BookStack is a free, self-hosted, open-source wiki platform for organizing documentation into books, chapters, and pages. MIT licensed and PHP/Laravel-based.
BookStack is a free, open-source, self-hosted documentation and wiki platform created by UK developer Dan Brown, with its first commit dating to July 12, 2015. It is built on PHP and Laravel, and released under the MIT license.
Content is organized into a four-level hierarchy of shelves, books, chapters, and pages, designed to mirror how reference manuals are structured, which distinguishes it from flat-page wiki tools.
BookStack includes full-text search across books, page revision history, image and file management, and a role-and-permission system for controlling access at a granular level. The editor supports both WYSIWYG and Markdown editing.
The project reached stable status with its v21.04 release in April 2021 after several years of beta development, and by its tenth anniversary in July 2025 had accumulated nearly 17,000 GitHub stars and around 186 direct contributors.
BookStack is completely free and open source under the MIT license. There is no official paid tier, subscription, or hosted SaaS product; organizations self-host it, commonly using Docker, and pay only for their own infrastructure.
Support comes from community documentation, the project repository, and community forums rather than a commercial vendor support contract.
Yes, BookStack is fully open source under the MIT license with no cost to use.
BookStack was created by UK developer Dan Brown, starting in July 2015.
Yes, BookStack is self-hosted; there is no official managed cloud version, though it is commonly deployed via Docker.
BookStack is built in PHP using the Laravel framework.
Content follows a four-level hierarchy: shelves group books, books contain chapters, and chapters group pages.