BookStack vs MediaWiki
Price, platforms and features side by side. The table says where each price was read and when.
BookStack
Free self-hosted wiki organized into books, chapters and pages
Free plan · from £450/yr
Where they differ
- BookStack starts at £450 per year for an optional support plan; the software itself is free. MediaWiki is free.
- BookStack also covers Markdown, templates and diagrams.
In commonFree planWebOpen sourceSelf-hostablePublic APIWiki
At a glance
| BookStack | MediaWiki | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Free plan | Free |
| Starts at | £450 per year for an optional support plan; the software itself is free | Free |
| Free plan | 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. | The software is free of charge and licensed under version 2 or later of the GNU General Public License, with no warranty. |
| Free trial | None listed | None listed |
| Web | ||
| Made by | Dan Brown | Wikimedia Foundation |
| Price read from | bookstackapp.com | mediawiki.org |
| Checked | Oct 5, 2026 | Oct 5, 2026 |
Who each one suits
BookStack
- Teams that want a free wiki running on their own server
- Mixed technical and non-technical staff writing documentation
- Organizations that need LDAP, SAML2 or OIDC sign-in at no cost
MediaWiki
- Large public wikis and encyclopedia-style reference sites
- Organizations with a server administrator to install and update it
- Communities that already know how to edit Wikipedia
Worth knowing
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.
MediaWiki
- The manual says MediaWiki is often not suitable when access to part of a wiki must be restricted, because it was designed for open content.
- You host it yourself: it needs PHP 8.3 or later, web server software and a database such as MariaDB or MySQL, and ongoing security upgrades.
- It is optimized for very high-traffic sites and may not suit small sites where disk space or memory is the tighter limit.
- Hosting comes only from third parties: the site lists hosting services that the Wikimedia Foundation neither guarantees nor endorses.
Key features
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.
MediaWiki
- Wikitext and VisualEditor
- Pages use MediaWiki's wikitext format, which needs no knowledge of HTML or CSS. The VisualEditor extension, bundled since version 1.35, allows editing pages as rich content instead.
- Full revision history
- Every edit is written to the database without deleting earlier versions of the page, so vandalism, spam or mistakes can be reverted easily.
- Extensions
- Administrators add functions by installing extensions. Some are bundled with the software; third-party ones may be unmaintained or incompatible with each other.
- Action API
- A web service at the api.php endpoint lets programs log in, read data and post changes over HTTP, covering features such as page operations and search.
- Built for high traffic
- The software was designed to serve sites that get millions of hits a day. It supports caching and can be coupled with proxy server software.
- Image and media files
- MediaWiki also manages images and multimedia files, which are stored in the server's file system rather than in the database.
Plans
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.
MediaWiki
MediaWiki$0
The full software, downloaded and installed on your own server, with help from the community support desk.
