A cheap Confluence alternative: a team wiki on plain files
Confluence charges for every person, and its self-hosted version ends in 2029. A team wiki on plain Markdown files: what it costs and what you give up.
- Confluence Cloud costs money for every person above its free plan of 10 users. Confluence Data Center, the self-hosted one, becomes read-only on 2029-03-28.
- A small team usually needs four things from a wiki: pages in folders, the right people with the right access, working together, and safe use by AI helpers.
- mdnest does these four on plain Markdown files, on a server you run, with no fee per person.
- You give up Jira links, the Marketplace and a support contract. This post says where, and names four other wikis that may fit you better.
Confluence is a good product. The trouble is the way you pay for it. Every person you add is one more seat on the bill, including the ones who only read a page once a month. And if you run Confluence on your own servers, that version has an end date.
This post is for teams of about 5 to 100 people who use a wiki for documents, how-tos and runbooks. If your wiki is full of Jira macros and Marketplace apps, read the section on what you give up first.
Why teams look for another wiki
You pay per person
Confluence Cloud is priced per user per month. The bill grows with every hire, and with every contractor who needs to read one page.
a cost that does not grow with headcount.
Data Center has an end date
Atlassian stopped selling Data Center to new customers on 2026-03-30. Existing customers can buy until 2028-03-30. Instances become read-only on 2029-03-28.
a wiki you can keep running after 2029.
Your pages live in Confluence
A space exports as PDF, HTML, XML or CSV. Atlassian's export page does not list Markdown. A page in your own folder works with grep, git and any editor.
pages that are files you own.
What it costs, worked out
Atlassian's pricing page lists Confluence Cloud Standard at USD 5.42 per user per month and Premium at USD 10.44 per user per month. It also lists a free plan for up to 10 users. (Checked on 2026-10-13. The price per user can change with team size and how you pay, so use Atlassian's own calculator before you decide.)
Here is what those list prices add up to over one year:
| Team size | Standard, USD per year | Premium, USD per year | mdnest |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10 people | Free plan | 1,253 | No fee per person |
| 25 people | 1,626 | 3,132 | No fee per person |
| 50 people | 3,252 | 6,264 | No fee per person |
| 100 people | 6,504 | 12,528 | No fee per person |
mdnest is free and open source (MIT license). What you pay for is a small server and a backup, and those prices depend on where you host. A server you already run costs nothing extra. Confluence costs more with each row. mdnest has no fee per person.
Four jobs a team wiki has to do
Folders people can find things in
A Confluence space becomes a mdnest namespace, which is a folder on your server. The page tree is the folder tree. You move pages with Move to…, which also works on a phone, and you link them with [[wikilinks]].
The right people, the right access
Three roles, grants on a whole namespace or one folder, groups, and sign-in with your company account (SSO). Every note shows who created it and who edited it last.
Working together
Two people can edit one note at the same time and see each other's cursors (an admin turns on live collaboration in the server settings). Comments sit inline on the text. A task board is built from your - [ ] checkboxes.
Safe for AI helpers
An agent uses an API token, and the token gets exactly the access of the person who made it. It reads and writes through the MCP server or the command line.
Who can open a note
Every request goes through the same checks, in order, whether it comes from a person or from an agent's token. The first yes allows it. If all four answers are no, it is refused.
There are three roles:
| Role | Reach | What they can do |
|---|---|---|
| Super-admin | The whole server | Manage every user, every namespace and every grant |
| Admin | One or more namespaces | Invite people, give and take away access in their own namespaces only |
| Collaborator | Only what they are granted | Read or write the namespaces and folders an admin gave them |
A team lead can be admin of their own namespace and cannot touch anyone else's. A grant on a folder covers everything below it.
Groups and sign-in
You can give access to a group instead of to one person at a time. A group can be a list of people you pick, or a group from your identity provider. If you set OIDC_GROUPS_CLAIM (for example groups on Entra ID), everyone in the matching group gets the access when they sign in. Sign-in works with any OIDC provider (Google Workspace, Okta, Entra, Keycloak, Auth0), Firebase, or local accounts with two-factor codes.
Two details matter to the person who runs IT:
- If you take away a person's grant, their tokens lose that access at once.
- Group membership from your identity provider is read at sign-in. SSO sessions last 12 hours, so someone you remove from a group at your identity provider can keep access for up to 12 hours.
What you give up
Be honest with yourself about this list before you move.
- Jira and the Marketplace. The mdnest docs describe no Jira integration and no app store. If your pages depend on Jira macros, keep Confluence for those.
- A bulk Confluence importer. mdnest does not have one. You can paste from Confluence and the rich text turns into Markdown, and you can convert an exported space yourself (see the steps below). Docmost can import a Confluence export directly (its pricing page lists that under a paid plan), and that is a real advantage for a large wiki.
- A support contract. mdnest is open source and has no vendor support contract. There is no company to call. For some companies that alone decides it.
- Offline use. mdnest is a server, so it needs a connection to reach it.
- Compliance paperwork. If an audit needs a vendor's certificates, check that first.
Other wikis worth a look
How to move one space over
Start with one space, not the whole wiki.
- In Confluence, a space admin exports the space as HTML.
- Convert the pages to Markdown. Pandoc is a free tool that does this:
for f in *.html; do pandoc -f html -t gfm "$f" -o "${f%.html}.md"; done
- Open a few pages and check tables, images and any macros, because those are the parts that convert badly.
- Put the folder on your mdnest server. Each namespace is a directory on the host, so you add the folder you copied as a namespace.
- Give the team access, by person or by group.
The Quick Start gets mdnest running from one Docker Compose file, so you can try this with one small space before you decide.
A checklist before you leave Confluence
- I know how many people use the wiki, and what their seats cost per year.
- Nothing important depends on Jira macros or Marketplace apps.
- I can live without a vendor support contract, or I have someone who can fix problems.
- I tried one exported space and the pages looked right.
- Access is set by group, and I know a removed person keeps access for up to 12 hours.
- There is a backup of the server, and git backup is turned on so every note has history.
Sources
Checked on 2026-10-13.
- Atlassian, Data Center end of life: atlassian.com/licensing/data-center-end-of-life
- Atlassian, Confluence Cloud pricing: atlassian.com/software/confluence/pricing
- Atlassian, export content: support.atlassian.com, export content to Word, PDF, HTML and XML
- Docmost: github.com/docmost/docmost, import and export, pricing
- Outline: github.com/outline/outline, MCP changelog
- BookStack: github.com/BookStackApp/BookStack, installation
- Wiki.js: js.wiki, github.com/requarks/wiki
- mdnest: user guide, security, SSO setup, MCP, setup