Outline
- About
- The fastest knowledge base for growing teams. Open-source alternative to Confluence and Notion.
- Catalogue
- No. 070
- Category
- Data & Content
- Founded
- 2016, United States (Open Source)
- GitHub stars
- ★ 40.9k

Overview
Outline is an open-source knowledge base and wiki designed for modern teams. It combines the simplicity of markdown with the power of a structured knowledge base, offering real-time collaboration, beautiful design, and lightning-fast performance. Outline helps teams organize their documentation, share knowledge, and collaborate seamlessly with an intuitive interface that feels familiar yet powerful.
What it does well
Outline provides real-time collaborative editing with a beautiful, distraction-free interface. It supports markdown for easy formatting, offers powerful search capabilities, includes version history and document recovery, provides fine-grained permissions and access controls, integrates with Slack and other tools, supports 20+ languages with RTL support, and offers both self-hosted and cloud deployment options. The platform includes collections for organizing documents, public sharing capabilities, and an open API for custom integrations.
Why it’s in the collection
Outline is perfect for teams that want a fast, beautiful, and powerful knowledge base without the complexity of enterprise solutions. Its markdown-first approach makes it familiar to developers while remaining accessible to non-technical users. The open-source nature ensures transparency and customization, while the hosted option provides convenience. It's ideal for technical documentation, team wikis, product specs, meeting notes, and company handbooks. The real-time collaboration and intuitive organization make it easy for teams to maintain up-to-date documentation.
On GitHub
- Stars
- 40,902
- Forks
- 3,617
- Commits
- 10,666
- Repository
- outline/outline
Languages
- TypeScript 95.9%
- JavaScript 4%
- HTML 0.1%
Compared with
NotionAll-in-one workspace with databases and more features, but can be slower and more complex for simple documentation needs.
CraftBeautiful document editor with native apps, but less focused on team collaboration and knowledge base structure.
ConfluenceEnterprise wiki platform with extensive features, but heavier, more expensive, and less modern interface.
See every open-source alternative to Confluence and Notion in the collection.



