15 Best Confluence Alternatives and Competitors in 2026

By Björn Michelsen · Updated on January 13, 2026

Explore the most popular paid and free Confluence alternatives.

Atlassian Confluence is one of the most widely used documentation and collaboration tools, but recent changes from Atlassian have many users reconsidering their options.

Over the past few years, Atlassian has ended support for Confluence Server, pushed customers toward its cloud and data center editions, and steadily raised subscription prices. More recently, Atlassian has introduced AI-powered features and deeper integrations with Jira – helpful for some teams, but adding complexity and cost for others.

For many organizations, this shift has been a tipping point. Some want a tool that's easier to use, some prefer self-hosting to keep control of their data, and others are simply looking for a more affordable option. The good news is that there are plenty of alternatives on the market today, from open-source wiki software to modern collaboration platforms.

In this article, we'll explore the best Confluence alternatives in 2026, look at how they compare, and help you decide which one is the right fit for your team.

What is Confluence?

Atlassian Confluence is one of the oldest corporate wiki platforms and software documentation tools on the market. It's highly customizable and versatile wiki software that has accumulated a lot of features over the years. Its powerful enterprise capabilities and extensive configuration options helped it amass over 60,000 customers.

But it is not without its drawbacks, for example:

More and more teams find Confluence too overengineered and slow to be used effectively, leading to out-of-date content and low engagement:

"Confluence is not easy to use. All the places where I've used it, the information hasn't been up-to-date and people have preferred to work in some other tool before transferring info to Confluence. The last step is usually forgotten."

— Paul T., CTO (Capterra)

Does your Confluence analytics dashboard show that your team isn't updating your wiki? Are new team members struggling to get the hang of it? It might be time to switch to a more user-friendly alternative to Confluence – fortunately, there are many great options to choose from.

Modern Confluence alternative

15 best Confluence alternatives

To make your decision easier, we've put together a list of 15 best Confluence alternatives and competitors, based on real reviews.

Confluence is a multifunctional product with a variety of use cases and applications – so there is no one-size-fits-all solution. Each one of these options comes with its own unique strengths, design decisions, and feature sets.

Check out the Confluence alternatives below and find the one that best suits your team's needs.

1. Nuclino

Best Confluence alternative Nuclino

Nuclino is an internal knowledge base and wiki software that allows teams to organize information and collaborate in real time. Its clean, distraction-free interface, intuitive navigation, and frictionless editing experience make it stand out as a modern and easy-to-use alternative to Confluence.

While not as feature-packed as Confluence, Nuclino focuses on the essential functionality, such as search, content organization, and collaborative editing, and minimizes the learning curve for new users. It's a great option for teams looking for a faster, easier, and more lightweight Confluence alternative.

Best Confluence alternative Nuclino table

One of Nuclino's distinctive strengths is the effortless collaboration experience, which allows users to easily edit documents in real time and exchange feedback without stepping on each other's toes.

Collaborative Confluence alternative Nuclino

In addition to being able to organize their internal documentation in a familiar nested list, users can visualize their data in a Kanban board, a table, or a mindmap-style graph. This makes Nuclino a great solution for a wide range of use cases, including knowledge sharing, employee handbooks, employee onboarding and offboarding, sprint planning, process documentation, and many more.

Best Confluence alternative Nuclino board

You can also turn any Nuclino workspace into a public website, accessible to anyone on the web and discoverable via search engines. It's perfect for help centers, user documentation, changelogs, and much more.

Confluence alternative Nuclino public documentation

Nuclino comes with an AI-powered assistant Sidekick. It can instantly answer any question based on your content, brainstorm ideas, create first drafts, generate images, summarize long documents, and more.

Nuclino also offers built-in visual collaboration and allows you to add an infinite collaborative canvas to any page. You can use it to create diagrams and flowcharts, organize ideas using sticky notes, build moodboards, and much more.

Confluence alternative visual collaboration

Learn more about how Nuclino compares to Confluence: Nuclino vs Confluence.

What users say about Nuclino:

"Nuclino is what Confluence should be. Great from start to end. I signed up with Nuclino in its very early days and the product has been rock solid. The team has been willing to add new features I've suggested (yay, emoji auto-complete when entering ":") and they've been moving fast and building new features every month."

— Ian M. (Capterra)

2. Outline

Confluence alternative Outline

Outline is a knowledge base tool built for teams that want a clean, focused alternative to Confluence. It's centered around writing and reading documentation, with a simple editor, fast search, and a structure that stays easy to navigate as content grows.

Compared to Confluence, Outline feels lighter and more opinionated. Pages are organized in a clear hierarchy, permissions are straightforward, and the interface stays out of the way. It works well for internal docs, handbooks, and technical documentation, especially for teams that want something predictable and easy to maintain.

Outline is best suited for teams that care more about clarity than customization. It does not try to cover every workflow or use case, and that's often the appeal. If Confluence feels cluttered or overly complex for your needs, Outline offers a calmer way to keep team knowledge organized.

What users say about Outline:

"Outline is open-source, so we were able to self-host it in a tiny cloud server. This is very cost-effective compared to Confluence's per-user pricing."

Capterra review

Looking for more tools similar to Outline? Check out this list of Outline alternatives.

3. Tettra

Confluence alternative Tettra

Tettra takes a more focused approach to team documentation than Confluence. Instead of trying to be a broad collaboration platform, it's built around capturing shared knowledge and making it easy for teams to find answers when they need them.

Most teams use Tettra for internal FAQs, onboarding docs, and day-to-day processes. Writing and editing content is simple, and the structure stays manageable even as the knowledge base grows. The tight Slack integration is a big part of the appeal, especially for teams that already rely on Slack as their main communication tool.

Tettra is a good fit if your goal is to reduce repeated questions and keep internal knowledge up to date without maintaining a complex system. If you rely on Confluence for heavy technical documentation or deeply nested spaces, Tettra may feel limited. For many teams, that limitation is exactly what makes it easier to use.

Learn more about how Tettra compares to Confluence: Tettra vs Confluence.

Looking for more tools similar to Tettra? Check out this list of Tettra alternatives.

What users say about Tettra:

"Tettra makes it simple for our company to develop material that can be shared and approved by our whole team. We utilize it in a collaborative setting where we can configure many roles and responsibilities to keep the information current. Tettra's interface with Slack is quite beneficial because we can search for information, create new pages, and quote other wiki sites to contextualize remarks in a Slack thread. But since only one person can work on a draft at a time, if Tettra could create a collaborative draft (like Google Docs) that would be fantastic."

Capterra review

4. Slite

Confluence alternative Slite

Slite is a team documentation tool that puts writing and reading first. It's designed for internal docs, meeting notes, and long-living team knowledge, with an editor that feels calm and focused rather than packed with options.

Teams often choose Slite when Confluence feels heavy or distracting. The structure is simple, navigation is clear, and it's easy to keep documents tidy over time. Slite also places a lot of emphasis on review and ownership, which helps teams avoid outdated pages quietly piling up.

Slite works best for teams that want a shared source of truth without turning documentation into a project of its own. It's less flexible than Confluence in terms of customization and integrations, but easier to live with day to day if your main goal is clear, readable internal docs.

Learn more about how Slite compares to Confluence: Slite vs Confluence.

Looking for more tools similar to Slite? Check out this list of Slite alternatives.

What users say about Slite:

"I think Slite is excellent at organizing information and providing an easy wiki for your employees to find up-to-date information."

Capterra review

5. Slab

Confluence alternative Slab

Slab is an internal knowledge base that puts readability first. It's designed for teams that want their documentation to be easy to read, easy to trust, and easy to keep current, without the clutter that often builds up in larger tools like Confluence.

Teams often choose Slab when Confluence starts to feel overwhelming. Content in Slab is organized around topics and collections rather than complex space hierarchies. The editor is clean and consistent, which helps documentation stay clear even when many people contribute. Features like content verification and ownership make it easier to spot outdated pages and keep important docs accurate over time.

It's not aimed at teams that need heavy customization or complex workflows. Slab focuses on making knowledge easy to write, read, and trust. If your main goal is a clean internal wiki rather than an all-purpose collaboration platform, it can be a comfortable alternative to Confluence.

Learn more about how Slab compares to Confluence: Slab vs Confluence.

Looking for more tools similar to Slab? Check out this list of Slab alternatives.

What users say about Slab:

"Excellent alternative for creating a wiki or corporate knowledge base. It is the tool that I selected to create the knowledge base of the research team to which I belong. We have been using it since the beginning of 2020. Very useful for academic or business use."

Capterra review

6. GitBook

Confluence alternative GitBook

GitBook started as a tool for writing developer documentation, and that focus still shows today. It's built around clear, well-structured content, with an editor that feels closer to writing than to managing a complex workspace. For teams that care about readable docs, it keeps things simple and predictable.

Teams often choose GitBook over Confluence when their focus is documentation rather than collaboration. The editor is clean, versioning is built in, and content is organized in a way that works well for longer guides and reference material. Publishing to the web is a core part of the product, which makes it popular for teams that need both internal and public docs.

GitBook is less flexible than Confluence outside of documentation use cases. It's not meant to handle planning, whiteboards, or mixed workflows, and it doesn't try to be an all-purpose workspace. If you rely on Confluence as an all-purpose team hub, it may feel too narrow.

Learn more about how GitBook compares to Confluence: GitBook vs Confluence.

Looking for more tools similar to GitBook? Check out this list of GitBook alternatives.

What users say about GitBook:

"Gitbook offers the possibility to have an online wiki in an organized and easy way. You don't need to be related to the technical world to know how to use this tool since it has a very intuitive interface. You can create folders, categories, upload files, share a page in a public way, etc. It is a very complete tool. I use GitBook for one of my projects in which a lot of non-developer people participate."

Capterra review

7. Quip

Confluence alternative Quip

Quip is a project management and task collaboration software that combines documents, spreadsheets, checklists, presentation slides, and chat in one tool. Tightly integrated with Salesforce, Quip is a great Confluence alternative for large teams and enterprises.

Adopting Quip will likely come with a certain learning curve, so make sure to allocate enough time to thoroughly evaluate it together with your entire team to make sure everyone can get the hang of it.

While Quip is more expensive than most other alternatives, it can replace not only Confluence but also Google Drive, Slack, and other online collaboration tools, saving costs in the long run.

What users say about Quip:

"Quip has managed to stand out in this heavily competitive field of online collaboration. Quip UI is really smooth and feels new! Perhaps one point was, it takes significant time for a new guy to get up to speed with the tool and understand all the intricate details."

— Verified Reviewer (Capterra)

8. You Need A Wiki

Confluence alternative YNAW

You Need a Wiki is new to the market of wiki software. If your team enjoys the effortless collaboration experience and familiar feel of Google Docs, this tool might be right for you. With YNAW, you can take your existing disconnected Google Docs and build a wiki out of them in a matter of seconds.

If you've ever compared Confluence and Google Docs and felt more at home with the simplicity of Docs but needed clearer structure, YNAW is an alternative worth considering.

It is still in the early stages of development and new product updates are being rolled out on a regular basis.

What users say about You Need A Wiki:

"I did indeed need a wiki! I was struggling with Tiddly, Notion and a few others and either I did not have the proper computer setup or I just could not figure out how it worked. And how I wanted it to work was to keep all of my book and other information in one place and be able to find it later. This is looking good!"

— James P. (Product Hunt)

9. SharePoint

Confluence alternative SharePoint

SharePoint is an immensely popular intranet portal, used by 190 million people across 200,000 organizations. It's a tool many love to hate, but this list of Confluence alternatives would be incomplete without it.

SharePoint comes for free with any Microsoft Office 365 subscription, making it a cost-effective option for any organization already powered by Microsoft. It also seamlessly integrates with other products in the Microsoft suite, most notably OneDrive, making it easy to keep all your work in sync.

It's a very powerful and versatile platform. SharePoint offers even more flexibility and configuration options than Confluence, allowing you to customize it on a granular level. On the other hand, its extensive feature set comes at a price of a fairly high learning curve and a cluttered, complex interface. New users will likely be overwhelmed by all the available settings and menus and will need dedicated training to get the hang of the platform.

Whether SharePoint would be a good solution to replace Confluence depends on your internal workflows and preferences. Large enterprises may appreciate the flexibility of SharePoint, while smaller teams may prefer a more lightweight and user-friendly alternative.

Looking for more tools similar to SharePoint? Check out this list of SharePoint alternatives.

What users say about SharePoint:

"I like the ability to quickly share, access, and retrieve documents that my team and I use on a weekly basis. It's nice having one place where everything is stored, and that I don't have to go to multiple storage locations to get what I need. The versatility of Sharepoint is also a bright spot."

— Brandon G. (Capterra)

10. Zoho Wiki

Confluence alternative Zoho wiki

Zoho Wiki is an enterprise wiki tool that is offered as a part of Zoho Office Suite and integrates well with other Zoho Products, such as Zoho Analytics and Zoho Projects. While its feature count is not as extensive as that of Confluence, it covers all the essentials, including a powerful WYSIWYG editor, advanced access management, custom branding, and more.

Zoho Wiki is available for free for teams with up to 3 members and offers a very affordable Business subscription plan for just €2.70 per user per month. It's best-suited for small teams, educators, and anyone who is working with a limited budget.

What users say about Zoho Wiki:

"Zoho Wiki is a great software for knowledge management and collaborating with globally located teams on certain projects. It has a well-designed feed, and strong access controls. This gives me master access to all the materials I need, with a good customizable layout too."

— Carly A. (G2)

11. Basecamp

Confluence alternative Basecamp

Like Quip, Basecamp is an all-in-one remote collaboration tool. It brings together message boards, tasks, documents, files, calendars, and more. It can replace Confluence, Google Drive, Slack, and many other tools, serving as your team's central collaboration hub.

Basecamp particularly shines as a tool for remote companies. The Basecamp team was one of the pioneers of remote work and incorporated their personal experiences and learnings into the design of their product.

If you are managing a virtual team and like the idea of consolidating all work in one place and reducing the number of tools you use – Basecamp can be a great option for you.

Looking for more tools similar to Basecamp? Check out this list of Basecamp alternatives.

What users say about Basecamp:

"I've personally used Basecamp for two years and have liked it in general for organizing Digital Marketing projects within an agency. Like any software with vast functionality, you have to learn all of its features to use it as it is intended to be used."

— Stanislav G. (Capterra)

12. BookStack

Confluence alternative BookStack

BookStack stands out as one of the few open-source and self-hosted Confluence alternatives that is also fairly user-friendly. The initial installation may require some patience and technical skills, but once your wiki is up and running, it should be easy to bring new users on board.

The tool also offers a clean, intuitive interface and a wide range of customization options. If you are looking for a self-hosted free Confluence alternative, consider BookStack.

Looking for more tools similar to BookStack? Check out this list of BookStack alternatives.

What users say about BookStack:

"The stock interface design has a modern feel and is simple for new users to use. Granular permissions can be set up for specific roles on a per-content basis and permissions will waterfall down to child content. However, the current installation process involves many steps and may be a lot to take in for people not familiar with setting up Laravel applications."

— Dan B. (Slant)

6. Notion

Confluence alternative Notion

Notion approaches team documentation very differently from Confluence. Instead of structured spaces and rigid page trees, it gives teams a flexible workspace where documents, tables, and lightweight project views can live side by side.

Teams often use Notion to combine internal docs with planning, roadmaps, or team wikis in one place. Pages are easy to rearrange, link, and reuse, which makes it possible to shape the workspace around how the team actually works. For smaller teams or fast-moving companies, this flexibility can feel refreshing compared to Confluence's more formal setup.

The downside is that Notion asks you to make more decisions up front. There's less built-in structure, and keeping content organized takes some discipline as the workspace grows. It's a strong Confluence alternative for teams that want control and adaptability, and a weaker fit for those who prefer strict structure and governance out of the box.

Learn more about how Notion compares to Confluence: Notion vs Confluence.

Looking for more tools similar to Notion? Check out this list of Notion alternatives.

What users say about Notion:

"Overall, Notion has been a great addition to our team. We use it to host all our internal wikis and general project information, enabling a seamless workflow. I love the simple interface and the customization possibilities. It's intuitive and adaptable, making it easy to implement across various projects. Whether used as a project tracker or an internal wiki, it serves our needs well."

Capterra review

14. Wiki.js

Confluence alternative Wikijs

Wiki.js is a powerful open-source free documentation tool and wiki software built on Node.js. Popular among developers, Wiki.js saves all content directly as Markdown (.md) files and syncs with your remote Git repository. With a modern and elegant interface, it's a great platform for both internal and external documentation.

If you are a team of developers looking to replace Confluence with a high-performance, self-hosted alternative, give Wiki.js a try.

15. Papyrs

Confluence alternative Papyrs

Papyrs may not be the most powerful and feature-packed tool on this list, but it is one of the most user-friendly ones. It was designed to be a more lightweight and modern alternative to tools like Confluence and SharePoint.

Papyrs is a fairly general-purpose tool that allows you to set up your internal or external wiki, create an intranet portal for your employees, collaborate on projects, or even build a product knowledge base for your customers. Its feature set includes a drag-and-drop page editor, powerful search, version history, user permissions, comments, and more.

The pricing model of Papyrs is tiered. Its cheapest plan starts at $89 per month, making it a fairly expensive option if you are a small team. Large companies, however, can take advantage of the "Company Intranet" plan that charges a flat $899 fee per month, regardless of how many users you add.

What users say about Papyrs:

"Creating a wiki site was super easy with this intuitive program. Although for our needs some of the features are a bit too rich, the overall product is much more user-friendly than our last intranet site, and it's much more appealing to our company users as well."

— Maura V. (Capterra)

Other alternatives to Confluence

In addition to the tools covered above, there are several other Confluence alternatives that may be a better fit depending on how your team works and what you need from a documentation tool.

How we evaluated Confluence alternatives

We've been working with team documentation and wiki software for many years, both as users and as people who regularly review and compare these tools. This article is based on that experience, combined with hands-on testing and ongoing research.

Each Confluence alternative on this list was reviewed across the same set of criteria: the writing and editing experience, content structure and navigation, search reliability, permissions, version history, integrations, export and backup options, publishing features, and admin controls.

In addition to testing the products ourselves where possible, we reviewed reviews on platforms like Capterra, G2, and Product Hunt. Patterns in reviews carried more weight than individual opinions.

Why you can trust this list

This page is reviewed and updated regularly to reflect product changes, new features, and pricing updates. Tools are included based on how often they come up as realistic alternatives to Confluence and how well they fit different team needs. Rankings and descriptions are not influenced by sponsorships or paid placements.

Find the best Confluence alternative for your team

There is a reason why so many new Confluence alternatives are springing up every year. Confluence tries to do many things, but ultimately doesn't truly excel at any of them.

While choosing between all these options may seem overwhelming at first, it's an opportunity to find a solution that better matches your team's unique needs. We hope this list has made the decision a little easier.

Written by Björn Michelsen

Björn is the CEO and co-founder of Nuclino. His writing draws on 10+ years of experience designing collaboration and productivity software used by teams of all sizes, across many industries.

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