BookStack: An Open Source Alternative to Confluence

What BookStack Offers

Free and Open Source

BookStack is 100% free to use under the MIT license. The code is fully open; Use and modify BookStack any way you like, just provide attribution if you distribute the code.

Self-Host However You Please

There’s no push to the cloud here unless that’s your preference. Whether you install on a Raspberry Pi, or stick it in AWS; It’s fully up to you. You can ensure your documentation stays behind your firewall.

Lightweight and Speedy

Tired of seeing placeholder content while your pages load? Tired of managing bloated Java processes? BookStack is built in modern PHP and can run on lightweight systems.

WYSIWYG Editing Experience

BookStack uses a WYSWIYG editor at its core, with a range of essential formatting options and features. No scary mark-up language. Ideal for mixed-skill environments.

Standard Content Storage Format

BookStack primarily retains content in a relatively focused and flat layer of HTML. One of our ideals is to keep the format relatively standardised for if you ever need to migrate away from BookStack.

System API

Our growing REST API allows the programming of automation where desired, and provides a mechanism for import where needed.

An Open Community

Whether it’s via GitHub, Discord or our subreddit, you can discuss with and seek help from the BookStack developers & the wider community.

Diagrams.net Integration, Built In

Want to create diagrams in your documentation? You can jump directly into an embedded diagrams.net editing session which will save directly into BookStack.

Authentication Options

A range of authentication options and controls are built-in including LDAP, SAML2 and a range of OAuth clients. Additionally MFA with role-based enforcement can be used with any of these.

GitHub | Demo Instance | Installation Instructions

Migrating From Confluence to BookStack

We don’t yet have an automated way to migrate your content directly from Confluence to BookStack.
We do have a growing REST API that can be used to automate some of the process where possible.
In the future we’d like to have some tools to assist with a migration but the opportunity
to create such tools has not yet presented itself.