- Readers, editors and guests: the question that decides your free plan
- What self-hosted means if you're not technical
- Caps, locks and open wikis: how the nine split
- Free knowledge base tools at a glance
- The nine knowledge base tools, in no particular order
- Plain advice on choosing a free knowledge base
- A one-hour trial run before you move everything in
- Frequently asked questions
Free knowledge base software comes in two forms. Hosted free plans cap what a growing team hits first, such as items, users or editors, while self-hosted free editions drop the caps but often hold back permissions, guest access or single sign-on. Work out who needs to read and who needs to edit, then pick the form that fits.
Every small business has the same problem sooner or later: the answers to everyday questions live in one person's head, or in an inbox nobody else can search. A knowledge base fixes that, and plenty of them are free, as long as you pick the kind of free that suits who'll be using it.
So this page leads with what each free tier caps or locks, not with feature lists.
Readers, editors and guests: the question that decides your free plan
Hosted free plans cap the thing a growing team hits first. Some cap the number of items you can store, some cap users, and one allows a single user only, so the free plan works for a solo writer and stops the moment a colleague wants to edit.
Self-hosted free editions usually drop those caps but keep back the permission layer: guest access, single sign-on, audit logs or fine-grained permissions. That's fine for a small internal team where everyone sees everything, and a problem if you want customers or contractors to read some pages and not others. So before you pick, list who needs to read, who needs to edit, and whether anyone outside your team needs access.
What self-hosted means if you're not technical
Self-hosted means the software is free to download, but you run it on a server you rent or own. Someone has to install it, keep it updated, back it up and fix it if it breaks. If you've got a developer or a technical partner, that's very doable. If you haven't, a hosted free plan with a cap is the easier start, and you can move later by exporting your pages.
Caps, locks and open wikis: how the nine split
Free-tier limits below are as of Nov 2026, from each vendor's own page.
Hosted free plans with a cap
Nuclino's free plan is capped at 50 items, 3 canvases and 2GB of total storage, and publishing a workspace as a website starts on its Starter plan. Slab's free plan, which the vendor calls free forever for small teams, is limited to 10 users, 10MB attachments, 90 days of version history and 10 standard integrations. GitBook's free plan is for one user, its built-in Agent is capped at 10 messages a week, and custom domains and analytics come with upgrades.
Self-hosted editions with the permission layer locked
Outline's cloud version is only a trial, after which the knowledge base turns read-only until you upgrade, so the free route is its Community Edition, which you host yourself; that edition omits guest users, SAML sign-in, the audit log and AI question answering, and comes with no support. Docmost's Community edition is free and open source but excludes single sign-on, AI features and granular permissions, and there's no hosted free plan.
Open wikis you host yourself
BookStack is free and open source; you install it on a PHP server, there's no hosted free plan from the project, and support is sold separately. Wiki.js is self-hosted only and needs Node.js and Postgres, deployed through Docker or Kubernetes. XWiki is built in Java, so you'll run a Java stack, and its setup is heavier than a note tool's. MediaWiki needs a web server, PHP and a database, and features such as permissions and editors depend on the extensions you add.
Free knowledge base tools at a glance
| Tool | Where it runs | Good for |
|---|---|---|
| BookStack | Self-hosted wiki | Books, chapters and pages with a simple visual editor |
| Docmost | Self-hosted wiki | Team spaces with real-time editing and full-text search |
| GitBook | Hosted docs site | Publishing public or internal docs with Git sync |
| MediaWiki | Self-hosted wiki | Large multilingual wikis extended with add-ons |
| Nuclino | Hosted team wiki | A small team wiki mixing docs, boards and graphs |
| Outline | Self-hosted wiki | A polished team wiki you host yourself |
| Slab | Hosted internal wiki | An internal knowledge base for a small team |
| Wiki.js | Self-hosted wiki | Markdown wiki with live preview and modules |
| XWiki | Self-hosted wiki | App-style enterprise wikis built in Java |
The nine knowledge base tools, in no particular order
BookStack
Best for: Teams who want a plain, tidy wiki arranged as books, chapters and pages, with a visual editor anyone can pick up quickly.
Docmost
Best for: Small teams wanting spaces, real-time collaboration and full-text search on their own server, from the free Community edition.
GitBook
Best for: Solo makers publishing product docs with a visual editor and Git sync, where the vendor says docs get an MCP server and llms.txt files.
MediaWiki
Best for: Communities and organisations wanting the wiki software behind Wikipedia, multilingual and extensible, and happy to add extensions for permissions and editing.
Nuclino
Best for: Small teams starting a wiki that mixes documents with list, board, table and graph views in one workspace.
Outline
Best for: Teams with someone technical who want real-time editing, comments, templates and an API, with unlimited documents and history, by the vendor's claim.
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Slab
Best for: Growing teams wanting a hosted internal knowledge base with topics, posts, unified search and integrations, free while the team stays small.
Wiki.js
Best for: Developers and technical teams who like writing in Markdown with live preview, and want a wiki they can extend with modules.
XWiki
Best for: Larger organisations wanting an open source wiki that doubles as an application builder, with a Java team ready to host it.
Plain advice on choosing a free knowledge base
If you're a team of a handful of people with no developer, start with a hosted free plan and check its cap against the number of pages or people you'll have in six months, not today. If you need customers to read help articles while staff edit them, look hard at the permission layer before anything else, because that's what most free editions hold back.
If you've got technical help and want no caps at all, an open wiki you host gives you the most room, in return for your own time on updates and backups. And if what you need is a help centre tied to support tickets, our guide to free help desk software covers that job, while our wider list of knowledge base software for growing teams includes tools without a free plan.
A one-hour trial run before you move everything in
- Write five real articles your team asks about every week.
- Invite one colleague to edit and one person to read only, and check both work on the free tier.
- Search for a word buried in one article and see if it comes up.
- Attach your largest typical file, such as a PDF manual.
- Export everything and open the export, so you know you can leave.
Do you make knowledge base software with a free plan? Tool makers can ask to be considered for a featured place on this list.
Want your tool on this list? Featured spots and reviews here are paid partnerships. Here's how to partner with me.
Frequently asked questions
What's the difference between a wiki and a knowledge base?
A wiki is usually an internal space that anyone on the team can edit. A knowledge base is the wider idea of organised answers, which can be internal, public for customers, or both. Many tools here do either job.
Can I make a public help centre with free knowledge base software?
Sometimes. Some hosted free plans keep publishing or custom domains for upgrades, and self-hosted wikis can be public if you set them up that way. Check how read-only visitors are handled before you rely on it.
Do I need a developer to self-host a knowledge base?
It helps a lot. Installing, updating and backing up a self-hosted wiki needs someone comfortable with servers. Without that help, a hosted free plan is the safer start.
What happens when a hosted free plan runs out of room?
Usually you can keep reading what you've got, but you can't add more items or users until you upgrade or tidy up. Check the vendor's own help pages for the exact behaviour.
Can I move my knowledge base to another tool later?
Yes, if the tool exports cleanly. Markdown or HTML exports are easiest to move, while images, links between pages and permissions are the parts most likely to need fixing.
How do I get my team to use a knowledge base?
Start with the questions people ask most, link to the answers whenever someone asks again, and give one person the job of keeping pages up to date. A small, current knowledge base beats a big, stale one.
