Documentation · pricing
Outline pricing
Outline publishes 3 tiers. Below is each one, what it adds over the tier beneath it, and where the ladder stops being worth climbing for most people.
As of 30 August 2026, Outline pricing is free across 3 published tiers. Figures are the vendor's list prices as recorded on this page's last check; the vendor's site is the final word.
- Entry price
- Free
- Model
- Free to self-host, per user per month when hosted by the vendor
- Tiers
- 3
- Free tier
- Yes
Outline plans, side by side
Every published tier in ascending order of price, with the number of features each one lists. An absence here means the record does not itemise it, not that the tier lacks it.
| Plan | Price | Features listed | Step up from the tier below |
|---|---|---|---|
| Self-hosted | Free | 5 | Entry tier |
| Team (hosted) | On request | 4 | Priced on request |
| Enterprise (hosted) | On request | 4 | Priced on request |
What each tier adds
The set difference between each tier's feature list and the one beneath it. Where a tier lists nothing new, the vendor has either stopped repeating the inherited list or the tier raises limits rather than adding capability, the record does not distinguish the two, so this page does not either.
Self-hosted
FreeThe entry tier. It covers source available under the business source licence, no licence fee for use inside your own organisation, requires postgres, redis and s3-compatible storage, requires an external identity provider for login, no right to offer it as a service to third parties.
Team (hosted)
On requestOver Self-hosted, this tier adds:
- Charged per user per month
- Hosted and maintained by the vendor
- Single sign-on through Google, Slack or Microsoft
- No choice of hosting region
Enterprise (hosted)
On requestOver Team (hosted), this tier adds:
- SAML single sign-on and provisioning
- Administrative controls and audit visibility
- Negotiated terms and support
- Pricing on application
Where Outline stops being free
Self-hosted, Free
- Source available under the Business Source Licence
- No licence fee for use inside your own organisation
- Requires Postgres, Redis and S3-compatible storage
- Requires an external identity provider for login
- No right to offer it as a service to third parties
No paid tier on record
Outline lists a free tier and no priced tier above it in the record we hold.
What the product covers
The full Outline feature record, grouped as the catalogue groups it. This is the product as a whole; the record does not map every feature onto a specific tier.
Other
- Structured collections
- Block editor
- Search
- Backlinks and mentions
- Templates
- API and webhooks
- Single sign-on
- Self-hosting
People bring Outline in for running an internal wiki on your own infrastructure when documentation cannot leave a specific jurisdiction, replacing a general-purpose workspace tool with something narrower where search speed and writing flow matter most, keeping engineering decision records and postmortems in templated documents that link to each other automatically, giving a company already standardised on google or okta a wiki that inherits identity and group membership directly. If that is not the job you are buying for, the alternatives to Outline are worth a look before you commit to a tier.
How that compares in Documentation
Too few documentation tools in this directory publish a starting price to quote a meaningful median, so the table below is a like-for-like list rather than a ranking.
| Tool | Entry price | Model | Rated | Head to head |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Outline (this page) | Free | Free to self-host, per user per month when hosted by the vendor | - | |
| Paligo | On request | Per author seat per year | - | vs Outline |
| Guidde | Free, then $19/month | Per creator per month | - | vs Outline |
| Adobe RoboHelp | On request | Per user per month, annual commitment | - | vs Outline |
| HelpDocs | On request | Per editor seat per month | - | vs Outline |
| MadCap Flare | On request | Per author per year, annual subscription only | - | vs Outline |
| Doxygen | Free | Open source, no licence fee | - | vs Outline |
Ratings are aggregated from third-party sources and imported with each catalogue entry, they are not reviews hosted on Softwr. How each figure is used is set out on the Outline badges page.
Before you pay for Outline
Three things this page cannot tell you, and all three change the bill. The record carries a price and a billing period but not the unit - per-seat and flat-rate pricing are indistinguishable in this data, so a five-person team may be looking at five times the figure above. It carries no annual rate, so any discount for paying yearly is not something this page can quote. And it carries no trial length.
What it can tell you is the shape of the ladder: 3 tiers between Free and On request, with the jump itemised above. Because there is a free tier, the cheapest way to answer the rest is to use it before paying anything.
Outline runs on web, self-hosted, docker, ios, android, and is published by Outline of United States. The full record is on the Outline review, and the rest of the category is under best documentation tools.
Outline pricing questions
- How much does Outline cost?
- Outline publishes 3 tiers, from Free for Self-hosted up to On request for Enterprise (hosted). The entry tier costs nothing.
- Does Outline have a free plan?
- Yes. The Self-hosted tier costs nothing and covers source available under the business source licence, no licence fee for use inside your own organisation, requires postgres, redis and s3-compatible storage.
- What is the difference between Self-hosted and Team (hosted) on Outline?
- Team (hosted) costs On request against Free, and adds charged per user per month, hosted and maintained by the vendor, single sign-on through google, slack or microsoft, no choice of hosting region.
- Which documentation tools can I use without paying?
- 4 of the 8 documentation tools listed alongside Outline have a free tier: Guidde, Doxygen, Fumadocs, BookStack.
- What am I actually paying for with Outline?
- The record lists 8 features across 1 area: other. In practice it is brought in for running an internal wiki on your own infrastructure when documentation cannot leave a specific jurisdiction, replacing a general-purpose workspace tool with something narrower where search speed and writing flow matter most, keeping engineering decision records and postmortems in templated documents that link to each other automatically.
- Does Outline charge per user?
- The record carries a price and a billing period for each of its 3 tiers, but not the unit that price is charged in. Per-seat and flat-rate billing look identical in this data, so check the vendor's page before budgeting for a team.
- Are these Outline prices current?
- They are what the catalogue entry holds, refreshed when the entry is. Vendors change pricing without notice and nobody at Softwr re-verifies each tier by hand, so treat this as a structured summary and the vendor's own pricing page as the authority.
- What should I compare Outline against before paying?
- The closest documentation tools in this directory are Paligo, Guidde, Adobe RoboHelp, HelpDocs. Each has a side-by-side comparison with Outline covering price, platforms and features.