PBwiki vs. MediaWiki vs. Foswiki vs. XWiki

General Features PBwiki MediaWiki Foswiki XWiki
Version
N/A
1.45.3
2.1.11
18.6.0
Last Release Date
N/A
2025-12-04 (8 months ago)
2026-03-15 (4 months ago)
2026-07-27 (15 days ago)
Last Update here
2010-08-16 (15 years ago)
2026-06-03 (2 months ago)
2026-03-15 (4 months ago)
2026-07-28 (14 days ago)
Author
PBworks
Magnus Manske, Brion Vibber, Lee Daniel Crocker, Tim Starling, Erik Möller, and others.
Foswiki Community
XWiki Development Team
URL
Free and Open Source
N/A
Yes
Yes
Yes
License
N/A
GPL
GPL
LGPL + Free hosting on https://myxwiki.org for individuals/non profit
Programming Language
N/A
PHP
Perl
Java
Data Storage
N/A
Database
Files, RCS
Database, RCS
License Cost/ Fee
Determined by Solution Needs
0
$0
0
Development status
N/A
Mature
Mature
Mature
Intended Audience
Business Enterprises
End Users/Desktop, Education
Enterprise, Corporate, Business, Intranets, Personal use, Community building, Educational, Intranet, Extranet
Enterprise, Workgroups, Developers
Hosting Features PBwiki MediaWiki Foswiki XWiki
Storage Quota
No limit
N/A
N/A
Bandwidth Quota
No limit
N/A
N/A
Other Limits
None
N/A
N/A
Topic Restrictions
None
N/A
N/A
Corporate Branding
Yes
N/A
N/A
Yes
Own Domain
Yes
N/A
N/A
Yes
Ads allowed
Yes
N/A
N/A
No
System Requirements PBwiki MediaWiki Foswiki XWiki
Operating System
N/A
*nix, Windows, Mac OS X
Linux, Windows, OS-X and others
Any platform supporting Java 21 or greater
Root Access
N/A
No
No
No
Webserver
N/A
Any with PHP support
Apache, Lighttpd, Nginx, or any other supporting (F)CGI
Servlet 5.0+
Other Requirements
N/A
none
RCS (optional), cron/scheduler, fgrep, egrep; Plugins may have additional dependencies
Java 21, MySQL/MariaDB/PostgreSQL/HSQLDB/etc (JDBC Driver required)
Datastorage PBwiki MediaWiki Foswiki XWiki
Text Files
N/A
No
Yes
No
MySQL
N/A
Yes
No
Yes
PostgreSQL
N/A
Yes
No
Yes
Oracle
N/A
No
No
Yes
SQLite
N/A
Yes
No
No
BerkeleyDB
N/A
No
No
No
RCS
N/A
No
Yes
Plugin
Other
N/A
No
caching of content into database using plugins
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 PBwiki MediaWiki Foswiki XWiki
Page Permissions
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
ACL
Yes
No
Yes
Yes
Authentication Backends
N/A
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
Optional
Yes
Plugin
No
Mail Encryption
No
Plugin
Yes
Yes
nofollow
No
Optional
Yes
No
Blacklist
Optional
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
CAPTCHA
No
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Delayed Indexing
No
No
Plugin
Yes
Development/Support PBwiki MediaWiki Foswiki XWiki
# of Consultants
Preconfigured Hosting
N/A
Yes
Yes
Yes
Code Repository
N/A
Issue Tracker
Mailing List
Support Forum
Chat Channel
Stars on GitHub
N/A
N/A
118 ⭐
N/A
Common Features PBwiki MediaWiki Foswiki XWiki
Preview
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Minor Changes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Change Summary
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Page History
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Page Revisions
Unlimited
Unlimited
Unlimited
Unlimited
Revision Diffs
Between all
Between all
Between all
Between all
Sitemap
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin System
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Special Features PBwiki MediaWiki Foswiki XWiki
Unicode Support
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Right-to-Left Support
Yes
Yes
No
No
Interface Languages
1
English
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
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
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
Optional
Yes
Yes
Comments
Threaded
Discussion Pages
Plugin
Threaded
Categories
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Namespaces
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Conflict Handling
Page Locking
Conflict Resolution
Page Locking
Conflict Resolution
Concurrent Editing
Unknown
No
No
Yes
Search
Full Text
Full Text
Full Text
Full Text
Wiki Farming
N/A
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Structured Data
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Links PBwiki MediaWiki Foswiki XWiki
CamelCase
Yes
No
Yes
Yes
Freelinks
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Backlinks
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
InterWiki
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
SisterWiki
Yes
No
Plugin
Yes
Image Links
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Windows Shares
Optional
No
Plugin
Yes
Page Redirects
Unknown
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Syntax Features PBwiki MediaWiki Foswiki XWiki
HTML Tags
All
Some
All
All
Math formulas
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Tables
simple + complex
simple + complex
simple + complex
simple + complex
CREOLE support
No
No
Plugin
Yes
Markdown Support
No
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Textile Support
No
No
Plugin
No
BBCode Support
No
No
Plugin
No
Emoticon Images
Yes
Optional
Plugin
Yes
Syntax Highlighting
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Footnotes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Quoting
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Internal Comments
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Custom styles
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
FAQ Tags
Yes
Unknown
Yes
Plugin
Scripting
Javascript
Optional
JavaScript; Topic Markup Language
velocity, groovy, ruby, jython, generic JSR223 & very powerful API
Content Includes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Yes
Feed Aggregation
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Usability PBwiki MediaWiki Foswiki XWiki
Section Editing
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Page Templates
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Double-Click Edit
No
Optional
Plugin
No
Toolbar
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
WYSIWYG Editing
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Access Keys
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Auto Signature
No
Yes
Yes
No
Statistics PBwiki MediaWiki Foswiki XWiki
Recent Changes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Wanted Pages
Optional
Yes
No
Yes
Orphaned Pages
No
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Most/Least Popular
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Recent Visitors
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Analysis
Optional
Optional
Yes
Yes
Output PBwiki MediaWiki Foswiki XWiki
Printer Friendly
Print CSS
Print CSS
Print View
Print CSS
Mobile Friendly
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Themes & Skins
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
RSS Feeds
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
ATOM Feeds
Yes
Yes
Yes
Optional
Abbreviations
Yes
No
Plugin
Plugin
Auto-TOC
Yes
Yes
Yes
Optional
Raw Export
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
HTML Export
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
XML export
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
PDF Export
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Office Export
Unknown
Unknown
Plugin
Yes
Media and Files PBwiki MediaWiki Foswiki XWiki
File Attachments
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Media Revisions
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Embedded Flash
Yes
Unknown
Plugin
Yes
Embedded Video
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Image Editing
Yes
No
Plugin
Plugin
SVG Editing
Yes
No
Plugin
Plugin
MindMap Editing
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Media Search
Contents
Keywords
Contents
Contents
Extras PBwiki MediaWiki Foswiki XWiki
Calendar
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Image Galleries
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Presentations
Unknown
Unknown
Plugin
Plugin
Forums
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Blogs
Optional
Unknown
Plugin
Plugin
Ticket System
Plugin
Unknown
Plugin
Plugin
Chat
Unknown
Unknown
No
Plugin
Syntax Examples PBwiki MediaWiki Foswiki XWiki
Internal Link
CamelCaseLink or [Free 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://www.externallink.com]
[http://example.org The title]
External Link
http://foswiki.org/ autolink
[[http://foswiki.org/][label]]
[[wiki syntax here>>http://www.xwiki.com]]
http://www.xwiki.com
Headlines
! Level 1
!! Level 2
!!! Level 3
!!!! Level 4
!!!!! Level 5
!!!!!! Level 6
==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*
**bold**
Italics Format
''italics''
''italic''
_italic_
//Italics//
Underline Format
__underline__
<u>underlined</u>
<u>underline</u>
__underline__
Monospace Format
<code>monospace</code>
<tt>monospace</tt>
=monospaced text= and
<verbatim>
multi line text
</verbatim>
##monospace##
Strikethrough Format
-strikethrough-
<s>strikethrough</s>
<strike>strikethrough</strike>
--Strike--
Superscript Format
<sup>superscript</sup>
<sup>superscript</sup>
<sup>superscript</sup>
^^superscript^^
Subscript Format
<sub>subscript</sub>
<sub>subscript</sub>
<sub>subscript</sub>
,,subscript,,
Images
[http://www.imagelocation.com/image.jpg
[[Image:wiki.png]]
%ATTACHURL%/image.png
http://any.domain/image.png
%IMAGE{"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
<left>, <center>, <right>
<center>Centered</center>
| left |   center   |   right |
or HTML
or CSS
(% style="... css here..." %)Text
Text Indentation
Indented block
: 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
* Bullet #1
* Bullet #2
** SubBullet #1
* Item 1
** Item 1.2
* Item 2
* Item 1
* Item 1.1
* Item 2
* List
** list
*** list
Numbered Lists
# Number #1
# Number #2
# 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
<dl>
</dl>
; term : definition
$ Term: Definition
; term
: definition
Horizontal Rule
---
----
---
----
remove PBwiki remove MediaWiki remove Foswiki remove XWiki