2 Best Open Source Confluence Alternatives

Confluence is Atlassian's team documentation and wiki product, used for writing internal docs, meeting notes, and knowledge bases organized into spaces and pages. It integrates closely with Jira for linking documentation to issues and projects, and supports templates, permissions, and page hierarchies for larger organizations.

Teams look for open-source alternatives to Confluence over per-user pricing that scales with headcount, and over wanting documentation stored somewhere they control rather than Atlassian's cloud. Some also find Confluence's page editor and navigation heavier than what a smaller team needs, and prefer a lighter, faster tool for the same job.

Outline is one option built specifically as a team wiki, with a clean editor, nested documents, and search, aimed at replacing the core Confluence use case without the broader Atlassian ecosystem. AppFlowy takes a broader approach, combining documents with project and task management in one open-source workspace, closer to a combined Notion and Confluence alternative, and it can run fully offline or self-hosted.

When comparing these, consider how your team actually uses Confluence today. If the main need is a searchable wiki with clean editing, a focused tool like Outline is a closer match. If your team also wants task boards and databases alongside docs, AppFlowy's broader scope may reduce the number of separate tools you run. Either way, check the import path for existing Confluence content, since formatting and page hierarchies do not always transfer cleanly, and test search performance with your actual document volume, since search quality varies more between wiki tools than most other features.