Comparison

Wiki.js vs MediaWiki

Wiki.js and MediaWiki both land on Depends.

Wiki.js

Depends

Confidence: Medium

Great fit if a technical person will own hosting, upgrades, and patching of a free, powerful wiki.

Depends

Confidence: Medium

Buy if you run a large or public knowledge base and can staff its upkeep and patching.

Wiki.js versus MediaWiki
Compare	Wiki.js	MediaWiki
Verdict	Depends	Depends
Best for	Technical self-hosters	Large public knowledge bases
Who it's not for	Non-technical teams wanting one-click setup	Small teams wanting a quick internal wiki
Privacy	Multiple public CVEs including recent authentication bypass (through 2.5.314) and privilege escalation . patch discipline is mandatory.^⁷	Actively maintained with a dedicated security team, but a steady stream of CVEs means prompt patching is mandatory.
Support quality	Community support; paid help via hosts	Guess: community forums only; no vendor SLA.
Public sentiment	Self-hosters praise its power and flexibility but repeatedly flag it as heavy to run and maintain.^⁵	Reddit users find MediaWiki powerful but repeatedly call it too complicated and maintenance-heavy for casual users and small teams.¹³
Biggest gotcha	Running it well needs ongoing ops: upgrades, backups, CVE patching. Recent bypass CVEs hit older versions.^⁷	Multiple 2026 CVEs including auth bypass and stored XSS; patch fast.