Everyone knows Wikipedia, the universal multi-language human-friendly encyclopedia that edited by its users. Wikipedia is built on an open-source top of MediaWiki by a dedicated team of developers.

MediaWiki becomes the first popular Wiki engine, which opened the way to dozens of Wiki engines for multipurpose and specific use.

Companies and teams can use self-hosted Wiki as a collaborative, organized writing platform to document instructions, team activities, software documentation and more.

If you are looking for a simple flat-file wiki or Git-based wiki system to use in personal or community projects, you can check our list here:

18 Open-source Flat-file Wiki Engines
A flat-file system is a solution that save records, and data in a plain files, instead of depending on an external database to store its content. Unlike database dependent systems, which requires you to setup, configure, prepare, and manage your database before installing your system, the flat-file…

Here, in this article we collected the best popular open-source, free Libre self-hosted Wiki engines software, as a guide for anyone who wants to create their wiki on their private servers.

Open-source Wiki engines

1- Wiki.JS

Wiki.js: Src (self)

Wiki.js is our first pick here because it is an enterprise-grade Wiki engine with dozens of features and options. It exceeds other engines in performance, features, and customizations.

In Medevel.com, We are using it to organize our projects documents and keep track of our learning activities.

Wiki.js is a modular system with a large set of modules and extensions. As its community grows, expect more add-ons to be added there.

The other thing that we like about Wiki.js is that we run it locally on our devices: Linux, macOS and Windows.

Wiki.js: A Modern Open-source Wiki Engine for the Enterprise
Whenever there is a mention of a Wiki, the first thing that always come to thoughts is: Wikipedia.org. So first let’s draw a like between Wiki and Wikipedia. A Wiki is a software that built to ease collaborative writing and editing processes for teams. They are designed with a

2- BookStack App

BookStack App (src. self)

The BookStack App is not just a Wiki Engine, but it works the same. It aims for creating books by easing collaboration among writers and editors, we run it for us and some clients as a Wiki Engine, where they use books as projects.

The application is easy to use for all sort of users with different backgrounds. It allows managing several books, categories, unlimited pages and comes with a powerful history and revision system for editors.

BookStack:Collaboratively Create and editor books with your team
There is no shortage for collaborative writing tools and software online, however not all of them are created and customized for book writing. Today, we bring to you an

4- TWiki

TWiki

TWiki is not just another Wiki engine, it is also a consummate web application development platform. It comes with all set of wiki features alongside a long list of development tools to build a complex web apps.

TWiki has a library of plugins which extend its functionalities and features.

TWiki - the Open Source Enterprise Wiki and Web Application Platform
A leading Enterprise 2.0 collaboration platform with 400+ extensions, used by 50,000 businesses, maintained by an active open source community for 10+ years.

4- XWiki

XWiki Page Editing (src. XWiki)

XWiki is an open-source wiki engine for enterprise. It focuses on productivity, collaboration, and simplicity.

The developers offer a powerful fancy control dashboard with responsive options which works seamlessly on mobile and tablets. It has its set of apps and modules and a developer-friendly API.

XWiki export options can export the content to numerous extensions like PDF, ODT,  RTF, XML and HTML.

It supports all soft of file attachments, and offers a full control over the page lifecycle.

XWiki has the traditional Wiki syntax editor and WYSIWYG editor for  non-experienced users.

XWiki - The Advanced Open Source Enterprise and Application Wiki (XWiki.org)
Enterprise wiki for sharing knowledge

5- DokuWiki

DokuWiki is a popular PHP-based open-source wiki that has been standing for years. It offers a multilingual support as it packed by a large community of experienced users and developer from all over the world.

When it comes to configuration and customization, DokuWiki has a large set of themes, modules, plugins and configuration options, which makes it the right choice for tech-savvy teams.

dokuwiki [DokuWiki]

6- TikiWiki CMS

TikiWiki CMS and Groupware (src. TikiWiki)

It may look as a Wiki, but it's not just another Wiki engine, It is a complete groupware and CMS for teams and enterprise as well as a web app development platform.

TikiWiki features include: editors, forums, form wizard control, custom fields and custom data structure management options, calendar and events management, galleries, survey, quizzes, polls, blogs and more.

Tiki Wiki CMS Groupware
Tiki is the Free / Libre / Open Source Web Application Platform with the most built-in features. - Tiki Wiki CMS Groupware

7- PmWiki

PmWiki

PmWiki is a lightweight open-source wiki built with PHP. It offers a spam protection, page editing, revisions, RSS feeds, search tools, page group management and dozens of themes and plugins.

This wiki is pretty straightforward that does not require a steep learning curve. Some may prefer it as a personal wiki engine.

PmWiki | PmWiki / PmWiki

8- TiddlyWiki

TiddlyWiki

TiddlyWiki has been my favorite wiki on this list, It is an open-source portal one-file wiki that does not even require install. Despite its simple use and look, it has a rich list of features, plugins, and themes.

TiddlyWiki can be customized and modified according as required; however, some customization requires the user to dive deep in documentation and has a good coding experience.

TiddlyWiki — a non-linear personal web notebook

9- Outline

Outline is a fairly new Wiki engine for teams which built on top of Node.JS, React and PostgreSQL.

It has a simple user-interface and rich features list with a dozen of customization options. It offers a docker install which can works seamlessly on Windows, Linux, and macOS.

Keep in mind that the project is under heavy development, which suggest more features in the near future.

Outline: An Open-source modern Wiki engine for teams and communities
The Outline app is a free self-hosted wiki engine and collaborative knowledge base for teams. Wiki engines are built to ease collaborative content creation for teams, organizations, and communities. However, many current open-source wiki engines are old, Outline and some others are new modern recre…

10- Gollum

Gollum is a GitHub-based Wiki engine for developers to organize software documentation.  It uses GitHub repository for markdown files and Gollum engine to control and organize the content.

It features: RSS feed, UML diagram support, BibTeX and citation support, macros and more.

GitHub - gollum/gollum: A simple, Git-powered wiki with a sweet API and local frontend.
A simple, Git-powered wiki with a sweet API and local frontend. - GitHub - gollum/gollum: A simple, Git-powered wiki with a sweet API and local frontend.

11- MediaWiki

MediaWiki is an open-source Wiki engine that runs Wikipedia.  It is the oldest system in the list and some may consider it the king of Wiki engines. It supports almost all available languages as it is easy to install and use.

It is available to download for free for users to host it at their server and start creating, editing and organizing their pages and media content.

MediaWiki has a tremendous list of customization options tips, extensions themes.

MediaWiki

12- Amusewiki

Amusewiki is an Open-Source Wiki Engine for Publishers
Amusewiki is a free and open-source wiki engine that also can be used as authoring, archiving and publishing platform. Amusewiki is also an amazing EPUB editor, viewer and authoring tool. Unlike many other wiki engines, Amusewiki uses Emacs Muse Markup instead of Wiki syntax, or Markdown. It come…

13- GROWI

GROWI: an Open-source Markdown-based Wiki Engine for Teams
What is GROWI? GROWI is a new open-source Wiki engine for teams that supports real-time editing It is built on top of Node.js and MongoDB. It also uses Redis, and ElasicSearch for full-text search functionality. Features 1. It uses Markdown by default: (Create hierarchical pages with Markdown…

14- WackoWiki

WackoWiki is an Outstanding Open-source Wiki Engine
What is WackoWiki? WackoWiki is a free, open-source light and easy to install multilingual Wiki-engine. It supports WYTIWYG-editing, page rights (ACLs), design themes (skins), file upload, email notification and much more. Compatible with PHP 7.3 - 8.1 and MariaDB / MySQL. WackoWiki features *…

15- Quiki

Quiki is an Outstanding Wiki system written in Go
Quiki is a file-based web engine and server featuring a productive source language, markdown, image generation, categories, templates, and revision tracking

16- Mycorrhiza

Mycorrhiza is a Flat-file Self-hosted Wiki Engine
Filesystem and git-based wiki engine written in Go using Mycomarkup as its primary markup language.

17- JINGO

JINGO is an Open-source Git-based CMS and Wiki engine
What is JINGO? JINGO is a git based wiki engine and CMS written for Node.js, with a decent design, a search capability and a good typography. In this post, we will reveal Jingo’s amazing features and how can you install it on your system. Features * No database: Jingo uses

18- MoinMoin

MoinMoin Wiki Engine: An Open Source Extensible Wiki
MoinMoin is an easy to use, full-featured and extensible wiki software package written in Python.

In the end

Here, as we listed all popular open-source Wiki engines, It is up to you choosing the one that fits you and your team requirements. We encourage you to narrow it down to three or two, then go throw all features and compare to select the right one.

If you have any other open-source Wiki engine system that we miss, send to us and we will add it.