Outline
Documentation & KnowledgeA team knowledge base and wiki with real-time editing, search and integrations, offered as a hosted service or as a self-hosted install.
Self-hostable alternative to:
What the free edition leaves out
Scroll sideways to view all columns →The free edition is genuinely usable, but some team or enterprise features need a paid plan. “Not confirmed” means the official pages we read did not say, so we do not guess.
| Feature | Free edition | Details | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| SSO / SAML | Paid | The pricing page lists SAML 2.0 as not included in the self-hosted Community Edition and included from Business. It lists general SSO authentication as included in all three on-premises editions. | Source ↗ |
| Role-based access control | Free | The pricing page lists groups and user permissions as included in the Community Edition. | Source ↗ |
| Audit logs | Paid | The pricing page lists the security audit log as not included in Community and included from Business. | Source ↗ |
| Multi-user / teams | Free | Groups and user permissions are listed as included in Community, and no user limit is listed for that edition. | Source ↗ |
| Backups and restore | Not confirmed | Backup and restore is not described on the pages read. | Source ↗ |
| API access | Free | The pricing page lists API and webhooks as included in all three on-premises editions. | Source ↗ |
| Support SLA | Paid | The pricing page describes Community as limited features with no support, and lists a support contract only under Enterprise. The hosting guide sends Community users to GitHub discussions. | Source ↗ |
Best for
Teams that want a searchable internal wiki with real-time collaboration and can accept a source-available license.
Why choose it over Confluence
The source code is public and you can self-host it for your own organization. The Community Edition includes unlimited documents with version history, real-time editing, comments, templates, groups and permissions, an API with webhooks, and general SSO. Outline's site positions it as an alternative to Confluence and Google Docs.
Where it falls short
The license is the Business Source License, which is not open source, and it forbids offering Outline as a Document Service to third parties. The self-hosted Community Edition is listed as limited features with no support: AI question answering, guest users, SAML 2.0, the audit log and the Confluence importer are listed from the Business edition. Running it in production needs dev-ops experience according to the hosting guide.
Self-hostable alternative to
- Confluence — Outline's site has a page titled as an alternative to Confluence and lists a Confluence importer for its Business edition, so it can replace Confluence as a team wiki.
- Google Docs — Outline's site has a page titled as an alternative to Google Docs for teams that need a structured, searchable knowledge base instead of scattered shared documents.
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