BookStack vs. XWiki vs. MediaWiki vs. TiddlyWiki

General Features BookStack XWiki MediaWiki TiddlyWiki
Version
v21.12.1
18.4.0
1.45.3
5.1.21
Last Release Date
2022-01-06 (4 years ago)
2026-05-27 (14 days ago)
2025-12-04 (6 months ago)
2019-07-25 (6 years ago)
Last Update here
2022-01-08 (4 years ago)
2026-05-27 (14 days ago)
2026-06-03 (7 days ago)
2019-11-20 (6 years ago)
Author
Dan Brown
XWiki Development Team
Magnus Manske, Brion Vibber, Lee Daniel Crocker, Tim Starling, Erik Möller, and others.
Jeremy Ruston, TiddlyWiki community
URL
Free and Open Source
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
License
MIT
LGPL + Free hosting on https://myxwiki.org for individuals/non profit
GPL
BSD
Programming Language
PHP
Java
PHP
HTML, JavaScript
Data Storage
Database
Database, RCS
Database
Files
License Cost/ Fee
0
0
0
0
Development status
Mature
Mature
Mature
Mature
Intended Audience
Small to mid-size groups and businesses
Enterprise, Workgroups, Developers
End Users/Desktop, Education
Individuals, private, small groups
Hosting Features BookStack XWiki MediaWiki TiddlyWiki
Storage Quota
N/A
N/A
N/A
Bandwidth Quota
N/A
N/A
N/A
Other Limits
N/A
N/A
N/A
Topic Restrictions
N/A
N/A
N/A
Corporate Branding
N/A
Yes
N/A
N/A
Own Domain
N/A
Yes
N/A
N/A
Ads allowed
N/A
No
N/A
N/A
System Requirements BookStack XWiki MediaWiki TiddlyWiki
Operating System
Linux, Windows and Unix variants
Any platform supporting Java 17 or greater
*nix, Windows, Mac OS X
Any
Root Access
No
No
No
No
Webserver
Apache, Nginx or others with PHP support
Servlet 5.0+
Any with PHP support
Not required (optional backends available)
Other Requirements
Command-line access, PHP7.3+
Java 17, MySQL/MariaDB/PostgreSQL/HSQLDB/etc (JDBC Driver required)
none
A common browser
Datastorage BookStack XWiki MediaWiki TiddlyWiki
Text Files
No
No
No
Optional
MySQL
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
PostgreSQL
No
Yes
Yes
No
Oracle
No
Yes
No
No
SQLite
No
No
Yes
No
BerkeleyDB
No
No
No
No
RCS
No
Plugin
No
No
Other
MariaDB
JDBC Databases and in general any database supported by Hibernate; any custom implementation, as the storage is pluggable. Attachments can be saved on the filesystem
No
Data self contained in html file OR as individual data files
Security/Anti-Spam BookStack XWiki MediaWiki TiddlyWiki
Page Permissions
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
ACL
Yes
Yes
No
No
Authentication Backends
SAML2, LDAP, OIDC, ActiveDirectory, Google, GitHub, GitLab, AzureAD, Slack and more
XWiki, OpenID Connect, LDAP, custom (Open API), Kerberos, NTLM, Headers, PUMA, SAML, Trusted LDAP, Sun SSO
Yes
optional extensions available
Host Blocking
No
No
Yes
No
Mail Encryption
Yes
Yes
Plugin
No
nofollow
No
No
Optional
Unknown
Blacklist
No
Plugin
Yes
No
CAPTCHA
No
Yes
Plugin
No
Delayed Indexing
No
Yes
No
Unknown
Development/Support BookStack XWiki MediaWiki TiddlyWiki
# of Consultants
Preconfigured Hosting
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
Code Repository
Issue Tracker
Mailing List
Support Forum
Chat Channel
Stars on GitHub
18818 ⭐
N/A
N/A
8594 ⭐
Common Features BookStack XWiki MediaWiki TiddlyWiki
Preview
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Minor Changes
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
Change Summary
Yes
Yes
Yes
Unknown
Page History
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Page Revisions
Restricted by Number
Unlimited
Unlimited
Unlimited
Revision Diffs
Between all
Between all
Between all
Between all
Sitemap
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin System
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
Special Features BookStack XWiki MediaWiki TiddlyWiki
Unicode Support
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Right-to-Left Support
Yes
No
Yes
Yes
Interface Languages
29
Arabic, Bulgarian, Catalan, Danish, German, English, Spanish, French, Hebrew, Croatian, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latvian, Lettish, Dutch, Polish, Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, Slovak, Slovenian, Swedish, Turkish, Ukrainian, Vietnamese, Chinese, Chinese Traditional
40
Bulgarian, Catalan, Czech, Danish, German, Greek, English, Spanish, Persian, French, Galician, Hindi, Croatian, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Cambodian, Kannada, Korean, Lithuanian, Latvian, Lettish, Marathi, Dutch, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Sinhalese, Slovak, Slovenian, Swedish, Turkish, Uighur, Ukrainian, Vietnamese, Chinese, Chinese Traditional
140
Afar, Abkhazian, Afrikaans, Amharic, Arabic, Assamese, Aymara, Azerbaijani, Bashkir, Byelorussian, Bulgarian, Bihari, Bislama, Bengali; Bangla, Tibetan, Breton, Catalan, Corsican, Czech, Welsh, Danish, German, Bhutani, Greek, English, Esperanto, Spanish, Estonian, Basque, Persian, Finnish, Fiji, Faroese, French, Frisian, Irish, Scots Gaelic, Galician, Guarani, Gujarati, Hausa, Hebrew, Hindi, Croatian, Hungarian, Armenian, Interlingua, Indonesian, Interlingue, Inupiak, Icelandic, Italian, Inuktitut, Japanese, Georgian, Kazakh, Greenlandic, Cambodian, Kannada, Korean, Kashmiri, Kurdish, Kirghiz, Latin, Lingala, Laothian, Lithuanian, Latvian, Lettish, Malagasy, Maori, Macedonian, Malayalam, Mongolian, Moldavian, Marathi, Malay, Maltese, Burmese, Nauru, Nepali, Dutch, Norwegian, Occitan, Oromo, Oriya, Punjabi, Polish, Pashto, Pushto, Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, Quechua, Rhaeto-Romance, Kirundi, Romanian, Russian, Kinyarwanda, Sanskrit, Sindhi, Sangho, Serbo-Croatian, Sinhalese, Slovak, Slovenian, Samoan, Shona, Somali, Albanian, Serbian, Siswati, Sesotho, Sundanese, Swedish, Swahili, Tamil, Telugu, Tajik, Thai, Tigrinya, Turkmen, Tagalog, Setswana, Tonga, Turkish, Tsonga, Tatar, Twi, Uighur, Ukrainian, Urdu, Uzbek, Vietnamese, Volapuk, Wolof, Xhosa, Yiddish, Yoruba, Zhuang, Chinese, Chinese Traditional, Zulu
4
German, English, French, Japanese
Email notification
No
Yes
Optional
Unknown
Comments
Flat
Threaded
Discussion Pages
Plugin
Categories
Optional
Yes
Yes
Yes
Namespaces
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Conflict Handling
Conflict Detection
Conflict Resolution
Conflict Resolution
None
Concurrent Editing
No
Yes
No
Unknown
Search
Full Text
Full Text
Full Text
Full Text
Wiki Farming
No
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Structured Data
No
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Links BookStack XWiki MediaWiki TiddlyWiki
CamelCase
No
Yes
No
Yes
Freelinks
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Backlinks
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
InterWiki
No
Yes
Yes
Plugin
SisterWiki
No
Yes
No
No
Image Links
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Windows Shares
No
Yes
No
Yes
Page Redirects
No
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Syntax Features BookStack XWiki MediaWiki TiddlyWiki
HTML Tags
Optional
All
Some
Optional
Math formulas
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
Tables
simple
simple + complex
simple + complex
complex
CREOLE support
No
Yes
No
Plugin
Markdown Support
Optional
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Textile Support
No
No
No
No
BBCode Support
No
No
No
No
Emoticon Images
No
Yes
Optional
Plugin
Syntax Highlighting
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
Footnotes
No
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Quoting
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Internal Comments
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
Custom styles
Optional
Yes
Yes
Yes
FAQ Tags
No
Plugin
Unknown
Plugin
Scripting
None
velocity, groovy, ruby, jython, generic JSR223 & very powerful API
Optional
JavaScript
Content Includes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Feed Aggregation
No
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
Usability BookStack XWiki MediaWiki TiddlyWiki
Section Editing
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
Page Templates
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Double-Click Edit
No
No
Optional
Plugin
Toolbar
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
WYSIWYG Editing
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
Access Keys
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
Auto Signature
No
No
Yes
Plugin
Statistics BookStack XWiki MediaWiki TiddlyWiki
Recent Changes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Wanted Pages
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
Orphaned Pages
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
Most/Least Popular
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Recent Visitors
No
Yes
Plugin
No
Analysis
No
Yes
Optional
Plugin
Output BookStack XWiki MediaWiki TiddlyWiki
Printer Friendly
Print CSS
Print CSS
Print CSS
Print CSS
Mobile Friendly
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Themes & Skins
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
RSS Feeds
No
Yes
Yes
Plugin
ATOM Feeds
No
Optional
Yes
Plugin
Abbreviations
No
Plugin
No
Unknown
Auto-TOC
No
Optional
Yes
Yes
Raw Export
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
HTML Export
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
XML export
No
Yes
Yes
Unknown
PDF Export
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
Office Export
No
Yes
Unknown
Unknown
Media and Files BookStack XWiki MediaWiki TiddlyWiki
File Attachments
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Media Revisions
No
Yes
Yes
No
Embedded Flash
No
Yes
Unknown
Plugin
Embedded Video
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Image Editing
No
Plugin
No
Yes
SVG Editing
No
Plugin
No
No
MindMap Editing
Optional
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Media Search
Filenames only
Contents
Keywords
No
Extras BookStack XWiki MediaWiki TiddlyWiki
Calendar
No
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Image Galleries
No
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Presentations
No
Plugin
Unknown
Plugin
Forums
No
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Blogs
No
Plugin
Unknown
Yes
Ticket System
No
Plugin
Unknown
Plugin
Chat
No
Plugin
Unknown
Unknown
Syntax Examples BookStack XWiki MediaWiki TiddlyWiki
Internal Link
XWiki supports 16+ input syntaxes (e.g. confluence, twiki, docbook, mediawiki, xwiki, markdown, etc), see http://rendering.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Main/WebHome#HSupportedSyntaxes for details.

The syntax documented below is XWiki Syntax 2.1 (http://platform.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Main/XWikiSyntax).

[[wiki syntax here>>Space.Page]]
[[Space.Page]]
(Space is optional and is the current space if not specified)
[[a link]]
[[a link|with title]]
WikiWord (CamelCase)
[[link]]
[[label|link]]
External Link
[[wiki syntax here>>http://www.xwiki.com]]
http://www.xwiki.com
[http://example.org The title]
http://www.example.com
[[label|http://www.example.com]]
Headlines
= Headline
== Subheadline
=== Sub-subheadline
==== etc..
==Section==
===Subsection===
====Sub-subsection====
! Level 1
!! Level 2
!!! Level 3
!!!! Level 4
!!!!! Level 5
Bold Format
**bold**
'''bold'''
''bold''
Italics Format
//Italics//
''italic''
//italic//
Underline Format
__underline__
<u>underlined</u>
__underline__
Monospace Format
##monospace##
<tt>monospace</tt>
{{{monospaced}}}
Strikethrough Format
--Strike--
<s>strikethrough</s>
--strikethrough--
Superscript Format
^^superscript^^
<sup>superscript</sup>
^^superscript^^
Subscript Format
,,subscript,,
<sub>subscript</sub>
~~subscript~~
Images
image:img.png
image:Space.Page@img.png
[[image:img.png||width="25" height="25"]]
image:http://some/url/img.png

Starting with the xwiki/2.1 syntax, also:
image:icon:cancel
[[Image:wiki.png]]
[img[local.jpg]]
[img[http://foo.bar/foo.jpg]]
Aligning Text
(% style="... css here..." %)Text
<center>Centered</center>
using custom classes, e.g.
{{right{
text
}}}
Text Indentation
Non-semantic text indentation through styling:

(% style="... css here..." %)multi line text

Quotes:

> This is a quoted text
: indented line
:indent

> quote

<<<
blockquote
<<<
Bulleted Lists
* List
** list
*** list
* Item 1
** Item 1.2
* Item 2
* Item 1
** Item 1.1
* Item 2
Numbered Lists
1. Item 1
11. Item 2
111. Item 3
1. Item 4
# Item 1
## Item 1.2
# Item 2
# Item 1
## Item 1.1
# Item 2
Definition Lists
; term
: definition
; term : definition
; term
: description
Horizontal Rule
----
----
----
remove BookStack remove XWiki remove MediaWiki remove TiddlyWiki