Foswiki vs. TiddlyWiki vs. XWiki

General Features Foswiki TiddlyWiki XWiki
Version
2.1.11
5.1.21
18.2.1
Last Release Date
2026-03-15 (1 month ago)
2019-07-25 (6 years ago)
2026-04-09 (6 days ago)
Last Update here
2026-03-15 (1 month ago)
2019-11-20 (6 years ago)
2026-04-09 (6 days ago)
Author
Foswiki Community
Jeremy Ruston, TiddlyWiki community
XWiki Development Team
URL
Free and Open Source
Yes
Yes
Yes
License
GPL
BSD
LGPL + Free hosting on https://myxwiki.org for individuals/non profit
Programming Language
Perl
HTML, JavaScript
Java
Data Storage
Files, RCS
Files
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
Individuals, private, small groups
Enterprise, Workgroups, Developers
Hosting Features Foswiki TiddlyWiki 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 TiddlyWiki XWiki
Operating System
Linux, Windows, OS-X and others
Any
Any platform supporting Java 17 or greater
Root Access
No
No
No
Webserver
Apache, Lighttpd, Nginx, or any other supporting (F)CGI
Not required (optional backends available)
Servlet 5.0+
Other Requirements
RCS (optional), cron/scheduler, fgrep, egrep; Plugins may have additional dependencies
A common browser
Java 17, MySQL/MariaDB/PostgreSQL/HSQLDB/etc (JDBC Driver required)
Datastorage Foswiki TiddlyWiki XWiki
Text Files
Yes
Optional
No
MySQL
No
No
Yes
PostgreSQL
No
No
Yes
Oracle
No
No
Yes
SQLite
No
No
No
BerkeleyDB
No
No
No
RCS
Yes
No
Plugin
Other
caching of content into database using plugins
Data self contained in html file OR as individual data files
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 TiddlyWiki XWiki
Page Permissions
Yes
Yes
Yes
ACL
Yes
No
Yes
Authentication Backends
Internal authentication; anything Apache supports such as LDAP, NIS, AD, Kerberos
optional extensions available
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
Unknown
No
Blacklist
Plugin
No
Plugin
CAPTCHA
Plugin
No
Yes
Delayed Indexing
Plugin
Unknown
Yes
Development/Support Foswiki TiddlyWiki XWiki
# of Consultants
Preconfigured Hosting
Yes
Yes
Yes
Code Repository
Issue Tracker
Mailing List
Support Forum
Chat Channel
Stars on GitHub
118 ⭐
8581 ⭐
N/A
Common Features Foswiki TiddlyWiki XWiki
Preview
Yes
Yes
Yes
Minor Changes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Change Summary
Yes
Unknown
Yes
Page History
Yes
Plugin
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 TiddlyWiki XWiki
Unicode Support
Yes
Yes
Yes
Right-to-Left Support
No
Yes
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
4
German, English, French, Japanese
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
Unknown
Yes
Comments
Plugin
Plugin
Threaded
Categories
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Namespaces
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Conflict Handling
Page Locking
None
Conflict Resolution
Concurrent Editing
No
Unknown
Yes
Search
Full Text
Full Text
Full Text
Wiki Farming
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Structured Data
Yes
Yes
Yes
Links Foswiki TiddlyWiki XWiki
CamelCase
Yes
Yes
Yes
Freelinks
Yes
Yes
Yes
Backlinks
Yes
Yes
Yes
InterWiki
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
SisterWiki
Plugin
No
Yes
Image Links
Yes
Yes
Yes
Windows Shares
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Page Redirects
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Syntax Features Foswiki TiddlyWiki XWiki
HTML Tags
All
Optional
All
Math formulas
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Tables
simple + complex
complex
simple + complex
CREOLE support
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Markdown Support
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Textile Support
Plugin
No
No
BBCode Support
Plugin
No
No
Emoticon Images
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Syntax Highlighting
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Footnotes
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Quoting
Yes
Yes
Yes
Internal Comments
Yes
Yes
Yes
Custom styles
Yes
Yes
Yes
FAQ Tags
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
Scripting
JavaScript; Topic Markup Language
JavaScript
velocity, groovy, ruby, jython, generic JSR223 & very powerful API
Content Includes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Feed Aggregation
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Usability Foswiki TiddlyWiki XWiki
Section Editing
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Page Templates
Yes
Yes
Yes
Double-Click Edit
Plugin
Plugin
No
Toolbar
Plugin
Yes
Yes
WYSIWYG Editing
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Access Keys
Yes
Yes
Yes
Auto Signature
Yes
Plugin
No
Statistics Foswiki TiddlyWiki XWiki
Recent Changes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Wanted Pages
No
Yes
Yes
Orphaned Pages
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Most/Least Popular
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Recent Visitors
Plugin
No
Yes
Analysis
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Output Foswiki TiddlyWiki XWiki
Printer Friendly
Print View
Print CSS
Print CSS
Mobile Friendly
Yes
Yes
Yes
Themes & Skins
Yes
Yes
Yes
RSS Feeds
Yes
Plugin
Yes
ATOM Feeds
Yes
Plugin
Optional
Abbreviations
Plugin
Unknown
Plugin
Auto-TOC
Yes
Yes
Optional
Raw Export
Yes
Yes
Yes
HTML Export
Yes
Yes
Yes
XML export
Plugin
Unknown
Yes
PDF Export
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Office Export
Plugin
Unknown
Yes
Media and Files Foswiki TiddlyWiki XWiki
File Attachments
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Media Revisions
Yes
No
Yes
Embedded Flash
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Embedded Video
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Image Editing
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
SVG Editing
Plugin
No
Plugin
MindMap Editing
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Media Search
Contents
No
Contents
Extras Foswiki TiddlyWiki XWiki
Calendar
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Image Galleries
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Presentations
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Forums
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Blogs
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Ticket System
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Chat
No
Unknown
Plugin
Syntax Examples Foswiki TiddlyWiki XWiki
Internal Link
WikiWord autolink
Otherweb.WikiWord
[[Spaced text]]
[[WikiWord][label]]
WikiWord (CamelCase)
[[link]]
[[label|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)
External Link
External Link
http://foswiki.org/ autolink
[[http://foswiki.org/][label]]
http://www.example.com
[[label|http://www.example.com]]
[[wiki syntax here>>http://www.xwiki.com]]
http://www.xwiki.com
Headlines
---+ Level 1
---++ Level 2
---+++ Level 3
---++++ Level 4
---+++++ Level 5
---++++++ Level 6
! Level 1
!! Level 2
!!! Level 3
!!!! Level 4
!!!!! Level 5
= Headline
== Subheadline
=== Sub-subheadline
==== etc..
Bold Format
*bold*
''bold''
**bold**
Italics Format
_italic_
//italic//
//Italics//
Underline Format
<u>underline</u>
__underline__
__underline__
Monospace Format
=monospaced text= and
<verbatim>
multi line text
</verbatim>
{{{monospaced}}}
##monospace##
Strikethrough Format
<strike>strikethrough</strike>
--strikethrough--
--Strike--
Superscript Format
<sup>superscript</sup>
^^superscript^^
^^superscript^^
Subscript Format
<sub>subscript</sub>
~~subscript~~
,,subscript,,
Images
%ATTACHURL%/image.png
http://any.domain/image.png
%IMAGE{"image.png"}%
[img[local.jpg]]
[img[http://foo.bar/foo.jpg]]
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
using custom classes, e.g.
{{right{
text
}}}
(% style="... css here..." %)Text
Text Indentation
<blockquote>
multi line text
</blockquote>
:indent

> quote

<<<
blockquote
<<<
Non-semantic text indentation through styling:

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

Quotes:

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