Outline is a free, source-available Confluence alternative: a fast, tidy wiki for handbooks, guides and meeting notes. Confluence charges per user as your team grows; self-hosted Outline has no per-member price.
| App | Good for | Code | Import from Confluence | Ease of use |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 Outline | Team handbooks, how-to guides and meeting notes that people can find quickly | Code Source-available | Import from Confluence Yes | Some setup |
Confluence is Atlassian's team wiki, often used alongside Jira for documentation, meeting notes and project pages. Content is organised into spaces, with page trees, templates and a large marketplace of add-ons.
Teams look for an alternative for two main reasons. Atlassian ended support for Confluence Server in February 2024, so the only self-hosted option left is the Data Center edition, which is priced for large organisations. And Confluence Cloud charges per user once a team grows past the free plan, which covers up to 10 users. Many teams also find the editor and page trees heavier than they need. A self-hosted wiki such as Outline keeps your documents on your own server, with no price per user.
A fast team wiki for your handbook, how-tos and meeting notes.
A lighter, faster wiki than Confluence. Documents live in collections, can be nested and are found with quick search, and people sign in with the work accounts they already have. It has fewer add-ons than Confluence.
Export a Confluence space and bring it in with Outline's Confluence import, or move pages as Word, Markdown or HTML files. Page text, headings, images and nesting carry over; Confluence macros and add-on content do not, so review heavily formatted pages after the import.
Outline is the free, self-hosted alternative to Confluence for team documentation in the catalogue today. A lighter, faster wiki than Confluence. Documents live in collections, can be nested and are found with quick search, and people sign in with the work accounts they already have. It has fewer add-ons than Confluence.
Yes. Outline runs on your own server and covers the everyday wiki work of spaces, nested pages, search and sharing, with no price per user.
Yes. People sign in with an existing account such as Google Workspace, Microsoft or another OpenID Connect provider; Outline has no passwords of its own.
Yes, the app is free. To run them you need Cloudgate and a server. Use hosted Cloudgate, which can also provide the server, or install Cloudgate on a server of your own for free. Cloudgate's plans and prices are at cloudgate.octabyte.io/pricing. One server can run several apps.
No. Cloudgate installs the app on your server and gives it a secure web address. You use it in your browser.
