Knowledge base and self-service · RankedBookStack
BookStack is an open-source knowledge base platform that organizations host themselves to write, organize and share documentation · bookstackapp.com ↗
Read the same way at every company size.
The standing depends on who is buying. Every model is asked the same questions for each company size.
Notion is first at 28%.
Document360 is first at 24%.
Zendesk Guide is first at 18%.
Why models recommend it
“For most small teams with limited budgets, BookStack (self‑hosted) or Notion (Free Plan) are the top choices.”GLM 4.7 FlashX · Budget-constrained question · first choice
“with BookStack being the only completely free option if you're comfortable with self-hosting”Mistral Small · Budget-constrained question · first choice
“Notion's free tier or BookStack (if you can self-host) provide the best value”Kimi K2 · Budget-constrained question · first choice
“Best on a very limited budget: BookStack—if someone on your team can manage hosting.”GPT-6 Luna · Budget-constrained question · first choice
What gives them pause
“BookStack, DokuWiki, and similar options may offer control, but your team becomes responsible for updates, backups, security, and recovery.”Perplexity Sonar · Negative question · warning
“Bad search is the #1 reason knowledge bases fail. Basic keyword matching only finds exact terms”DeepSeek V4 Flash · Negative question · warning
““BookStack, basic tools” – Only finds exact terms. Users must know the right keywords.”Muse Glimmer 30B · Negative question · warning
Also on the shortlist
The products named in the same answers as BookStack, over the 43 answers that named it, and how often each was the first choice instead.
| Product | Named together | Picked instead | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 38 | 15 | Compare → | |
| 29 | 3 | Compare → | |
| 21 | 0 | Compare → | |
| 16 | 2 | Compare → | |
| 16 | 0 | View → | |
| 13 | 1 | Compare → | |
| 13 | 0 | View → | |
| 13 | 0 | View → | |
| 11 | 1 | Compare → | |
| 11 | 0 | View → |
What the models named instead of BookStack →
A side-by-side page exists where both products are among a category's top eight.
At a glance
Stated on BookStack's own site, not checked by Gane.
- For
- self-hosted & enterprise environments
- Price stated
- There is no cost to downloading and installing your own instance of BookStack.
- Free plan or trial
- There is no cost to downloading and installing your own instance of BookStack.
- Founded
- 2015
How this is measured
Fourteen AI models from 12 labs are asked the same buying questions six ways, for three company sizes. Standings refresh every edition.
Gane sells AI visibility software. No company can pay to change a result.
Read the method →Sources returned with these answers
Fourteen of the fourteen models returned a source list in this edition: five return the pages they cited and nine the search results they consulted. These counts come from 38 of the 43 answers that named BookStack and are not a share of its labels.
Domains cited
127 of the 127 domain citations in answers naming BookStack came from a third party's page.
Pages cited
Pages are listed as the models cited them.
By model
| Model | First choice | Alternative | Mention | Warning | Labels |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Haiku 4.5 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| GPT-5.4 mini | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Gemini 3.5 Flash | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Perplexity Sonar | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 2 |
| Grok 4.20 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| Mistral Small | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| DeepSeek V4 Flash | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 2 |
| Llama 4 Maverick | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Qwen 3.7 Flash | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Kimi K2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| GLM 4.7 FlashX | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 2 |
| MiniMax M2.5 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| GPT-6 Luna | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Muse Glimmer 30B | 0 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 3 |
What it publishes
| Kind | Pages | Last 90 days | 2025-11 to 2026-10 | Latest | Categories named |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Blog | 149 | undated | |||
| Comparison | 3 | undated |
How it is countedHide how it is counted
Every page bookstackapp.com exposes, subdomains included. Kind is read from the address and title. The last 90 days, the latest date and the twelve months count pages by when they were published, from the site's feeds, a date in the address, or the page's own publication date, read from up to a hundred of its most recently changed pages; a page that says only when it last changed is counted in its kind but not in when, so the recent counts are a floor, and a kind none of whose pages gives a publication date reads undated. Read October 5, 2026.