Foswiki vs. MediaWiki vs. PmWiki vs. TWiki vs. XWiki

General Features Foswiki MediaWiki PmWiki TWiki XWiki
Version
2.1.8
1.32.2
2.3.32
TWiki-6.1.0
16.2.0
Last Release Date
2023-08-05 (7 months ago)
2019-06-05 (4 years ago)
2024-03-23 (5 days ago)
2018-07-15 (5 years ago)
2024-03-24 (4 days ago)
Last Update here
2023-10-16 (5 months ago)
2019-06-21 (4 years ago)
2024-03-24 (4 days ago)
2019-07-19 (4 years ago)
2024-03-25 (3 days ago)
Author
Foswiki Community
Magnus Manske, Brion Vibber, Lee Daniel Crocker, Tim Starling, Erik Möller, and others.
Petko Yotov (Original author: Patrick R. Michaud)
Peter Thoeny, TWiki community
XWiki Development Team
URL
Free and Open Source
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
License
GPL
GPL
GPL2+
GPL
LGPL + Free hosting on https://myxwiki.org for individuals/non profit
Programming Language
Perl
PHP
PHP
Perl, JavaScript
Java
Data Storage
Files, RCS
Database
Files
Files, RCS
Database, RCS
License Cost/ Fee
$0
0
0
N/A
0
Development status
Mature
Mature
Mature
Mature
Mature
Intended Audience
Enterprise, Corporate, Business, Intranets, Personal use, Community building, Educational, Intranet, Extranet
End Users/Desktop, Education
All
Large enterprise; small to medium businesses
Enterprise, Workgroups, Developers
Hosting Features Foswiki MediaWiki PmWiki TWiki XWiki
Storage Quota
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
Bandwidth Quota
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
Other Limits
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
Topic Restrictions
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
Corporate Branding
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
Yes
Own Domain
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
Yes
Ads allowed
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
No
System Requirements Foswiki MediaWiki PmWiki TWiki XWiki
Operating System
Linux, Windows, OS-X and others
*nix, Windows, Mac OS X
Linux, UNIX, Windows, MacOS X, probably others
Linux, Windows, OS-X and other
Any platform supporting Java 11 or greater
Root Access
No
No
No
No
No
Webserver
Apache, Lighttpd, Nginx, or any other supporting (F)CGI
Any with PHP support
Apache, IIS, anything with PHP support. Can also be run w/o a webserver.
Almost any webserver, typically Apache and Ngnix
Servlet 3.1+
Other Requirements
RCS (optional), cron/scheduler, fgrep, egrep; Plugins may have additional dependencies
none
none
RCS (optional), cron/scheduler, fgrep, egrep; Plugins may have additional dependencies
Java 11, MySQL/MariaDB/PostgreSQL/HSQLDB/etc (JDBC Driver required)
Datastorage Foswiki MediaWiki PmWiki TWiki XWiki
Text Files
Yes
No
Yes
Yes
No
MySQL
No
Yes
Plugin
No
Yes
PostgreSQL
No
Yes
No
No
Yes
Oracle
No
Yes
No
No
Yes
SQLite
No
Yes
Plugin
No
No
BerkeleyDB
No
No
No
No
No
RCS
Yes
No
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Other
caching of content into database using plugins
No
Compressed, XML and/or ephemeral files (modules). Can provide custom data backends.
RcsLite Perl library for version control without external RCS; backend API for other storage
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 Foswiki MediaWiki PmWiki TWiki XWiki
Page Permissions
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
ACL
Yes
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
Authentication Backends
Internal authentication; anything Apache supports such as LDAP, NIS, AD, Kerberos
Yes
Internal: per page, per group, per user, per user group. External: .htpasswd, LDAP, Active Directory. Plugins: Mailman, forums w/MySQL, oAuth, custom possible.
Internal authentication; anything Apache supports such as LDAP, NIS, AD, Kerberos
XWiki, LDAP, custom (Open API), Kerberos, NTLM, Headers, PUMA, SAML, Trusted LDAP, Sun SSO
Host Blocking
Plugin
Yes
Optional
Plugin
No
Mail Encryption
Yes
Plugin
Optional
Yes
Yes
nofollow
Yes
Optional
Yes
Plugin
No
Blacklist
Plugin
Yes
Optional
Plugin
Plugin
CAPTCHA
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Delayed Indexing
Plugin
No
Optional
Plugin
Yes
Development/Support Foswiki MediaWiki PmWiki TWiki XWiki
# of Consultants
Preconfigured Hosting
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Code Repository
Issue Tracker
Mailing List
Support Forum
Chat Channel
Stars on GitHub
97 ⭐
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
Common Features Foswiki MediaWiki PmWiki TWiki XWiki
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 Foswiki MediaWiki PmWiki TWiki XWiki
Unicode Support
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Right-to-Left Support
No
Yes
Optional
No
No
Interface Languages
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
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
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
19
Bulgarian, Czech, Danish, German, English, Spanish, Finnish, French, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Dutch, Polish, 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
Optional
Yes
Yes
Comments
Plugin
Discussion Pages
Discussion Pages
Threaded
Threaded
Categories
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Namespaces
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Conflict Handling
Page Locking
Conflict Resolution
Conflict Resolution
Conflict Resolution
Conflict Resolution
Concurrent Editing
No
Unknown
Yes
Unknown
Plugin
Search
Full Text
Full Text
Full Text
Full Text
Full Text
Wiki Farming
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Optional
Yes
Structured Data
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Yes
Links Foswiki MediaWiki PmWiki TWiki XWiki
CamelCase
Yes
No
Optional
Yes
Yes
Freelinks
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Backlinks
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
InterWiki
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
SisterWiki
Plugin
No
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Image Links
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Windows Shares
Plugin
No
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Page Redirects
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Syntax Features Foswiki MediaWiki PmWiki TWiki XWiki
HTML Tags
All
Some
Plugin
All
All
Math formulas
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Tables
simple + complex
simple + complex
simple + complex
simple + complex
simple + complex
CREOLE support
Plugin
No
Optional
No
Yes
Markdown Support
Plugin
No
Plugin
No
Yes
Textile Support
Plugin
No
No
Plugin
No
BBCode Support
Plugin
No
Plugin
No
No
Emoticon Images
Plugin
Optional
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Syntax Highlighting
Plugin
Plugin
Optional
Plugin
Yes
Footnotes
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Quoting
Yes
No
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Internal Comments
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Custom styles
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
FAQ Tags
Yes
No
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Scripting
JavaScript; Topic Markup Language
Optional
MarkupExpressions (core, many add-ons). PageLists with templates (core structured data scripting). WikiSh (plugin), Data forms (optional)
TWiki Markup Language, TWiki variables, JavaScript, extensive API
velocity, groovy, ruby, jython, generic JSR223 & very powerful API
Content Includes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Feed Aggregation
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Usability Foswiki MediaWiki PmWiki TWiki XWiki
Section Editing
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Page Templates
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Double-Click Edit
Plugin
Optional
Plugin
Plugin
No
Toolbar
Plugin
Yes
Optional
Plugin
Yes
WYSIWYG Editing
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Access Keys
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Auto Signature
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
Statistics Foswiki MediaWiki PmWiki TWiki XWiki
Recent Changes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Wanted Pages
No
Yes
Optional
No
Yes
Orphaned Pages
Plugin
Yes
Optional
Plugin
Yes
Most/Least Popular
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
Yes
Recent Visitors
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Analysis
Yes
Optional
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Output Foswiki MediaWiki PmWiki TWiki XWiki
Printer Friendly
Print View
Print CSS
Print View
Print View
Print CSS
Mobile Friendly
Yes
No
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Themes & Skins
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
RSS Feeds
Yes
Yes
Optional
Yes
Yes
ATOM Feeds
Yes
Yes
Optional
Yes
Optional
Abbreviations
Plugin
No
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Auto-TOC
Yes
Yes
Optional
Yes
Optional
Raw Export
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
HTML Export
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
XML export
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
PDF Export
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Office Export
Plugin
Unknown
Plugin
Unknown
Yes
Media and Files Foswiki MediaWiki PmWiki TWiki XWiki
File Attachments
Yes
Yes
Optional
Yes
Yes
Media Revisions
Yes
Yes
Optional
Yes
Yes
Embedded Flash
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Embedded Video
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Image Editing
Plugin
No
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
SVG Editing
Plugin
No
No
Plugin
Plugin
MindMap Editing
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Media Search
Contents
Keywords
Filenames only
Contents
Contents
Extras Foswiki MediaWiki PmWiki TWiki XWiki
Calendar
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Image Galleries
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Presentations
Plugin
Unknown
Plugin
Unknown
Plugin
Forums
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Blogs
Plugin
No
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Ticket System
Plugin
No
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Chat
No
Unknown
No
Unknown
Plugin
Syntax Examples Foswiki MediaWiki PmWiki TWiki XWiki
Internal Link
WikiWord autolink
Otherweb.WikiWord
[[Spaced text]]
[[WikiWord][label]]
[[a link]]
[[a link|with title]]
[[page name]]
[[page name | link text]]
[[link text -> page name]]
[[#anchor]]
[[#anchor|link to anchor]]
[[page name #anchor]]
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
External Link
http://foswiki.org/ autolink
[[http://foswiki.org/][label]]
[http://example.org The title]
http://....
[[http://... | link text]]
[[link text -> http://...]]
http://twiki.org/ autolink
[[http://twiki.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 1
---++ Level 2
---+++ Level 3
---++++ Level 4
---+++++ Level 5
---++++++ Level 6
= Headline
== Subheadline
=== Sub-subheadline
==== etc..
Bold Format
*bold*
'''bold'''
'''bold'''
*bold*
**bold**
Italics Format
_italic_
''italic''
''italic''
_italic_
//Italics//
Underline Format
<u>underline</u>
<u>underlined</u>
{+underlined+}
<u>underline</u>
__underline__
Monospace Format
=monospaced text= and
<verbatim>
multi line text
</verbatim>
<tt>monospace</tt>
@@monospace@@
=monospaced text= and
<verbatim>
multi line text
</verbatim>
##monospace##
Strikethrough Format
<strike>strikethrough</strike>
<s>strikethrough</s>
{-strikethrough-}
<strike>strikethrough</strike>
--Strike--
Superscript Format
<sup>superscript</sup>
<sup>superscript</sup>
'^superscript^'
<sup>superscript</sup>
^^superscript^^
Subscript Format
<sub>subscript</sub>
<sub>subscript</sub>
'_subscript_'
<sub>subscript</sub>
,,subscript,,
Images
%ATTACHURL%/image.png
http://any.domain/image.png
%IMAGE{"image.png"}%
[[Image:wiki.png]]
https://foo.bar/foo.jpg
Attach:foo.jpg
Attach:foo.jpg"alt/title text" | Caption
%ATTACHURL%/image.png
http://any.domain/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 |
or HTML
or CSS
<center>Centered</center>
%center% centered text
%right% right aligned
%lfloat% left floating text
%rfloat% right floating text
%rframe% right floating frame
%lframe% left floating frame
| left |   center   |   right |
or HTML
or CSS
(% style="... css here..." %)Text
Text Indentation
<blockquote>
multi line text
</blockquote>
: indented line
-> indented text
--> more indentation
-< hanging text
--< more indentation
<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
* Item 1
* Item 1.1
* Item 2
* Item 1
** Item 1.2
* Item 2
* Item 1
** Item 1.1
* Item 2
alternatively, indented:
* item 1
* item 1.1
* item 2
* Item 1
* Item 1.1
* Item 2
* List
** list
*** list
Numbered Lists
1. Item 1
a. Item 1.a
1. Item 2
# Item 1
## Item 1.2
# Item 2
# Item 1
## Item 1.1
# Item 2
alternatively, indented:
# Item 1
# Item 1.1
# 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
$ Term: Definition
; term : definition
: term : definition
$ Term: Definition
; term
: definition
Horizontal Rule
---
----
----
---
----
remove Foswiki remove MediaWiki remove PmWiki remove TWiki remove XWiki