support through the project's discussions, Codeberg and Reddit.
Professional Support Plan£450
per year, VAT not included
Email and help-desk support covering installation and updating issues, with high-priority handling of bug and issue reports.
Enterprise Support Plan£4,500
per year, VAT not included
Everything in Professional, plus highest-priority handling, help with API integrations and up to 10 hours of video support a year.

BlueSpice

Nonprofit
Discount for registered non-profits
The pricing FAQ gives registered non-profit organizations a discount on the software subscription, excluding governmental, academic and commercial bodies. No amount is published.

BookStack

No public discounts listed.