#48 in Notes & Knowledge ManagementUpdated 2026-08

BookStack

by BookStack · Self-hosted open-source wiki for documentation

24.7 — BenchRank score out of 100

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Overview

BookStack is an open-source, self-hosted platform for organising and storing documentation. Content is grouped into books, chapters and pages, written in a WYSIWYG or Markdown editor with diagrams.net drawing built in, and searched at book level or across everything. It runs on PHP with Laravel and MySQL, and includes roles, permissions and page revisions.

Best for: Teams that can self-host and want a free wiki for internal documentation and knowledge storage.
Pricing: No prices are shown: the software is MIT licensed and free to download and self-host, with donation and sponsorship options mentioned.
Runs on: Self-hosted

Strengths and trade-offs

Strengths

MIT licensed and free to self-host; source on Codeberg
WYSIWYG and Markdown editors, with diagrams.net built in
OIDC, SAML2 and LDAP login, plus built-in MFA per role
Runs on PHP, Laravel and MySQL on modest hardware

Trade-offs

Self-hosted only; the site shows no hosted or managed option
You run the PHP and MySQL stack and apply the security releases yourself
Content must fit the fixed Books, Chapters and Pages structure
Demo restricts user deletion, user updates and setting updates

How this score is made up

Each dimension is scored out of 100 and combined into the headline score using fixed weights.

MCP support: 0 out of 100
API quality: 10 out of 100
Documentation: 45 out of 100
Agent friendliness: 65 out of 100
Changelog: 0 out of 100
Marketing site structure: 50 out of 100
Operational trust: 10 out of 100

Measured, but not part of the score

Useful to know, but not a mark for or against the product — so these do not affect the ranking.

Openness: 25 out of 100

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