BlueSpice vs Wiki.js
We give BlueSpice a 3.2 GPA and Wiki.js a 3.0, out of 4.0. BlueSpice grades higher on features and ease of use. Wiki.js grades higher on value for money and the free plan. They get the same grade on platforms.
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
How we grade them
| 3.2GPABlueSpiceVery good | 3.0GPAWiki.jsVery good | |
|---|---|---|
| Value for money | BPro in the cloud is $1,620 a year for up to 25 users, about $5.40 a user a month if you fill every seat, which is the cheap end of this category. But 25 is the smallest tier, so a team of 10 pays the same. There's a one-time setup fee listed at $450, and single sign-on costs extra in the cloud. | AIt costs nothing. The whole application is free and open source under the AGPL-v3 license, with no paid tier holding features back. Your only bill is the server you run it on. |
| Free plan and trial | BBlueSpice free costs nothing and has every MediaWiki feature plus a visual editor, search and about 100 extensions. But you download and run it yourself with community support only, and approvals, workflows, forms and central authentication are left out. The cloud has a 30-day trial of pro for up to 25 users. | AAll of it is free, for good. The project is kept going by sponsors, backers and donations, so there isn't a paid plan to be nudged towards. |
| Features | AWrite in a visual editor or wiki syntax, then add drafts and approvals, workflows, read confirmations and page assignments on pro. Forms capture structured data, the bookmaker turns pages into manuals, and draw.io and BPMN diagrams sit inside the wiki. Pro ships with about 180 extensions. | BThree editors (Markdown with live preview, a visual one and plain HTML), every change tracked with a visual compare, group permissions with page rules, and sync to Git or cloud storage. But version 3.0 is still in beta, and modules like the tabular editor are marked coming soon. |
| Ease of use | BNo App Store rating on record, so a B is our ceiling. On the paid cloud version the vendor hosts it for you, and the visual editor means nobody has to learn wiki syntax. Go for the free edition and you're running a server yourself. | DYou host it yourself. It needs a server that runs Node.js and its own domain or sub-domain, as it can't sit in a subfolder of another site. A DigitalOcean Marketplace image speeds things up, but there's no managed plan and no paid support. |
| Platforms and integrations | BIt's a web app, in the vendor's cloud or delivered as Docker containers or a virtual machine for your own servers. It hooks into Microsoft Entra ID, Okta and Keycloak for sign-in, plus draw.io, DeepL, Lucidchart, GitHub and Microsoft Teams. No phone or desktop apps are listed. | BIt's a web app that runs wherever Node.js does, with no desktop or phone apps listed. Modules connect it to GitHub, GitLab, Google, Slack, Okta and Elasticsearch, and a GraphQL API can read and change everything in the wiki. |
| Best for | MediaWiki with approvals and vendor support | a free Markdown wiki on your own server |
The GPA is the average of the five grades: an A is 4 points, an F is none. The full reasons are on each tool's page: BlueSpice and Wiki.js. How we grade
Where they differ
- BlueSpice starts at $1,620 per year for up to 25 users, cloud-hosted (about $5.40 per user / month). Wiki.js is free.
- BlueSpice also covers templates and forms.
- Wiki.js also covers Markdown.
In commonFree planWebOpen sourceSelf-hostableWikiDiagrams
At a glance
| BlueSpice | Wiki.js | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Free plan | Free |
| Starts at | $1,620 per year for up to 25 users, cloud-hosted (about $5.40 per user / month) | 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 open source under the AGPL-v3 license. The project is supported by sponsors, backers and donations. |
| 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 | Requarks.io |
| Price read from | bluespice.com | js.wiki |
| Checked | Oct 9, 2026 | Oct 5, 2026 |
Who each one suits
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
Wiki.js
- Developer teams that prefer writing documentation in Markdown
- Organizations that want a free wiki on their own infrastructure
- Wikis whose content should be mirrored to a Git repository
Worth knowing
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.
Wiki.js
- The site offers two ways to run it, self-hosting or a DigitalOcean Marketplace image, and lists no managed hosting plan or paid support.
- It requires a dedicated domain or sub-domain and cannot be mapped to a subfolder of another site.
- MySQL, MariaDB, MS SQL Server and SQLite will not be supported in the next major version, which keeps only PostgreSQL.
- Version 3.0 is still in beta, and several listed modules, such as the WikiText and tabular editors, are marked as coming soon.
Key features
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.
Wiki.js
- Three editors
- Pages can be written in Markdown with a live preview, in a visual WYSIWYG editor meant for non-technical people, or directly in HTML.
- Version tracking
- All content changes are tracked. Two versions of a page can be compared visually, and a page can be reverted to an earlier state or recovered after deletion.
- Authentication modules
- Sign-in can use local accounts, services such as Google, GitHub and Slack, or LDAP, SAML, Okta and Azure AD, with two-factor authentication on supported modules.
- Git and cloud storage sync
- Content can be synchronized or backed up to Git services such as GitHub and GitLab, or to storage such as AWS S3, Azure Blob Storage and Google Cloud Storage.
- Groups, permissions and page rules
- Users are placed in groups with granular permissions, and page rules limit a group's access by exact path, by how a path starts or ends, or by regular expression.
- GraphQL API
- A GraphQL endpoint on each wiki reads and modifies all of its resources, using API tokens with permission scopes that are generated in the administration area.
Plans
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.
Wiki.js
Wiki.js$0
The full application, hosted on your own servers or launched from the DigitalOcean Marketplace image, with community help through the project's support channels.
Ways to pay less
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.
Wiki.js
No public discounts listed.
