LeafWiki vs Pepperminty Wiki
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
Pepperminty Wiki
Complete wiki engine contained in a single PHP file
| Feature | LeafWiki | Pepperminty Wiki |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 83 · Excellent | 44 · Fair |
| Category | Wikis & Documentation | Wikis & Documentation |
| License | MIT | MPL-2.0 |
| Language | Go | PHP |
| Setup difficulty | Easy | Easy |
| Min. RAM | 64 MB | 64 MB |
| Deployment | docker, binary | bare-metal, docker |
| GitHub stars | ★ 1,149 | ★ 206 |
| First released | 2024 | 2015 |
| Replaces | DokuWiki, Confluence | DokuWiki, MediaWiki |
What are LeafWiki and Pepperminty Wiki?
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
Pepperminty Wiki
Pepperminty Wiki is a complete wiki engine packaged into a single PHP file with a flat-file storage backend. It supports Markdown, full-text search, page revision history, tags, and file uploads.
- Single-file wiki engine
- Flat-file storage for easy backup
- Full-text search and revision history
- Page tags and file uploads
LeafWiki vs Pepperminty Wiki: key differences
LeafWiki is written in Go, while Pepperminty Wiki is built with PHP. Licensing differs — MIT for LeafWiki versus MPL-2.0 for Pepperminty Wiki. Pepperminty Wiki is the more established project (first released 2015), while LeafWiki arrived in 2024. LeafWiki has the considerably larger community, at 1,149 GitHub stars versus 206.
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 Pepperminty Wiki if…
- Released under the MPL-2.0 license
- Easy to set up — beginner-friendly
- First-class Docker support for quick deployment
- Written in PHP
Frequently asked questions
Is LeafWiki or Pepperminty Wiki better?
Neither is universally better. LeafWiki has the larger community; both share a easy setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.
Are LeafWiki and Pepperminty Wiki free and open-source?
Yes. LeafWiki is licensed under MIT and Pepperminty Wiki under MPL-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run LeafWiki and Pepperminty Wiki with Docker?
LeafWiki: yes. Pepperminty Wiki: yes.