BananaWiki

BananaWiki is a self-hosted wiki for teams, schools and communities: Markdown pages with history, fine-grained permissions, and optional collaboration tools (chat, kanban boards, canvases, quizzes, read aloud). It runs as a single wiki, as a desktop app on one computer, or as a hosting platform that gives each customer a separate wiki.

Italiano · Screenshots · Documentation · Getting started · Upgrading · User guide

Features

• Pages: Markdown editor with toolbar, live preview, image upload with alternative text, size, alignment and crop, tables, video embeds and @mentions; categories with drag-and-drop ordering and sequential navigation; full-text search; edit-conflict detection; page history with differences, restore and attribution; autosaved drafts; attachments; PDF and Markdown export; bulk Markdown import and export; a block-based page builder.
• Access control: roles (user, editor, administrator, owner), custom roles, per-user permissions, read and write access per category, public mode, invite codes, open sign-up with an end date, approval of new accounts, two-step verification, suspensions, session management, audit log.
• Content governance: page protection, check-outs with quotas, proposed edits with review, a 48-hour grace period for deletions, scheduled deletion of pages and accounts, temporary roles.
• Collaboration: direct messages and group chats with retention rules, kanban boards, visual canvases, quizzes attached to pages, announcements, badges, a contributor leaderboard, member profiles with custom fields.
• Read aloud: audio versions of pages with local neural voices (Piper) or a GPU server.
• Integration: a REST API with scoped tokens and an OpenAPI description, federation between wikis, custom pages at any free address, third-party plugins (off by default; only the owner or a superuser can install them; 1.4 plugins load through a compatibility layer).
• Administration: appearance themes, interface languages (English, Italian and German included, more can be uploaded), built-in user guide, whole-site export and import, bulk delete.
• Operations: one-command installation with HTTPS configuration, updates with a backup and automatic rollback, encrypted backups to a private Git repository, Docker Compose, a desktop launcher for Windows, macOS and Linux.
• Hosting platform: sign-up, per-customer wikis in isolated containers, custom domains, collaborators, quotas and expiry, platform sign-in, its own API, Google Drive backups. Each new wiki gets its HTTPS certificate right away, also behind Cloudflare, and wikis that stopped are started again.

Quick start

From source (Python 3.11 or newer, Git):

git clone https://github.com/BananaSuite/BananaWiki.git
cd BananaWiki
python3 -m venv .venv && . .venv/bin/activate
python -m pip install -e .
bananawiki serve

Open http://127.0.0.1:5001, run bananawiki setup-token in a second terminal (same folder, same virtual environment) and enter the token to create the first account. See getting started.

Docker Compose (one wiki behind Caddy with automatic HTTPS; building the image needs Docker's BuildKit component, docker buildx):

git clone https://github.com/BananaSuite/BananaWiki.git
cd BananaWiki
WIKI_DOMAIN=wiki.example.org ACME_EMAIL=you@example.org docker compose up -d
docker compose exec wiki python -m bananawiki.cli setup-token

Managed Linux server (systemd services, HTTPS, updates, backups). Install from the latest release tag:

git clone https://github.com/BananaSuite/BananaWiki.git
cd BananaWiki
git checkout "$(git tag -l 'v*' | sort -V | tail -1)"
sudo ./banana install --mode wiki --domain wiki.example.org
sudo bananawiki proxy --install --email you@example.org
sudo bananawiki setup-token

Use --mode hosting for the hosting platform (needs Docker with BuildKit). Any filesystem works; on XFS mounted with prjquota every wiki also gets a hard storage limit. Automatic updates stay off until you run sudo bananawiki updates enable --require-signatures ALLOWED_SIGNERS. See deployment and operations.

Desktop: BananaWiki Desktop runs a wiki on a classroom or office computer without a server.

Upgrading from 1.6 or 1.4: read UPGRADING.md first.

Development

python -m pip install -e ".[dev]"
python -m pytest tests -q -n 2
python -m ruff check .

Use python -m pytest, not pytest: the tests import each other as a package and need the repository root on the path. CI runs the suite on Python 3.11 to 3.14.

Documentation

docs/ covers configuration, deployment, operations, security, permissions, features, the API, federation, plugins, hosting, the desktop app, read aloud and the architecture, plus a user guide in English and Italian. Contributors start with CONTRIBUTING.md and ARCHITECTURE.md. Please follow the code of conduct. Report security issues as described in SECURITY.md, not in public issues.

License

BananaWiki is licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License version 3 only (AGPL-3.0-only); see LICENSE and NOTICE. Personal and commercial use are permitted.

If you modify BananaWiki and let people use it over a network, AGPL section 13 requires you to offer them the corresponding source. Set BW_SOURCE_URL to the source of the version you run; the wiki links to it at /source. Keep the third-party notices.

Started in February 2026 by Luca Zani (OverloadedTech); see NOTICE.

Copyright © 2026 Luca Zani and contributors. Each contributor keeps the copyright in their contributions.