Confluence: pricing, pros and cons
Confluence is the enterprise wiki, strongest when Jira is already in the building. Its editing experience is dated enough that adoption outside engineering is a fight.
- Price
- $6.4/seat/moestimate
- At 50 people
- $3,840/yr
- Free tier
- Yes
- Website
- atlassian.com
Specification
What Confluence supports
The dimensions every wiki in our catalogue is compared on.
- Database-style tables
- No
- Publish public pages
- Yes
- AI search over your content
- No
- Version history
- Yes
- Page-level permissions
- Yes
- SAML single sign-on
- Yes
- SOC 2
- Yes
- EU data residency
- Yes
- Self-hostable
- No
- Open source
- No
- Public API
- Yes
- Native mobile apps
- Yes
The honest assessment
Confluence: pros and cons
Editing experience is dated enough that adoption outside engineering is a fight.
What it does well
- Page-level permissions, approvals and audit trails
- Tight Jira linkage between specs and the work they describe
- Space model keeps large organisations navigable
What it costs you
- Writing in it feels like a chore, so documentation quietly stops happening
- Pages sprawl and go stale with no lifecycle to catch them
- Slower than modern editors, particularly on long pages
Fit
Who Confluence suits
Choose it if
- Organisations already standardised on Atlassian
- Teams needing page approvals, granular permissions and audit trails
Look elsewhere if
- Companies where the problem is that nobody writes documentation
- Small teams who will find the space model heavier than their needs
Head to head
Confluence compared
Direct comparisons against every other wiki we cover.
4 alternatives
Other wikis worth a look
Everything else we cover in documentation & wiki, cheapest first.
Questions
Confluence, answered
What is Confluence best for?
Organisations already standardised on Atlassian. Teams needing page approvals, granular permissions and audit trails. In short: atlassian’s enterprise wiki, strongest when you already run Jira.
What are the downsides of Confluence?
Writing in it feels like a chore, so documentation quietly stops happening. Pages sprawl and go stale with no lifecycle to catch them. Slower than modern editors, particularly on long pages. The trade-off in one line: Editing experience is dated enough that adoption outside engineering is a fight.
How much does Confluence cost?
About $6.4/seat/mo on its common paid tier — roughly $3,840 a year for 50 people. There is a free tier. That figure is our unverified estimate; confirm it with the vendor before budgeting.
What are the best Confluence alternatives?
In documentation & wiki the credible alternatives are Coda, Notion, Outline, Slite. Which fits depends on your team size, budget and non-negotiables — our questionnaire ranks all of them against your answers in about three minutes.
Is Confluence worth switching away from?
Only if one of its real drawbacks is costing you something concrete. Editing experience is dated enough that adoption outside engineering is a fight. If none of the downsides above describe your situation, staying is almost always cheaper than moving — a migration costs weeks, and a tool that merely annoys you is not worth them.
Prices are unverified estimates — useful for comparing orders of magnitude, not for budgeting. Confirm the current figure with the vendor before you commit to anything.
Is Confluence still the right call for your team?
Answer about a dozen questions and we will rank Confluence against every alternative in documentation & wiki — with the reasoning shown, and the cost of switching at your actual seat count.