LeafWiki vs MediaWiki
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
VS
MediaWiki
The wiki engine that powers Wikipedia
| Feature | LeafWiki | MediaWiki |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 83 · Excellent | 87 · Excellent |
| Category | Wikis & Documentation | Wikis & Documentation |
| License | MIT | GPL-2.0 |
| Language | Go | PHP |
| Setup difficulty | Easy | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 64 MB | 512 MB |
| Deployment | docker, binary | docker, bare-metal, source |
| GitHub stars | ★ 1,149 | ★ 5,174 |
| First released | 2024 | 2002 |
| Replaces | DokuWiki, Confluence | Confluence, Notion |
What are LeafWiki and MediaWiki?
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
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
LeafWiki vs MediaWiki: key differences
LeafWiki is written in Go, while MediaWiki is built with PHP. Licensing differs — MIT for LeafWiki versus GPL-2.0 for MediaWiki. LeafWiki is the lighter option, starting around 64 MB of RAM against 512 MB for MediaWiki. MediaWiki is the more established project (first released 2002), while LeafWiki arrived in 2024. MediaWiki has the considerably larger community, at 5,174 GitHub stars versus 1,149.
Why pick each one
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)
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 LeafWiki or MediaWiki better?
Neither is universally better. MediaWiki 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 LeafWiki and MediaWiki free and open-source?
Yes. LeafWiki is licensed under MIT and MediaWiki under GPL-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run LeafWiki and MediaWiki with Docker?
LeafWiki: yes. MediaWiki: yes.
Which is lighter on resources, LeafWiki or MediaWiki?
LeafWiki has the smaller minimum footprint at 64 MB of RAM, compared to about 512 MB for MediaWiki. Real-world usage depends on library size, user count, and enabled features.