DokuWiki vs. XWiki vs. MediaWiki vs. Foswiki vs. PBwiki

General Features DokuWiki XWiki MediaWiki Foswiki PBwiki
Version
2020-07-29 "Hogfather"
16.2.0
1.32.2
2.1.8
N/A
Last Release Date
2020-07-19 (3 years ago)
2024-03-24 (5 days ago)
2019-06-05 (4 years ago)
2023-08-05 (7 months ago)
N/A
Last Update here
2021-08-09 (2 years ago)
2024-03-25 (4 days ago)
2019-06-21 (4 years ago)
2023-10-16 (5 months ago)
2010-08-16 (13 years ago)
Author
Andreas Gohr
XWiki Development Team
Magnus Manske, Brion Vibber, Lee Daniel Crocker, Tim Starling, Erik Möller, and others.
Foswiki Community
PBworks
URL
Free and Open Source
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
N/A
License
GPL 2
LGPL + Free hosting on https://myxwiki.org for individuals/non profit
GPL
GPL
N/A
Programming Language
PHP
Java
PHP
Perl
N/A
Data Storage
Files
Database, RCS
Database
Files, RCS
N/A
License Cost/ Fee
0
0
0
$0
Determined by Solution Needs
Development status
Mature
Mature
Mature
Mature
N/A
Intended Audience
personal, small to medium companies
Enterprise, Workgroups, Developers
End Users/Desktop, Education
Enterprise, Corporate, Business, Intranets, Personal use, Community building, Educational, Intranet, Extranet
Business Enterprises
Hosting Features DokuWiki XWiki MediaWiki Foswiki PBwiki
Storage Quota
N/A
N/A
N/A
No limit
Bandwidth Quota
N/A
N/A
N/A
No limit
Other Limits
N/A
N/A
N/A
None
Topic Restrictions
N/A
N/A
N/A
None
Corporate Branding
N/A
Yes
N/A
N/A
Yes
Own Domain
N/A
Yes
N/A
N/A
Yes
Ads allowed
N/A
No
N/A
N/A
Yes
System Requirements DokuWiki XWiki MediaWiki Foswiki PBwiki
Operating System
Linux, UNIX, Windows, MacOS X, probably others
Any platform supporting Java 11 or greater
*nix, Windows, Mac OS X
Linux, Windows, OS-X and others
N/A
Root Access
No
No
No
No
N/A
Webserver
Apache, IIS, Nginx, Lighttpd, anything with PHP support
Servlet 3.1+
Any with PHP support
Apache, Lighttpd, Nginx, or any other supporting (F)CGI
N/A
Other Requirements
Java 11, MySQL/MariaDB/PostgreSQL/HSQLDB/etc (JDBC Driver required)
none
RCS (optional), cron/scheduler, fgrep, egrep; Plugins may have additional dependencies
N/A
Datastorage DokuWiki XWiki MediaWiki Foswiki PBwiki
Text Files
Yes
No
No
Yes
N/A
MySQL
No
Yes
Yes
No
N/A
PostgreSQL
No
Yes
Yes
No
N/A
Oracle
No
Yes
Yes
No
N/A
SQLite
No
No
Yes
No
N/A
BerkeleyDB
No
No
No
No
N/A
RCS
No
Plugin
No
Yes
N/A
Other
None
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
No
caching of content into database using plugins
N/A
Security/Anti-Spam DokuWiki XWiki MediaWiki Foswiki PBwiki
Page Permissions
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
ACL
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
Yes
Authentication Backends
Textfile, LDAP, MySQL, PostgreSQL, ActiveDirectory
XWiki, LDAP, custom (Open API), Kerberos, NTLM, Headers, PUMA, SAML, Trusted LDAP, Sun SSO
Yes
Internal authentication; anything Apache supports such as LDAP, NIS, AD, Kerberos
N/A
Host Blocking
Plugin
No
Yes
Plugin
Optional
Mail Encryption
Optional
Yes
Plugin
Yes
No
nofollow
Optional
No
Optional
Yes
No
Blacklist
Optional
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Optional
CAPTCHA
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
No
Delayed Indexing
Optional
Yes
No
Plugin
No
Development/Support DokuWiki XWiki MediaWiki Foswiki PBwiki
# of Consultants
Preconfigured Hosting
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
N/A
Code Repository
N/A
Issue Tracker
Mailing List
Support Forum
Chat Channel
Stars on GitHub
3582 ⭐
N/A
N/A
97 ⭐
N/A
Common Features DokuWiki XWiki MediaWiki Foswiki PBwiki
Preview
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Minor Changes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Change Summary
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Page History
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Page Revisions
Unlimited
Unlimited
Unlimited
Unlimited
Unlimited
Revision Diffs
Between all
Between all
Between all
Between all
Between all
Sitemap
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin System
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Special Features DokuWiki XWiki MediaWiki Foswiki PBwiki
Unicode Support
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Right-to-Left Support
Yes
No
Yes
No
Yes
Interface Languages
68
Afrikaans, Arabic, Azerbaijani, Byelorussian, Bulgarian, Bengali; Bangla, Catalan, Czech, Welsh, Danish, German, Greek, English, Esperanto, Spanish, Estonian, Basque, Persian, Finnish, Faroese, French, Frisian, Galician, Hebrew, Hindi, Croatian, Hungarian, Interlingua, Indonesian, Icelandic, Italian, Japanese, Georgian, Kazakh, Cambodian, Kannada, Korean, Kurdish, Latin, Lithuanian, Latvian, Lettish, Malagasy, Macedonian, Malayalam, Marathi, Malay, Nepali, Dutch, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Sinhalese, Slovak, Slovenian, Albanian, Serbian, Swedish, Tamil, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Uzbek, Vietnamese, 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
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
1
English
Email notification
Optional
Yes
Optional
Yes
Yes
Comments
Plugin
Threaded
Discussion Pages
Plugin
Threaded
Categories
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Namespaces
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Conflict Handling
Page Locking
Conflict Resolution
Conflict Resolution
Page Locking
Page Locking
Concurrent Editing
No
Plugin
Unknown
No
Unknown
Search
Full Text
Full Text
Full Text
Full Text
Full Text
Wiki Farming
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
N/A
Structured Data
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Links DokuWiki XWiki MediaWiki Foswiki PBwiki
CamelCase
Optional
Yes
No
Yes
Yes
Freelinks
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Backlinks
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
InterWiki
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
SisterWiki
No
Yes
No
Plugin
Yes
Image Links
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Windows Shares
Yes
Yes
No
Plugin
Optional
Page Redirects
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Unknown
Syntax Features DokuWiki XWiki MediaWiki Foswiki PBwiki
HTML Tags
Optional
All
Some
All
All
Math formulas
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Tables
simple
simple + complex
simple + complex
simple + complex
simple + complex
CREOLE support
Plugin
Yes
No
Plugin
No
Markdown Support
Plugin
Yes
No
Plugin
No
Textile Support
Plugin
No
No
Plugin
No
BBCode Support
Plugin
No
No
Plugin
No
Emoticon Images
Yes
Yes
Optional
Plugin
Yes
Syntax Highlighting
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Footnotes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Quoting
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
Yes
Internal Comments
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Custom styles
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
FAQ Tags
Plugin
Plugin
No
Yes
Yes
Scripting
Optional, PHP
velocity, groovy, ruby, jython, generic JSR223 & very powerful API
Optional
JavaScript; Topic Markup Language
Javascript
Content Includes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Feed Aggregation
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Usability DokuWiki XWiki MediaWiki Foswiki PBwiki
Section Editing
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
Page Templates
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Double-Click Edit
Plugin
No
Optional
Plugin
No
Toolbar
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
WYSIWYG Editing
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Access Keys
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Auto Signature
Yes
No
Yes
Yes
No
Statistics DokuWiki XWiki MediaWiki Foswiki PBwiki
Recent Changes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Wanted Pages
Plugin
Yes
Yes
No
Optional
Orphaned Pages
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Plugin
No
Most/Least Popular
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Recent Visitors
No
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Analysis
Plugin
Yes
Optional
Yes
Optional
Output DokuWiki XWiki MediaWiki Foswiki PBwiki
Printer Friendly
Print CSS
Print CSS
Print CSS
Print View
Print CSS
Mobile Friendly
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
Yes
Themes & Skins
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
RSS Feeds
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
ATOM Feeds
Yes
Optional
Yes
Yes
Yes
Abbreviations
Yes
Plugin
No
Plugin
Yes
Auto-TOC
Yes
Optional
Yes
Yes
Yes
Raw Export
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
HTML Export
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
XML export
No
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
PDF Export
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Office Export
Plugin
Yes
Unknown
Plugin
Unknown
Media and Files DokuWiki XWiki MediaWiki Foswiki PBwiki
File Attachments
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Media Revisions
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Embedded Flash
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Embedded Video
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Image Editing
No
Plugin
No
Plugin
Yes
SVG Editing
Plugin
Plugin
No
Plugin
Yes
MindMap Editing
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Media Search
Filenames only
Contents
Keywords
Contents
Contents
Extras DokuWiki XWiki MediaWiki Foswiki PBwiki
Calendar
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Image Galleries
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Presentations
Plugin
Plugin
Unknown
Plugin
Unknown
Forums
No
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Blogs
Plugin
Plugin
No
Plugin
Optional
Ticket System
Plugin
Plugin
No
Plugin
Plugin
Chat
No
Plugin
Unknown
No
Unknown
Syntax Examples DokuWiki XWiki MediaWiki Foswiki PBwiki
Internal Link
[[a Link]]
[[namespace:link]]
[[link|With a Title]]
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)
[[a link]]
[[a link|with title]]
WikiWord autolink
Otherweb.WikiWord
[[Spaced text]]
[[WikiWord][label]]
CamelCaseLink or [Free Link]
External Link
[[http://example.com]]
[[http://example.com|With a Title]]
[[wiki syntax here>>http://www.xwiki.com]]
http://www.xwiki.com
[http://example.org The title]
External Link
http://foswiki.org/ autolink
[[http://foswiki.org/][label]]
[http://www.externallink.com]
Headlines
====== Level 1 ======
===== Level 2 =====
==== Level 3 ====
=== Level 4 ===
== Level 5 ==
= Headline
== Subheadline
=== Sub-subheadline
==== etc..
==Section==
===Subsection===
====Sub-subsection====
---+ Level 1
---++ Level 2
---+++ Level 3
---++++ Level 4
---+++++ Level 5
---++++++ Level 6
! Level 1
!! Level 2
!!! Level 3
!!!! Level 4
!!!!! Level 5
!!!!!! Level 6
Bold Format
**bold**
**bold**
'''bold'''
*bold*
**bold**
Italics Format
//italics//
//Italics//
''italic''
_italic_
''italics''
Underline Format
__underlined__
__underline__
<u>underlined</u>
<u>underline</u>
__underline__
Monospace Format
''monospace''
##monospace##
<tt>monospace</tt>
=monospaced text= and
<verbatim>
multi line text
</verbatim>
<code>monospace</code>
Strikethrough Format
<del>strikethrough</del>
--Strike--
<s>strikethrough</s>
<strike>strikethrough</strike>
-strikethrough-
Superscript Format
<sup>superscript</sup>
^^superscript^^
<sup>superscript</sup>
<sup>superscript</sup>
<sup>superscript</sup>
Subscript Format
<sub>subscript</sub>
,,subscript,,
<sub>subscript</sub>
<sub>subscript</sub>
<sub>subscript</sub>
Images
{{local.jpg}}
{{http://foo.bar/baz.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
[[Image:wiki.png]]
%ATTACHURL%/image.png
http://any.domain/image.png
%IMAGE{"image.png"}%
[http://www.imagelocation.com/image.jpg
Aligning Text
Plugin
(% style="... css here..." %)Text
<center>Centered</center>
| left |   center   |   right |
or HTML
or CSS
<left>, <center>, <right>
Text Indentation
N/A
Non-semantic text indentation through styling:

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

Quotes:

> This is a quoted text
: indented line
<blockquote>
multi line text
</blockquote>
Indented block
Bulleted Lists
* item 1
* item 1.1
* item 2
* List
** list
*** list
* Item 1
** Item 1.2
* Item 2
* Item 1
* Item 1.1
* Item 2
* Bullet #1
* Bullet #2
** SubBullet #1
Numbered Lists
- item 1
- item 1.1
- item 2
1. Item 1
11. Item 2
111. Item 3
1. Item 4
# Item 1
## Item 1.2
# Item 2
1. Item 1
a. Item 1.a
1. Item 2
# Number #1
# Number #2
Definition Lists
Plugin
; term
: definition
; term : definition
$ Term: Definition
<dl>
</dl>
Horizontal Rule
----
----
----
---
---
remove DokuWiki remove XWiki remove MediaWiki remove Foswiki remove PBwiki