MediaWiki vs. BrainKeeper vs. ikiwiki

General Features MediaWiki BrainKeeper ikiwiki
Version
1.45.3
N/A
2.67
Last Release Date
2025-12-04 (6 months ago)
N/A
2008-10-17 (17 years ago)
Last Update here
2026-06-03 (16 days ago)
2008-01-12 (18 years ago)
2008-10-28 (17 years ago)
Author
Magnus Manske, Brion Vibber, Lee Daniel Crocker, Tim Starling, Erik Möller, and others.
BrainKeeper, Inc.
Joey Hess and the ikiwiki community
URL
Free and Open Source
Yes
N/A
Yes
License
GPL
N/A
GPL
Programming Language
PHP
N/A
Perl
Data Storage
Database
N/A
Files, RCS
License Cost/ Fee
0
from $35 for 9 logins, scaled pricing from there
0
Development status
Mature
N/A
Mature
Intended Audience
End Users/Desktop, Education
Enterprise, Corporations, and Business Teams
Anyone
Hosting Features MediaWiki BrainKeeper ikiwiki
Storage Quota
N/A
Unlimited
N/A
Bandwidth Quota
N/A
Unlimited
N/A
Other Limits
N/A
None
N/A
Topic Restrictions
N/A
No Restrictions
N/A
Corporate Branding
N/A
Yes
N/A
Own Domain
N/A
Yes
N/A
Ads allowed
N/A
No
N/A
System Requirements MediaWiki BrainKeeper ikiwiki
Operating System
*nix, Windows, Mac OS X
N/A
Any
Root Access
No
N/A
No
Webserver
Any with PHP support
N/A
Any, or none
Other Requirements
none
N/A
Datastorage MediaWiki BrainKeeper ikiwiki
Text Files
No
N/A
Yes
MySQL
Yes
N/A
No
PostgreSQL
Yes
N/A
No
Oracle
No
N/A
No
SQLite
Yes
N/A
No
BerkeleyDB
No
N/A
No
RCS
No
N/A
Yes
Other
No
N/A
Security/Anti-Spam MediaWiki BrainKeeper ikiwiki
Page Permissions
Yes
Yes
Yes
ACL
No
Yes
Yes
Authentication Backends
Yes
N/A
Built-in, HTTP auth, OpenID; extensible via plugins
Host Blocking
Yes
Unknown
Yes
Mail Encryption
Plugin
Unknown
Yes
nofollow
Optional
Unknown
No
Blacklist
Yes
Unknown
Yes
CAPTCHA
Plugin
Yes
No
Delayed Indexing
No
No
No
Development/Support MediaWiki BrainKeeper ikiwiki
# of Consultants
Preconfigured Hosting
Yes
N/A
No
Code Repository
N/A
Issue Tracker
Mailing List
Support Forum
Chat Channel
Stars on GitHub
N/A
N/A
N/A
Common Features MediaWiki BrainKeeper ikiwiki
Preview
Yes
Yes
Yes
Minor Changes
Yes
Yes
No
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
Plugin
Plugin System
Yes
Yes
Yes
Special Features MediaWiki BrainKeeper ikiwiki
Unicode Support
Yes
Yes
Yes
Right-to-Left Support
Yes
Unknown
Yes
Interface Languages
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
1
English
1
English
Email notification
Optional
Yes
Yes
Comments
Discussion Pages
Flat
Discussion Pages
Categories
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Namespaces
Yes
Yes
Yes
Conflict Handling
Conflict Resolution
Page Locking
Conflict Resolution
Concurrent Editing
No
Unknown
Unknown
Search
Full Text
Full Text
Full Text
Wiki Farming
Plugin
N/A
Yes
Structured Data
Plugin
Unknown
Unknown
Links MediaWiki BrainKeeper ikiwiki
CamelCase
No
No
Plugin
Freelinks
Yes
Yes
Yes
Backlinks
Yes
No
Yes
InterWiki
Yes
Yes
Plugin
SisterWiki
No
No
Plugin
Image Links
Yes
Yes
Yes
Windows Shares
No
Yes
Yes
Page Redirects
Yes
Unknown
Unknown
Syntax Features MediaWiki BrainKeeper ikiwiki
HTML Tags
Some
Some
Optional
Math formulas
Yes
No
Plugin
Tables
simple + complex
simple + complex
simple + complex
CREOLE support
No
Unknown
No
Markdown Support
Plugin
Unknown
Yes
Textile Support
No
Unknown
Plugin
BBCode Support
No
Unknown
No
Emoticon Images
Optional
No
Plugin
Syntax Highlighting
Plugin
Unknown
Plugin
Footnotes
Yes
Yes
No
Quoting
Yes
Yes
Yes
Internal Comments
Yes
Unknown
Yes
Custom styles
Yes
Yes
Yes
FAQ Tags
Unknown
Yes
Yes
Scripting
Optional
safe subset of HTML::Template supported via template plugin
Content Includes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Feed Aggregation
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Usability MediaWiki BrainKeeper ikiwiki
Section Editing
Yes
Yes
No
Page Templates
Yes
No
Yes
Double-Click Edit
Optional
No
No
Toolbar
Yes
Yes
No
WYSIWYG Editing
Plugin
Yes
No
Access Keys
Yes
Yes
No
Auto Signature
Yes
Yes
No
Statistics MediaWiki BrainKeeper ikiwiki
Recent Changes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Wanted Pages
Yes
No
Plugin
Orphaned Pages
Yes
Unknown
Plugin
Most/Least Popular
Yes
Yes
No
Recent Visitors
Plugin
Yes
No
Analysis
Optional
Yes
No
Output MediaWiki BrainKeeper ikiwiki
Printer Friendly
Print CSS
Print CSS
Print CSS
Mobile Friendly
Plugin
Unknown
Yes
Themes & Skins
Yes
Yes
Yes
RSS Feeds
Yes
Yes
Plugin
ATOM Feeds
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Abbreviations
No
No
No
Auto-TOC
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Raw Export
Yes
Yes
Yes
HTML Export
Yes
Yes
Yes
XML export
Yes
Yes
No
PDF Export
Plugin
Yes
No
Office Export
Unknown
Unknown
Unknown
Media and Files MediaWiki BrainKeeper ikiwiki
File Attachments
Yes
Yes
Yes
Media Revisions
Yes
Yes
Yes
Embedded Flash
Unknown
Yes
Optional
Embedded Video
Plugin
Yes
Optional
Image Editing
No
Yes
No
SVG Editing
No
Unknown
No
MindMap Editing
Plugin
No
No
Media Search
Keywords
Contents
Filenames only
Extras MediaWiki BrainKeeper ikiwiki
Calendar
Plugin
Unknown
Plugin
Image Galleries
Yes
Unknown
Plugin
Presentations
Unknown
Unknown
Unknown
Forums
Plugin
Unknown
Unknown
Blogs
Unknown
Unknown
Yes
Ticket System
Unknown
Unknown
Yes
Chat
Unknown
Unknown
Unknown
Syntax Examples MediaWiki BrainKeeper ikiwiki
Internal Link
[[a link]]
[[a link|with title]]
[[internal]]
External Link
[http://example.org The title]
[link text](http://example.org)
Headlines
==Section==
===Subsection===
====Sub-subsection====
Two syntaxes:

# heading 1
## heading 2
### heading 3

heading 1
=========

heading 2
---------
Bold Format
'''bold'''
**bold**
__bold__
Italics Format
''italic''
*emphasized*
_emphasized_
Underline Format
<u>underlined</u>
via HTML: <u>underlined</u>
Monospace Format
<tt>monospace</tt>
`inline monospace`

indented block of
monospaced text

tab-indented
block
Strikethrough Format
<s>strikethrough</s>
via HTML: <del>deleted</del>
Superscript Format
<sup>superscript</sup>
via HTML: x<sup>2</sup>
Subscript Format
<sub>subscript</sub>
via HTML: a<sub>1</sub>
Images
[[Image:wiki.png]]
![alt text](internal/image)
![alt text](http://example.org/external/image)
Aligning Text
<center>Centered</center>
Text Indentation
: indented line
Bulleted Lists
* Item 1
** Item 1.2
* Item 2
* item 1
* item 2
* item 2.1
* item 2.2
Numbered Lists
# Item 1
## Item 1.2
# Item 2
1. item 1
2. item 2
1. item 1.1
42. the value doesn't matter
1. any value works
Definition Lists
; term : definition
via HTML:
<dl>
<dt>term</dt>
<dd>definition</dd>
</dl>
Horizontal Rule
----
---
***
___
------------------
Any number > 3
- - - - - - - - - -
spaces don't matter
remove MediaWiki remove BrainKeeper remove ikiwiki