XWiki vs. Foswiki

General Features XWiki Foswiki
Version
17.10.2
2.1.10
Last Release Date
2025-12-30 (1 day ago)
2025-12-18 (13 days ago)
Last Update here
2025-12-30 (1 day ago)
2025-12-18 (13 days ago)
Author
XWiki Development Team
Foswiki Community
URL
Free and Open Source
Yes
Yes
License
LGPL + Free hosting on https://myxwiki.org for individuals/non profit
GPL
Programming Language
Java
Perl
Data Storage
Database, RCS
Files, RCS
License Cost/ Fee
0
$0
Development status
Mature
Mature
Intended Audience
Enterprise, Workgroups, Developers
Enterprise, Corporate, Business, Intranets, Personal use, Community building, Educational, Intranet, Extranet
Hosting Features XWiki Foswiki
Storage Quota
N/A
Bandwidth Quota
N/A
Other Limits
N/A
Topic Restrictions
N/A
Corporate Branding
Yes
N/A
Own Domain
Yes
N/A
Ads allowed
No
N/A
System Requirements XWiki Foswiki
Operating System
Any platform supporting Java 17 or greater
Linux, Windows, OS-X and others
Root Access
No
No
Webserver
Servlet 5.0+
Apache, Lighttpd, Nginx, or any other supporting (F)CGI
Other Requirements
Java 17, MySQL/MariaDB/PostgreSQL/HSQLDB/etc (JDBC Driver required)
RCS (optional), cron/scheduler, fgrep, egrep; Plugins may have additional dependencies
Datastorage XWiki Foswiki
Text Files
No
Yes
MySQL
Yes
No
PostgreSQL
Yes
No
Oracle
Yes
No
SQLite
No
No
BerkeleyDB
No
No
RCS
Plugin
Yes
Other
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
caching of content into database using plugins
Security/Anti-Spam XWiki Foswiki
Page Permissions
Yes
Yes
ACL
Yes
Yes
Authentication Backends
XWiki, OpenID Connect, LDAP, custom (Open API), Kerberos, NTLM, Headers, PUMA, SAML, Trusted LDAP, Sun SSO
Internal authentication; anything Apache supports such as LDAP, NIS, AD, Kerberos
Host Blocking
No
Plugin
Mail Encryption
Yes
Yes
nofollow
No
Yes
Blacklist
Plugin
Plugin
CAPTCHA
Yes
Plugin
Delayed Indexing
Yes
Plugin
Development/Support XWiki Foswiki
# of Consultants
Preconfigured Hosting
Yes
Yes
Code Repository
Issue Tracker
Mailing List
Support Forum
Chat Channel
Stars on GitHub
N/A
118 ⭐
Common Features XWiki Foswiki
Preview
Yes
Yes
Minor Changes
Yes
Yes
Change Summary
Yes
Yes
Page History
Yes
Yes
Page Revisions
Unlimited
Unlimited
Revision Diffs
Between all
Between all
Sitemap
Yes
Yes
Plugin System
Yes
Yes
Special Features XWiki Foswiki
Unicode Support
Yes
Yes
Right-to-Left Support
No
No
Interface Languages
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
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
Email notification
Yes
Yes
Comments
Threaded
Plugin
Categories
Yes
Plugin
Namespaces
Yes
Yes
Conflict Handling
Conflict Resolution
Page Locking
Concurrent Editing
Yes
No
Search
Full Text
Full Text
Wiki Farming
Yes
Plugin
Structured Data
Yes
Yes
Links XWiki Foswiki
CamelCase
Yes
Yes
Freelinks
Yes
Yes
Backlinks
Yes
Yes
InterWiki
Yes
Plugin
SisterWiki
Yes
Plugin
Image Links
Yes
Yes
Windows Shares
Yes
Plugin
Page Redirects
Yes
Plugin
Syntax Features XWiki Foswiki
HTML Tags
All
All
Math formulas
Yes
Plugin
Tables
simple + complex
simple + complex
CREOLE support
Yes
Plugin
Markdown Support
Yes
Plugin
Textile Support
No
Plugin
BBCode Support
No
Plugin
Emoticon Images
Yes
Plugin
Syntax Highlighting
Yes
Plugin
Footnotes
Yes
Plugin
Quoting
Yes
Yes
Internal Comments
Yes
Yes
Custom styles
Yes
Yes
FAQ Tags
Plugin
Yes
Scripting
velocity, groovy, ruby, jython, generic JSR223 & very powerful API
JavaScript; Topic Markup Language
Content Includes
Yes
Yes
Feed Aggregation
Yes
Plugin
Usability XWiki Foswiki
Section Editing
Yes
Plugin
Page Templates
Yes
Yes
Double-Click Edit
No
Plugin
Toolbar
Yes
Plugin
WYSIWYG Editing
Yes
Plugin
Access Keys
Yes
Yes
Auto Signature
No
Yes
Statistics XWiki Foswiki
Recent Changes
Yes
Yes
Wanted Pages
Yes
No
Orphaned Pages
Yes
Plugin
Most/Least Popular
Yes
Yes
Recent Visitors
Yes
Plugin
Analysis
Yes
Yes
Output XWiki Foswiki
Printer Friendly
Print CSS
Print View
Mobile Friendly
Yes
Yes
Themes & Skins
Yes
Yes
RSS Feeds
Yes
Yes
ATOM Feeds
Optional
Yes
Abbreviations
Plugin
Plugin
Auto-TOC
Optional
Yes
Raw Export
Yes
Yes
HTML Export
Yes
Yes
XML export
Yes
Plugin
PDF Export
Yes
Plugin
Office Export
Yes
Plugin
Media and Files XWiki Foswiki
File Attachments
Yes
Yes
Media Revisions
Yes
Yes
Embedded Flash
Yes
Plugin
Embedded Video
Yes
Plugin
Image Editing
Plugin
Plugin
SVG Editing
Plugin
Plugin
MindMap Editing
Plugin
Plugin
Media Search
Contents
Contents
Extras XWiki Foswiki
Calendar
Plugin
Plugin
Image Galleries
Yes
Plugin
Presentations
Plugin
Plugin
Forums
Plugin
Plugin
Blogs
Plugin
Plugin
Ticket System
Plugin
Plugin
Chat
Plugin
No
Syntax Examples XWiki Foswiki
Internal 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)
WikiWord autolink
Otherweb.WikiWord
[[Spaced text]]
[[WikiWord][label]]
External Link
[[wiki syntax here>>http://www.xwiki.com]]
http://www.xwiki.com
External Link
http://foswiki.org/ autolink
[[http://foswiki.org/][label]]
Headlines
= Headline
== Subheadline
=== Sub-subheadline
==== etc..
---+ Level 1
---++ Level 2
---+++ Level 3
---++++ Level 4
---+++++ Level 5
---++++++ Level 6
Bold Format
**bold**
*bold*
Italics Format
//Italics//
_italic_
Underline Format
__underline__
<u>underline</u>
Monospace Format
##monospace##
=monospaced text= and
<verbatim>
multi line text
</verbatim>
Strikethrough Format
--Strike--
<strike>strikethrough</strike>
Superscript Format
^^superscript^^
<sup>superscript</sup>
Subscript Format
,,subscript,,
<sub>subscript</sub>
Images
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
%ATTACHURL%/image.png
http://any.domain/image.png
%IMAGE{"image.png"}%
Aligning Text
(% style="... css here..." %)Text
| left |   center   |   right |
or HTML
or CSS
Text Indentation
Non-semantic text indentation through styling:

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

Quotes:

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