CanvasWiki vs. MediaWiki vs. TWiki vs. XWiki

General Features CanvasWiki MediaWiki TWiki XWiki
Version
1.2.101
1.32.2
TWiki-6.1.0
18.2.0
Last Release Date
2006-06-15 (19 years ago)
2019-06-06 (6 years ago)
2018-07-16 (7 years ago)
2026-03-30 (6 days ago)
Last Update here
2008-09-01 (17 years ago)
2019-06-21 (6 years ago)
2019-07-19 (6 years ago)
2026-03-31 (5 days ago)
Author
Raymond Camden
Magnus Manske, Brion Vibber, Lee Daniel Crocker, Tim Starling, Erik Möller, and others.
Peter Thoeny, TWiki community
XWiki Development Team
URL
Free and Open Source
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
License
Apache
GPL
GPL
LGPL + Free hosting on https://myxwiki.org for individuals/non profit
Programming Language
ColdFusion
PHP
Perl, JavaScript
Java
Data Storage
Database
Database
Files, RCS
Database, RCS
License Cost/ Fee
0
0
N/A
0
Development status
Mature
Mature
Mature
Mature
Intended Audience
Mildly technical
End Users/Desktop, Education
Large enterprise; small to medium businesses
Enterprise, Workgroups, Developers
Hosting Features CanvasWiki MediaWiki TWiki XWiki
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
N/A
N/A
Yes
Own Domain
N/A
N/A
N/A
Yes
Ads allowed
N/A
N/A
N/A
No
System Requirements CanvasWiki MediaWiki TWiki XWiki
Operating System
Windows, Linux, Solaris
*nix, Windows, Mac OS X
Linux, Windows, OS-X and other
Any platform supporting Java 17 or greater
Root Access
No
No
No
No
Webserver
Apache, IIS
Any with PHP support
Almost any webserver, typically Apache and Ngnix
Servlet 5.0+
Other Requirements
ColdFusion MX
none
RCS (optional), cron/scheduler, fgrep, egrep; Plugins may have additional dependencies
Java 17, MySQL/MariaDB/PostgreSQL/HSQLDB/etc (JDBC Driver required)
Datastorage CanvasWiki MediaWiki TWiki XWiki
Text Files
Unknown
No
Yes
No
MySQL
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
PostgreSQL
Unknown
Yes
No
Yes
Oracle
Unknown
Yes
No
Yes
SQLite
Unknown
Yes
No
No
BerkeleyDB
Unknown
No
No
No
RCS
Unknown
No
Yes
Plugin
Other
Access, SQL Server
No
RcsLite Perl library for version control without external RCS; backend API for other storage
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
Security/Anti-Spam CanvasWiki MediaWiki TWiki XWiki
Page Permissions
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
ACL
No
No
Yes
Yes
Authentication Backends
Yes
Internal authentication; anything Apache supports such as LDAP, NIS, AD, Kerberos
XWiki, OpenID Connect, LDAP, custom (Open API), Kerberos, NTLM, Headers, PUMA, SAML, Trusted LDAP, Sun SSO
Host Blocking
Unknown
Yes
Plugin
No
Mail Encryption
Unknown
Plugin
Yes
Yes
nofollow
Unknown
Optional
Plugin
No
Blacklist
Unknown
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
CAPTCHA
Unknown
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Delayed Indexing
Unknown
No
Plugin
Yes
Development/Support CanvasWiki MediaWiki TWiki XWiki
# of Consultants
Preconfigured Hosting
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
Code Repository
Issue Tracker
Mailing List
Support Forum
Chat Channel
Stars on GitHub
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
Common Features CanvasWiki MediaWiki TWiki XWiki
Preview
Unknown
Yes
Yes
Yes
Minor Changes
Unknown
Yes
Yes
Yes
Change Summary
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Page History
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Page Revisions
Unlimited
Unlimited
Unlimited
Revision Diffs
Between all
Between all
Between all
Sitemap
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin System
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
Special Features CanvasWiki MediaWiki TWiki XWiki
Unicode Support
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
Right-to-Left Support
Unknown
Yes
No
No
Interface Languages
0
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
19
Bulgarian, Czech, Danish, German, English, Spanish, Finnish, French, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Dutch, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Swedish, Ukrainian, 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
Email notification
Unknown
Optional
Yes
Yes
Comments
Discussion Pages
Threaded
Threaded
Categories
Unknown
Yes
Yes
Yes
Namespaces
Unknown
Yes
Yes
Yes
Conflict Handling
Conflict Resolution
Conflict Resolution
Conflict Resolution
Concurrent Editing
Unknown
Unknown
Unknown
Yes
Search
Full Text
Full Text
Full Text
Wiki Farming
Unknown
Plugin
Optional
Yes
Structured Data
Unknown
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Links CanvasWiki MediaWiki TWiki XWiki
CamelCase
Yes
No
Yes
Yes
Freelinks
Unknown
Yes
Yes
Yes
Backlinks
Unknown
Yes
Yes
Yes
InterWiki
Unknown
Yes
Yes
Yes
SisterWiki
Unknown
No
Plugin
Yes
Image Links
Unknown
Yes
Yes
Yes
Windows Shares
Unknown
No
Plugin
Yes
Page Redirects
Unknown
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Syntax Features CanvasWiki MediaWiki TWiki XWiki
HTML Tags
Some
All
All
Math formulas
Unknown
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Tables
simple + complex
simple + complex
simple + complex
CREOLE support
Unknown
No
No
Yes
Markdown Support
Unknown
No
No
Yes
Textile Support
Unknown
No
Plugin
No
BBCode Support
Unknown
No
No
No
Emoticon Images
Unknown
Optional
Yes
Yes
Syntax Highlighting
Unknown
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Footnotes
Unknown
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Quoting
Unknown
No
Yes
Yes
Internal Comments
Unknown
Yes
Yes
Yes
Custom styles
Unknown
Yes
Yes
Yes
FAQ Tags
Unknown
No
Yes
Plugin
Scripting
Optional
TWiki Markup Language, TWiki variables, JavaScript, extensive API
velocity, groovy, ruby, jython, generic JSR223 & very powerful API
Content Includes
Unknown
Yes
Yes
Yes
Feed Aggregation
Unknown
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Usability CanvasWiki MediaWiki TWiki XWiki
Section Editing
Unknown
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Page Templates
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
Double-Click Edit
Unknown
Optional
Plugin
No
Toolbar
Unknown
Yes
Plugin
Yes
WYSIWYG Editing
Unknown
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Access Keys
Unknown
Yes
Yes
Yes
Auto Signature
Unknown
Yes
Yes
No
Statistics CanvasWiki MediaWiki TWiki XWiki
Recent Changes
Unknown
Yes
Yes
Yes
Wanted Pages
Unknown
Yes
No
Yes
Orphaned Pages
Unknown
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Most/Least Popular
Unknown
Yes
Yes
Yes
Recent Visitors
Unknown
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Analysis
Unknown
Optional
Yes
Yes
Output CanvasWiki MediaWiki TWiki XWiki
Printer Friendly
Print CSS
Print View
Print CSS
Mobile Friendly
Unknown
No
Plugin
Yes
Themes & Skins
Unknown
Yes
Yes
Yes
RSS Feeds
Unknown
Yes
Yes
Yes
ATOM Feeds
Unknown
Yes
Yes
Optional
Abbreviations
Unknown
No
Plugin
Plugin
Auto-TOC
Unknown
Yes
Yes
Optional
Raw Export
Unknown
Yes
Yes
Yes
HTML Export
Unknown
Yes
Yes
Yes
XML export
Unknown
Yes
Plugin
Yes
PDF Export
Unknown
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Office Export
Unknown
Unknown
Unknown
Yes
Media and Files CanvasWiki MediaWiki TWiki XWiki
File Attachments
Unknown
Yes
Yes
Yes
Media Revisions
Unknown
Yes
Yes
Yes
Embedded Flash
Unknown
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Embedded Video
Unknown
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Image Editing
Unknown
No
Plugin
Plugin
SVG Editing
Unknown
No
Plugin
Plugin
MindMap Editing
Unknown
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Media Search
Keywords
Contents
Contents
Extras CanvasWiki MediaWiki TWiki XWiki
Calendar
Unknown
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Image Galleries
Unknown
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Presentations
Unknown
Unknown
Unknown
Plugin
Forums
Unknown
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Blogs
Unknown
No
Plugin
Plugin
Ticket System
Unknown
No
Plugin
Plugin
Chat
Unknown
Unknown
Unknown
Plugin
Syntax Examples CanvasWiki MediaWiki TWiki XWiki
Internal Link
[[a link]]
[[a link|with title]]
WikiWord autolink
Otherweb.WikiWord
[[Spaced text]]
[[WikiWord][label]]
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)
External Link
[http://example.org The title]
http://twiki.org/ autolink
[[http://twiki.org/][label]]
[[wiki syntax here>>http://www.xwiki.com]]
http://www.xwiki.com
Headlines
==Section==
===Subsection===
====Sub-subsection====
---+ Level 1
---++ Level 2
---+++ Level 3
---++++ Level 4
---+++++ Level 5
---++++++ Level 6
= Headline
== Subheadline
=== Sub-subheadline
==== etc..
Bold Format
'''bold'''
*bold*
**bold**
Italics Format
''italic''
_italic_
//Italics//
Underline Format
<u>underlined</u>
<u>underline</u>
__underline__
Monospace Format
<tt>monospace</tt>
=monospaced text= and
<verbatim>
multi line text
</verbatim>
##monospace##
Strikethrough Format
<s>strikethrough</s>
<strike>strikethrough</strike>
--Strike--
Superscript Format
<sup>superscript</sup>
<sup>superscript</sup>
^^superscript^^
Subscript Format
<sub>subscript</sub>
<sub>subscript</sub>
,,subscript,,
Images
[[Image:wiki.png]]
%ATTACHURL%/image.png
http://any.domain/image.png
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
Aligning Text
<center>Centered</center>
| left |   center   |   right |
or HTML
or CSS
(% style="... css here..." %)Text
Text Indentation
: indented line
<blockquote>
multi line text
</blockquote>
Non-semantic text indentation through styling:

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

Quotes:

> This is a quoted text
Bulleted Lists
* Item 1
** Item 1.2
* Item 2
* Item 1
* Item 1.1
* Item 2
* List
** list
*** list
Numbered Lists
# Item 1
## Item 1.2
# Item 2
1. Item 1
a. Item 1.a
1. Item 2
1. Item 1
11. Item 2
111. Item 3
1. Item 4
Definition Lists
; term : definition
$ Term: Definition
; term
: definition
Horizontal Rule
----
---
----
remove CanvasWiki remove MediaWiki remove TWiki remove XWiki