MoinMoin vs. Foswiki vs. PmWiki

General Features MoinMoin Foswiki PmWiki
Version
1.9.11
2.1.11
2.7.4
Last Release Date
2020-11-08 (5 years ago)
2026-03-15 (4 months ago)
2026-07-31 (14 days ago)
Last Update here
2020-11-08 (5 years ago)
2026-03-15 (4 months ago)
2026-07-31 (14 days ago)
Author
https://moinmo.in/MoinCoreTeamGroup
Foswiki Community
Petko Yotov (Original author: Patrick R. Michaud)
URL
Free and Open Source
Yes
Yes
Yes
License
GPL
GPL
GPL2+
Programming Language
Python
Perl
PHP
Data Storage
Files
Files, RCS
Files
License Cost/ Fee
0
$0
0
Development status
Mature
Mature
Mature
Intended Audience
Everybody with <<100.000 pages. :)
Enterprise, Corporate, Business, Intranets, Personal use, Community building, Educational, Intranet, Extranet
All
System Requirements MoinMoin Foswiki PmWiki
Operating System
UNIX, Windows, MacOS X, probably any platform with Python 2.3+
Linux, Windows, OS-X and others
Linux, UNIX, Windows, MacOS X, probably others
Root Access
No
No
No
Webserver
Standalone, WSGI (e.g. Apache+mod_wsgi) - others like CGI, FastCGI, SCGI, AJP, ... via middlewares
Apache, Lighttpd, Nginx, or any other supporting (F)CGI
Apache, IIS, anything with PHP support. Can also be run with PHP's built-in webserver.
Other Requirements
None
RCS (optional), cron/scheduler, fgrep, egrep; Plugins may have additional dependencies
none
Datastorage MoinMoin Foswiki PmWiki
Text Files
Yes
Yes
Yes
MySQL
No
No
Plugin
PostgreSQL
No
No
No
Oracle
No
No
No
SQLite
No
No
Plugin
BerkeleyDB
No
No
No
RCS
No
Yes
Plugin
Other
No
caching of content into database using plugins
Compressed, XML and/or ephemeral files (modules). Can provide custom data backends.
Security/Anti-Spam MoinMoin Foswiki PmWiki
Page Permissions
Yes
Yes
Yes
ACL
Yes
Yes
Yes
Authentication Backends
modular, scriptable. OpenID, ldap/AD, http, cookie, ssl client cert, interwiki, others possible
Internal authentication; anything Apache supports such as LDAP, NIS, AD, Kerberos
Internal: per page, per group, per user, per user group. External: .htpasswd, LDAP, Active Directory. Plugins: Mailman, forums w/MySQL, oAuth, custom possible.
Host Blocking
Yes
Plugin
Optional
Mail Encryption
Optional
Yes
Optional
nofollow
No
Yes
Yes
Blacklist
Yes
Plugin
Optional
CAPTCHA
Optional
Plugin
Plugin
Delayed Indexing
No
Plugin
Optional
Development/Support MoinMoin Foswiki PmWiki
# of Consultants
Preconfigured Hosting
Yes
Yes
Yes
Code Repository
Issue Tracker
Mailing List
Support Forum
Chat Channel
Stars on GitHub
N/A
118 ⭐
N/A
Common Features MoinMoin Foswiki PmWiki
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 MoinMoin Foswiki PmWiki
Unicode Support
Yes
Yes
Yes
Right-to-Left Support
Yes
No
Optional
Interface Languages
1
English
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
38
Arabic, Bulgarian, Breton, Catalan, Czech, Danish, German, Greek, English, Esperanto, Spanish, Persian, Finnish, French, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Lithuanian, Latvian, Lettish, Macedonian, Dutch, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Slovenian, Albanian, Swedish, Tamil, Turkish, Ukrainian, Vietnamese, Chinese, Chinese Traditional
Email notification
Yes
Yes
Optional
Comments
Discussion Pages
Plugin
Discussion Pages
Categories
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Namespaces
No
Yes
Yes
Conflict Handling
Conflict Resolution
Page Locking
Conflict Resolution
Concurrent Editing
No
No
Yes
Search
Full Text
Full Text
Full Text
Wiki Farming
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Structured Data
No
Yes
Yes
Links MoinMoin Foswiki PmWiki
CamelCase
Yes
Yes
Optional
Freelinks
Yes
Yes
Yes
Backlinks
Yes
Yes
Yes
InterWiki
Yes
Plugin
Yes
SisterWiki
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
Image Links
Yes
Yes
Yes
Windows Shares
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Page Redirects
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Syntax Features MoinMoin Foswiki PmWiki
HTML Tags
Some
All
Plugin
Math formulas
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Tables
complex
simple + complex
simple + complex
CREOLE support
Yes
Plugin
Optional
Markdown Support
No
Plugin
Plugin
Textile Support
No
Plugin
No
BBCode Support
No
Plugin
Plugin
Emoticon Images
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
Syntax Highlighting
Yes
Plugin
Optional
Footnotes
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
Quoting
No
Yes
Plugin
Internal Comments
Yes
Yes
Yes
Custom styles
Yes
Yes
Yes
FAQ Tags
No
Yes
Yes
Scripting
plugins, see comment ---------------->
JavaScript; Topic Markup Language
MarkupExpressions (core, many add-ons). PageLists with templates (core structured data scripting). WikiSh (plugin), Data forms (optional)
Content Includes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Feed Aggregation
No
Plugin
Plugin
Usability MoinMoin Foswiki PmWiki
Section Editing
No
Plugin
Plugin
Page Templates
Yes
Yes
Yes
Double-Click Edit
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
Toolbar
Yes
Plugin
Optional
WYSIWYG Editing
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
Access Keys
Optional
Yes
Yes
Auto Signature
Yes
Yes
Yes
Statistics MoinMoin Foswiki PmWiki
Recent Changes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Wanted Pages
Yes
No
Optional
Orphaned Pages
Yes
Plugin
Optional
Most/Least Popular
Yes
Yes
No
Recent Visitors
No
Plugin
Plugin
Analysis
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Output MoinMoin Foswiki PmWiki
Printer Friendly
Print CSS
Print View
Print View
Mobile Friendly
Yes
Yes
Yes
Themes & Skins
Yes
Yes
Yes
RSS Feeds
Yes
Yes
Optional
ATOM Feeds
No
Yes
Optional
Abbreviations
No
Plugin
Plugin
Auto-TOC
Yes
Yes
Optional
Raw Export
Yes
Yes
Yes
HTML Export
Yes
Yes
Plugin
XML export
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
PDF Export
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Office Export
No
Plugin
Plugin
Media and Files MoinMoin Foswiki PmWiki
File Attachments
Yes
Yes
Optional
Media Revisions
No
Yes
Optional
Embedded Flash
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
Embedded Video
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
Image Editing
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
SVG Editing
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
MindMap Editing
No
Plugin
Plugin
Media Search
Contents
Contents
Filenames only
Extras MoinMoin Foswiki PmWiki
Calendar
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
Image Galleries
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Presentations
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
Forums
No
Plugin
Plugin
Blogs
No
Plugin
Plugin
Ticket System
No
Plugin
Plugin
Chat
No
No
No
Syntax Examples MoinMoin Foswiki PmWiki
Internal Link
CamelCaseLink or [[free link]]

[[target|label|params]]
WikiWord autolink
Otherweb.WikiWord
[[Spaced text]]
[[WikiWord][label]]
[[page name]]
[[page name | link text]]
[[link text -> page name]]
[[#anchor]]
[[#anchor|link to anchor]]
[[page name #anchor]]
External Link
http://google.de/ or
[[http://google.de/ | Google]] or
file://///server/share/file
External Link
http://foswiki.org/ autolink
[[http://foswiki.org/][label]]
http://....
[[http://... | link text]]
[[link text -> http://...]]
Headlines
= Level 1 =
== Level 2 ==
=== Level 3 ===
==== Level 4 ====
===== Level 5 =====
---+ Level 1
---++ Level 2
---+++ Level 3
---++++ Level 4
---+++++ Level 5
---++++++ Level 6
! Level 1
!!#anchor Level 2
!!! Level 3
Bold Format
'''bold'''
'''strong emphasised'''
*bold*
'''bold'''
Italics Format
''italic''
''emphasised''
_italic_
''italic''
Underline Format
__underline__
<u>underline</u>
{+underlined+}
Monospace Format
`monospaced`
=monospaced text= and
<verbatim>
multi line text
</verbatim>
@@monospace@@
Strikethrough Format
--(strikethrough)--
<strike>strikethrough</strike>
{-strikethrough-}
Superscript Format
^superscript^
<sup>superscript</sup>
'^superscript^'
Subscript Format
,,subscript,,
<sub>subscript</sub>
'_subscript_'
Images
{{http://foo.bar/foo.jpg}}
{{attachment:foo.jpg | alt text}}
{{target|alt|params}}
%ATTACHURL%/image.png
http://any.domain/image.png
%IMAGE{"image.png"}%
https://foo.bar/foo.jpg
Attach:foo.jpg
Attach:foo.jpg"alt/title text" | Caption
Aligning Text
only in tables:
||<(> left ||<:> middle ||<)> right ||
| left |   center   |   right |
or HTML
or CSS
%center% centered text
%right% right aligned
%lfloat% left floating text
%rfloat% right floating text
%rframe% right floating frame
%lframe% left floating frame
Text Indentation
indented text
<blockquote>
multi line text
</blockquote>
-> indented text
--> more indentation
-< hanging text
--< more indentation
Bulleted Lists
* Item 1
* Item 1.1
* Item 2
* Item 1
* Item 1.1
* Item 2
* Item 1
** Item 1.1
* Item 2
alternatively, indented:
* item 1
* item 1.1
* item 2
Numbered Lists
1. Item 1
a. Item 1.a
1. Item 2
1. Item 1
a. Item 1.a
1. Item 2
# Item 1
## Item 1.1
# Item 2
alternatively, indented:
# Item 1
# Item 1.1
# Item 2
Definition Lists
term:: definition
$ Term: Definition
: term : definition
Horizontal Rule
----
-----
------
---
----
remove MoinMoin remove Foswiki remove PmWiki