Gollum vs MediaWiki
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted wikis & documentation options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
| Feature | Gollum | MediaWiki |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 51 · Fair | 87 · Excellent |
| Category | Wikis & Documentation | Wikis & Documentation |
| License | MIT | GPL-2.0 |
| Language | Ruby | PHP |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 256 MB | 512 MB |
| Deployment | binary, docker, source | docker, bare-metal, source |
| GitHub stars | ★ 14,330 | ★ 5,174 |
| First released | 2010 | 2002 |
| Replaces | Confluence, Notion | Confluence, Notion |
What are Gollum and MediaWiki?
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
MediaWiki
MediaWiki is the free, open-source wiki software developed for and used by Wikipedia. It is built to handle large collaborative knowledge bases with powerful templating, extensions, and revision history.
- Powers Wikipedia at scale
- Powerful template system
- Vast extension library
- Full revision history
Gollum vs MediaWiki: key differences
Gollum is written in Ruby, while MediaWiki is built with PHP. Licensing differs — MIT for Gollum versus GPL-2.0 for MediaWiki. Gollum is the lighter option, starting around 256 MB of RAM against 512 MB for MediaWiki. MediaWiki is the more established project (first released 2002), while Gollum arrived in 2010. Gollum has the considerably larger community, at 14,330 GitHub stars versus 5,174.
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 MediaWiki if…
- Battle-tested at massive scale
- Huge extension ecosystem
Watch out for
- Wikitext has a learning curve
- Setup can be involved
Frequently asked questions
Is Gollum or MediaWiki better?
Neither is universally better. Gollum has the larger community; both share a medium setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.
Are Gollum and MediaWiki free and open-source?
Yes. Gollum is licensed under MIT and MediaWiki under GPL-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Gollum and MediaWiki with Docker?
Gollum: yes. MediaWiki: yes.
Which is lighter on resources, Gollum or MediaWiki?
Gollum has the smaller minimum footprint at 256 MB of RAM, compared to about 512 MB for MediaWiki. Real-world usage depends on library size, user count, and enabled features.