Self-host BookStack

License: MIT
Host needs: Not stated in official docs
Install method: Manual install or Ubuntu scripts
One-click template: Available

Short answer

BookStack is MIT licensed and runs on PHP 8.2 or later with MySQL 8.0 or MariaDB 10.6 or later. The official install routes are a manual install and Ubuntu install scripts. The installation page says it "does not currently support shared PHP hosting". The same page also lists managed hosting providers.

There is no official Docker image on that page. It points to community images from LinuxServer.io and solidnerd.

BookStack has no built-in backup, so you back up two things yourself. For the database, the guide suggests mysqldump. For files, it lists .env, public/uploads, storage/uploads and themes. Copy those files as a separate step from the database dump.

Source: BookStack's canonical repository is on Codeberg at codeberg.org/bookstack/bookstack. BookStackApp/BookStack on GitHub is a GitHub copy.
License: MIT. The LICENSE file on Codeberg is "The MIT License (MIT)", and the GitHub copy's LICENSE matches it.
Last commit: 3 Nov 2026 02:23 SGT on Codeberg, as of 8 Nov 2026. The repository is not archived.
Latest release, as of 17 Oct 2026: v26.09.1, published on Codeberg on 29 Sep 2026 22:23 SGT.
Stars by host: 290 on Codeberg as of 17 Oct 2026, and 19,132 on the GitHub copy as of 8 Nov 2026. The two counts are separate and are not added together.

Requirements

The installation page lists these core requirements:

"PHP >= 8.2"
"Required Extensions: curl, dom, gd, iconv, mbstring, mysqlnd, openssl, pdo, pdo_mysql, tokenizer, xml, zip."
"MySQL >= 8.0 or MariaDB >= 10.6"
"Git Version Control"
"Composer >= v2.2.0"
"A PHP Compatible Webserver"

It adds "BookStack does not currently support shared PHP hosting." CPU, RAM and disk are not stated in the official docs we read.

Docker or Docker Compose

The official guide is the BookStack installation page.
It says "The install process will require some knowledge of hosting a PHP web application & database." The official routes are a manual install and Ubuntu install scripts.
There is no official BookStack Docker image on that page. It says "Community docker setups are available for those that would prefer to use a containerised version of BookStack:" and names LinuxServer.io and solidnerd.

Hosting options

A Railway template for BookStack is at railway.com/deploy/bookstack, created by nonzerosum.
It was created on 7 Mar 2025 and showed "Total Projects 80" on 17 Oct 2026.
The template runs MySQL (mysql:9), Redis (redis:8.2.1), a bucket, ghcr.io/railwayapp/function-bun:1.3.0 and the LinuxServer.io community image linuxserver/bookstack:25.12.9.
That image is pinned to 25.12.9, which is older than v26.09.1, the latest release on Codeberg as of 17 Oct 2026.
The docs give no RAM figure, so the template cannot be checked against the Railway Free limit of "0.5 GB RAM per service".

Affiliate disclosure: Forkshelf earns a commission if you sign up for Railway through the links marked "Paid link" on this page. This does not change the order or content of any guide here.

To get started, create a Railway account (Paid link).

Backups and updates

Backups: the official guide is Backup and Restore.
It notes that BookStack "does not currently have a built-in way to backup and restore content" and says "There are two types of content you need to backup: Files and database records."
For the database it says "The easiest way to backup the database is via mysqldump". The files to keep are .env, public/uploads, storage/uploads and themes.
Updates: the official guide is Updating BookStack.
It says "Updating is currently done via Git version control." The three commands, run in the application root, are "git pull origin release", "composer install --no-dev" and "php artisan migrate".
These steps cover the official install without Docker. Update steps for the community Docker images are not on the official pages.

Alternatives

BookStack is listed on open-source alternatives to Confluence.