What is Crowi used for?

Crowi is a Markdown wiki for team knowledge sharing in which URL paths form the page hierarchy; v1 is deprecated and v2 is in alpha with real-time editing and MCP. It is a good fit for team handbook and onboarding documentation, collaborative knowledge base with live editing, and upgrading an existing Crowi v1 wiki.

Is Crowi open source?

Yes. Crowi is open source under the MIT licence. Its source code is on GitHub at crowi/crowi and is written mainly in TypeScript.

Yes. Crowi is open source, so the software itself is free to use.

Can I self-host Crowi?

Yes. Crowi can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure; there is no official hosted version.

What is Crowi an alternative to?

Crowi is an open-source alternative to Confluence and Nuclino. Other open-source alternatives to Confluence include Outline, Wiki.js and Otterwiki.

Is Crowi actively maintained?

Yes. The most recent commit to Crowi was on 2 October 2026, and the latest release is v1.7.9, published on 16 July 2019. The project has 1.1k stars on GitHub.

Crowi: open-source alternative to Confluence, Nuclino

About Crowi

Crowi is a Markdown wiki for sharing knowledge in a team. Page URLs are the hierarchy, so a path such as /team/handbook/onboarding reads exactly as it is written, which keeps navigation intuitive and simple.

The README explains that version 1 is deprecated and unmaintained, and that version 2, codenamed Reignite, is in active prerelease. It rebuilds the stack on a Hono API with Next.js 16 and React 19 while keeping the version 1 MongoDB data shape, so existing wikis can be upgraded in place. Version 2 adds real-time collaborative editing with Yjs, an embedded MCP server for AI agents, OAuth 2.0 and personal access tokens, a pluggable architecture for storage, search, rendering and mail, encryption of sensitive configuration, dark mode and a command-line tool.

There is no stable version 2 yet, so the API and configuration can change between alpha releases, and the maintainers advise pinning a published release rather than using the repository head. Crowi is written in TypeScript, licensed under MIT and self-hosted. It suits teams already comfortable running MongoDB who want a modern Markdown wiki.

Key features

Markdown wiki with path-based hierarchy
Real-time collaborative editing in v2
Embedded MCP server for AI agents
OAuth 2.0 and personal access tokens
Pluggable storage, search, and mail
In-place upgrade from v1 MongoDB data

Good fit for

→Team handbook and onboarding documentation
→Collaborative knowledge base with live editing
→Upgrading an existing Crowi v1 wiki

Built with: TypeScript
Tags: wiki; markdown; knowledge-base; collaboration; mongodb; mcp; typescript; nextjs; self-hosted

Crowi: questions and answers

What is Crowi used for?: Crowi is a Markdown wiki for team knowledge sharing in which URL paths form the page hierarchy; v1 is deprecated and v2 is in alpha with real-time editing and MCP. It is a good fit for team handbook and onboarding documentation, collaborative knowledge base with live editing, and upgrading an existing Crowi v1 wiki.
Is Crowi open source?: Yes. Crowi is open source under the MIT licence. Its source code is on GitHub at crowi/crowi and is written mainly in TypeScript.
Is Crowi free?: Yes. Crowi is open source, so the software itself is free to use.
Can I self-host Crowi?: Yes. Crowi can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure; there is no official hosted version.
What is Crowi an alternative to?: Crowi is an open-source alternative to Confluence and Nuclino. Other open-source alternatives to Confluence include Outline, Wiki.js and Otterwiki.
Is Crowi actively maintained?: Yes. The most recent commit to Crowi was on 2 October 2026, and the latest release is v1.7.9, published on 16 July 2019. The project has 1.1k stars on GitHub.