Gollum vs LeafWiki
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted wikis & documentation options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
LeafWiki
Lightweight self-hosted wiki with Markdown stored on disk
| Feature | Gollum | LeafWiki |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 51 · Fair | 83 · Excellent |
| Category | Wikis & Documentation | Wikis & Documentation |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Language | Ruby | Go |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Easy |
| Min. RAM | 256 MB | 64 MB |
| Deployment | binary, docker, source | docker, binary |
| GitHub stars | ★ 14,330 | ★ 1,149 |
| First released | 2010 | 2024 |
| Replaces | Confluence, Notion | DokuWiki, Confluence |
What are Gollum and LeafWiki?
Gollum
Gollum is an open-source wiki system built on top of Git, where every page is a file in a Git repository. It powers the wikis found on GitHub and supports many markup languages.
- Git-backed page storage
- Multiple markup languages
- Powers GitHub wikis
- Full history via Git
LeafWiki
LeafWiki is a lightweight self-hosted wiki for long-lived documentation that stores Markdown pages on disk in a tree structure. It ships as a single Go binary with SQLite and supports tables, task lists, footnotes, and Mermaid diagrams.
- Single Go binary deployment
- Markdown pages stored on disk
- Tree-based page organization
- Mermaid diagram support
Gollum vs LeafWiki: key differences
Gollum is written in Ruby, while LeafWiki is built with Go. LeafWiki is the lighter option, starting around 64 MB of RAM against 256 MB for Gollum. Gollum is the more established project (first released 2010), while LeafWiki arrived in 2024. Gollum has the considerably larger community, at 14,330 GitHub stars versus 1,149.
Why pick each one
Choose Gollum if…
- Pages are plain files in Git
- Easy version control
Watch out for
- No fine-grained ACLs
- Ruby toolchain required
Choose LeafWiki if…
- Released under the MIT license
- Easy to set up — beginner-friendly
- First-class Docker support for quick deployment
- Active community (1.1k GitHub stars)
Frequently asked questions
Is Gollum or LeafWiki better?
Neither is universally better. Gollum has the larger community, while LeafWiki is simpler to set up (easy difficulty). Choose based on the comparison table above and your own setup.
Are Gollum and LeafWiki free and open-source?
Yes. Gollum is licensed under MIT and LeafWiki under MIT. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Gollum and LeafWiki with Docker?
Gollum: yes. LeafWiki: yes.
Which is lighter on resources, Gollum or LeafWiki?
LeafWiki has the smaller minimum footprint at 64 MB of RAM, compared to about 256 MB for Gollum. Real-world usage depends on library size, user count, and enabled features.