Foswiki vs. PhpWiki vs. XWiki

General Features Foswiki PhpWiki XWiki
Version
2.1.11
phpwiki-1.3.14
18.4.0
Last Release Date
2026-03-15 (2 months ago)
2007-07-01 (18 years ago)
2026-05-27 (13 days ago)
Last Update here
2026-03-15 (2 months ago)
2009-04-03 (17 years ago)
2026-05-27 (13 days ago)
Author
Foswiki Community
Steve Wainstead, Jeff Dairiki, Reini Urban, Carsten Klapp, Marc-Etienne Vargenau
XWiki Development Team
URL
Free and Open Source
Yes
Yes
Yes
License
GPL
GPL
LGPL + Free hosting on https://myxwiki.org for individuals/non profit
Programming Language
Perl
PHP
Java
Data Storage
Files, RCS
Database, Files, RCS
Database, RCS
License Cost/ Fee
$0
0
0
Development status
Mature
Mature
Mature
Intended Audience
Enterprise, Corporate, Business, Intranets, Personal use, Community building, Educational, Intranet, Extranet
Any
Enterprise, Workgroups, Developers
Hosting Features Foswiki PhpWiki XWiki
Storage Quota
N/A
N/A
Bandwidth Quota
N/A
N/A
Other Limits
N/A
N/A
Topic Restrictions
N/A
N/A
Corporate Branding
N/A
N/A
Yes
Own Domain
N/A
N/A
Yes
Ads allowed
N/A
N/A
No
System Requirements Foswiki PhpWiki XWiki
Operating System
Linux, Windows, OS-X and others
UNIX, Windows, MacOS X, probably others
Any platform supporting Java 17 or greater
Root Access
No
No
No
Webserver
Apache, Lighttpd, Nginx, or any other supporting (F)CGI
Apache, IIS, anything with PHP support
Servlet 5.0+
Other Requirements
RCS (optional), cron/scheduler, fgrep, egrep; Plugins may have additional dependencies
various opt. helpers
Java 17, MySQL/MariaDB/PostgreSQL/HSQLDB/etc (JDBC Driver required)
Datastorage Foswiki PhpWiki XWiki
Text Files
Yes
Yes
No
MySQL
No
Yes
Yes
PostgreSQL
No
Yes
Yes
Oracle
No
Yes
Yes
SQLite
No
Yes
No
BerkeleyDB
No
Yes
No
RCS
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Other
caching of content into database using plugins
gdbm, cvs, MSSQL, ... (ADODB, PearDB)
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 Foswiki PhpWiki XWiki
Page Permissions
Yes
Yes
Yes
ACL
Yes
Yes
Yes
Authentication Backends
Internal authentication; anything Apache supports such as LDAP, NIS, AD, Kerberos
db, session, pop, imap, ldap, file, webserver
XWiki, OpenID Connect, LDAP, custom (Open API), Kerberos, NTLM, Headers, PUMA, SAML, Trusted LDAP, Sun SSO
Host Blocking
Plugin
No
No
Mail Encryption
Yes
No
Yes
nofollow
Yes
Yes
No
Blacklist
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
CAPTCHA
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Delayed Indexing
Plugin
No
Yes
Development/Support Foswiki PhpWiki XWiki
# of Consultants
Preconfigured Hosting
Yes
No
Yes
Code Repository
Issue Tracker
Mailing List
Support Forum
Chat Channel
#phpwiki
Stars on GitHub
118 ⭐
N/A
N/A
Common Features Foswiki PhpWiki XWiki
Preview
Yes
Yes
Yes
Minor Changes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Change Summary
Yes
Yes
Yes
Page History
Yes
Yes
Yes
Page Revisions
Unlimited
Unlimited
Unlimited
Revision Diffs
Between all
Between all
Between all
Sitemap
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin System
Yes
Yes
Yes
Special Features Foswiki PhpWiki XWiki
Unicode Support
Yes
Yes
Yes
Right-to-Left Support
No
No
No
Interface Languages
22
Bulgarian, Czech, Danish, German, Greek, English, Spanish, Finnish, French, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Dutch, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, Swedish, Ukrainian, Chinese, Chinese Traditional
9
German, English, Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese, Dutch, Swedish, 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
Yes
Yes
Yes
Comments
Plugin
Plugin
Threaded
Categories
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Namespaces
Yes
No
Yes
Conflict Handling
Page Locking
Conflict Resolution
Conflict Resolution
Concurrent Editing
No
Unknown
Yes
Search
Full Text
Full Text
Full Text
Wiki Farming
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Structured Data
Yes
Patch
Yes
Links Foswiki PhpWiki XWiki
CamelCase
Yes
Yes
Yes
Freelinks
Yes
Yes
Yes
Backlinks
Yes
Yes
Yes
InterWiki
Plugin
Yes
Yes
SisterWiki
Plugin
No
Yes
Image Links
Yes
Yes
Yes
Windows Shares
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Page Redirects
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Syntax Features Foswiki PhpWiki XWiki
HTML Tags
All
Some
All
Math formulas
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Tables
simple + complex
simple + complex
simple + complex
CREOLE support
Plugin
No
Yes
Markdown Support
Plugin
No
Yes
Textile Support
Plugin
No
No
BBCode Support
Plugin
No
No
Emoticon Images
Plugin
No
Yes
Syntax Highlighting
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Footnotes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Quoting
Yes
Yes
Yes
Internal Comments
Yes
Yes
Yes
Custom styles
Yes
Yes
Yes
FAQ Tags
Yes
No
Plugin
Scripting
JavaScript; Topic Markup Language
plugins, templates, PHP
velocity, groovy, ruby, jython, generic JSR223 & very powerful API
Content Includes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Feed Aggregation
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Usability Foswiki PhpWiki XWiki
Section Editing
Plugin
No
Yes
Page Templates
Yes
Yes
Yes
Double-Click Edit
Plugin
Optional
No
Toolbar
Plugin
Yes
Yes
WYSIWYG Editing
Plugin
Patch
Yes
Access Keys
Yes
Yes
Yes
Auto Signature
Yes
Yes
No
Statistics Foswiki PhpWiki XWiki
Recent Changes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Wanted Pages
No
Yes
Yes
Orphaned Pages
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Most/Least Popular
Yes
Yes
Yes
Recent Visitors
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Analysis
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Output Foswiki PhpWiki XWiki
Printer Friendly
Print View
Print CSS
Print CSS
Mobile Friendly
Yes
No
Yes
Themes & Skins
Yes
Yes
Yes
RSS Feeds
Yes
Yes
Yes
ATOM Feeds
Yes
No
Optional
Abbreviations
Plugin
No
Plugin
Auto-TOC
Yes
Yes
Optional
Raw Export
Yes
Yes
Yes
HTML Export
Yes
Yes
Yes
XML export
Plugin
No
Yes
PDF Export
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Office Export
Plugin
Unknown
Yes
Media and Files Foswiki PhpWiki XWiki
File Attachments
Yes
Yes
Yes
Media Revisions
Yes
Yes
Yes
Embedded Flash
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Embedded Video
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Image Editing
Plugin
No
Plugin
SVG Editing
Plugin
No
Plugin
MindMap Editing
Plugin
No
Plugin
Media Search
Contents
No
Contents
Extras Foswiki PhpWiki XWiki
Calendar
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Image Galleries
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Presentations
Plugin
Unknown
Plugin
Forums
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Blogs
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Ticket System
Plugin
No
Plugin
Chat
No
Unknown
Plugin
Syntax Examples Foswiki PhpWiki XWiki
Internal Link
WikiWord autolink
Otherweb.WikiWord
[[Spaced text]]
[[WikiWord][label]]
WikiWord or [somelink]
[ desc | pagename ]
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
External Link
http://foswiki.org/ autolink
[[http://foswiki.org/][label]]
http://someserver/someurl
[ desc | exturl ]
[[wiki syntax here>>http://www.xwiki.com]]
http://www.xwiki.com
Headlines
---+ Level 1
---++ Level 2
---+++ Level 3
---++++ Level 4
---+++++ Level 5
---++++++ Level 6
!!!Headline1
!!Headline2
!Headline3
= Headline
== Subheadline
=== Sub-subheadline
==== etc..
Bold Format
*bold*
*bold* or
<strong>bold</strong>
**bold**
Italics Format
_italic_
_italics_ or 
or
<em>italics</em>
//Italics//
Underline Format
<u>underline</u>
<u>underlined</u>
__underline__
Monospace Format
=monospaced text= and
<verbatim>
multi line text
</verbatim>
<tt>monospace</tt>
<code>code</code>
<pre>preformatted</pre>
<verbatim>
unparsed text</verbatim>


##monospace##
Strikethrough Format
<strike>strikethrough</strike>
<strike>striked through</strike>
--Strike--
Superscript Format
<sup>superscript</sup>
<sup>above</sup>
^^superscript^^
Subscript Format
<sub>subscript</sub>
<sub>below</sub>
,,subscript,,
Images
%ATTACHURL%/image.png
http://any.domain/image.png
%IMAGE{"image.png"}%
[ http://foo.org/1.jpg size=30%] 
external image
[Upload:view.jpg align=right size=50x40] 
view uploaded image
[Upload:view.jpg | http://server/external-linkjpg ] 
view and link to another image
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
| left |   center   |   right |
or HTML
or CSS
<?plugin RawHtml <span align="right"> ?>right<?plugin RawHtml </span> ?>
or <div align="right"> right </div>

(% style="... css here..." %)Text
Text Indentation
<blockquote>
multi line text
</blockquote>
;: left indent
;;: more left indent

or 
paragraph
and another level 
Non-semantic text indentation through styling:

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

Quotes:

> This is a quoted text
Bulleted Lists
* Item 1
* Item 1.1
* Item 2
* list
or
- list
* List
** list
*** list
Numbered Lists
1. Item 1
a. Item 1.a
1. Item 2
# list
1. Item 1
11. Item 2
111. Item 3
1. Item 4
Definition Lists
$ Term: Definition
Term:<def>
def
; term
: definition
Horizontal Rule
---
----
----
remove Foswiki remove PhpWiki remove XWiki