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Self-host BookStack

updated Jul 2026prices checked · Aug 2026Install verified on Ubuntu 26.04 · Jul 2026 · how we test

A simple, genuinely open-source documentation wiki organized into shelves, books, and pages — easy to run and easy for non-technical teams to use.

Notion / yr$120
Self-hosted / yr~$55
You keep$65/yr
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Key facts

CategoryWiki & docs
LicenseMIT
StackPHP, Laravel
Min RAM512 MB
Dockeryes
Difficulty

What you need

  • Any VPS with at least 512 MB of RAM
  • A domain you control — most self-hosted setups need HTTPS in front of them
  • Under an hour if you've used Docker before

Install with Docker Compose

Save this as compose.yml and run docker compose up -d:

# BookStack + MariaDB (linuxserver image)
services:
  bookstack:
    image: lscr.io/linuxserver/bookstack:latest
    ports: ["6875:80"]
    environment: { APP_URL: http://SERVER_IP:6875, DB_HOST: db, DB_USER: bookstack, DB_PASS: secret, DB_DATABASE: bookstack }
  db: { image: lscr.io/linuxserver/mariadb:latest }
# docker compose up -d  →  http://SERVER_IP:6875

An alternative to

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