Outline vs Wiki.js

Outline

• Teams that want a fast, Markdown-friendly internal wiki
• Organizations that need to host their knowledge base themselves
• Small teams: cloud hosting is a flat $10 a month for up to 10 members

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

Outline

• The cloud version has no free plan: after the 30-day trial the workspace is read-only until a payment method is added.
• Cloud pricing goes by team-size tier, so an 11th member moves a team from $10 to $79 a month, and teams over 200 need a quote.
• The free Community Edition lacks AI answers, guest users, SAML 2.0 and the audit log; paid self-hosted licenses need at least 10 users.
• The download page offers desktop apps for macOS and Windows only; no mobile apps are listed.

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.

Outline

Markdown-friendly editor

The editor supports Markdown, slash commands and interactive embeds. Documents and their version history are unlimited on every tier, including the free Community Edition.

Real-time collaboration

Several people can edit a document at the same time, and comments, threads and @mentions keep the discussion attached to the text.

Search and AI answers

Search covers the whole workspace, and questions about your documents get direct AI answers. AI answers are in every cloud tier but need a paid license when self-hosting.

Permissions and public sharing

Read and write permissions, user groups and guest users control access. Documents can be shared publicly by link, with your own brand colors, logo and domain.

Self-hosting

Outline can run on your own infrastructure, either as the free Community Edition or with a paid Business or Enterprise license that adds features such as SAML 2.0.

Integrations and API

More than 20 integrations cover tools such as Slack, Figma, GitHub, GitLab and Zapier, and an API with webhooks is included on every tier.

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.

Outline

• Community Edition$0

  Self-hosted on your own server: unlimited docs, real-time editing, SSO, integrations and the API, with no AI answers, guest users or support.

• Cloud, 1–10 members$10

  per month for the whole team; annual pricing available

  Hosted by Outline with every cloud feature: AI question answering, SSO, templates, groups and permissions, API and webhooks, and a security audit log.

• Cloud, 11–100 members$79

  per month for the whole team; annual pricing available

  The same features as the smaller tier. A team moves to this tier automatically once it has more than 10 members.

• Cloud, 101–200 members$249

  per month for the whole team; annual pricing available

  The same features for 101 to 200 members. Larger cloud teams are asked to contact Outline for pricing.

• On-Premises Business$4

  per user / month, billed annually, 10-user minimum

  Self-hosted license that adds AI question answering, guest users, SAML 2.0, extra security controls, a Confluence importer and the audit log.

• On-Premises Enterprise$5

  per user / month, billed annually, 100-user minimum

  Everything in On-Premises Business, plus removal of Outline branding and a support contract.

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.

Outline

• Nonprofit

  30% off for non-profits

  Outline's pricing FAQ offers non-profits a 30% discount on request, and says it will sponsor accounts for non-profits working directly on climate change.

• Education

  30% off for educational institutions

  The same pricing FAQ extends the 30% discount to educational institutions that contact Outline.

Wiki.js

No public discounts listed.