World Anvil vs Kanka vs LegendKeeper: Which Campaign Wiki Fits Your Table?

D&D groups suggest many campaign wikis, and World Anvil, Kanka and LegendKeeper are the three they compare most often. Each suits a different sort of DM, and the complaints you come across on Reddit usually trace back to someone choosing a tool designed around a different prep style.

This post groups them by what they suit. Once you know your prep habits, how many of your players need to read the notes, and your budget, the choice tends to become clear.

If you are still unsure whether a wiki is what you want, start with what a campaign wiki is and what goes in one.

The comparison at a glance

The prices and limits listed here come from each tool's own pricing page, checked in October 2026. They do change, so verify them before you spend.

Is World Anvil free?

This is the question people search about World Anvil more than any other. Yes, it is free, though with a condition that counts for D&D.

Two worlds come with World Anvil's free tier, which it calls Freeman, along with a capped number of articles, two maps holding ten markers apiece, two timelines and 100 MB of storage. You can find out whether the editor appeals to you at that level. It is not enough for a private campaign, because everything on the free tier is public. Nothing stays hidden, no article can be made private, and a player hunting around can always find the villain's real name.

Master, at 54 US dollars a year, is where privacy begins. That tier also strips the adverts and brings in secrets, family trees, calendars, whiteboards and Discord webhooks. Grandmaster, at 99 a year, raises the world cap and includes custom statblocks, random generators and API access. Publishers and studios are the target of Sage, at 300 a year.

Kanka handles this in reverse. Campaigns and entries are unlimited on its free tier and as many as ten members can join a campaign, while upload size, ad removal and premium features like family trees are what you pay for. The paid tiers cost between 49.92 and 249.84 US dollars a year.

LegendKeeper offers no permanent free tier for building. Fourteen days are yours with no card needed. Once those are gone, the free plan allows you to read and export your work but not change it, so the true price is Pro at 9 a month or 90 a year.

World Anvil: best for the worldbuilder who wants depth

Of the three, World Anvil goes deepest, and you can see it on the very first screen. Templates exist for almost anything a setting might hold, whether species, religions or trade routes, and prompts come with each one that push you toward details you would otherwise have passed over.

Both the strength and the price of that depth show up here. A DM crafting a homebrew setting gets lore drawn out by the prompts that they would not have written on their own. For a DM running a weekly game, that same depth can turn prep time into formatting time, so they end up with pages to fill when they needed a session plan.

When a world has an audience, World Anvil performs best. The worlds it holds can be read like a published setting, and the platform also carries a manuscript tool for anyone writing fiction set in that world. If your players enjoy reading lore between sessions, this tool gives them a reason to.

The learning curve is what it costs you. The interface is large, and many of the features a private D&D game leans on sit behind paid tiers.

Kanka: best for budget tables and long campaigns

If you are not paying, Kanka gives you the most of the three. Unlimited entries on the free tier counts for a lot in a long campaign, since entries accumulate more quickly than you would guess. Each named innkeeper, each faction the party met and each item they sold turns into an entry, and a campaign lasting a year can comfortably exceed a few hundred.

The structure rests on entities. Characters, locations, organisations, quests, journals, calendars and maps all get their own type, and you connect them to one another. It looks less polished than World Anvil and feels less fluid than LegendKeeper, yet it stays organised, and roles within the permissions system let you decide which members view which entries.

Two points receive less attention than they deserve. To start, the free version can be self-hosted from its published source code, which matters to anyone who wants their notes on a server of their own. Also, the ten member cap on free campaigns applies per campaign, which covers most tables without trouble.

For long campaigns run by a DM who wants structure and no bill, Kanka fits. The free tier's upload ceilings are low, 3 MiB for files and 5 MiB for maps, which you will run into the first time you add a big map, and learning the interface takes a few sessions.

LegendKeeper: best for DMs who prep fast

LegendKeeper has the most pleasant editor of the three and is the newest. It still describes itself as being in beta. Working in it feels like using a modern document tool rather than filling in a database form, and pages, maps, timelines and whiteboards all sit inside one project.

A few features set it apart at the table. A co-DM can edit the same page while you work, thanks to real-time collaboration with live cursors. A page can be shared with the party while a passage stays back, through secrets and granular permissions. Offline use is supported too, though uploading images and maps still requires a connection. The browser is where it runs, and there is no separate desktop app. Timelines appear as chronicle, Gantt and calendar views, and homebrew worlds can use custom calendar systems.

For groups, its pricing model is the simplest of the three. The project owner alone pays. Guests are free and unlimited, so your players never meet a paywall.

Fast prep and co-DMing are where LegendKeeper fits. No permanent free tier for building exists, which makes it the only one of the three that cannot be used indefinitely without paying.

Kanka vs World Anvil: which one?

When deciding between these two, one question comes first. Do you need privacy without paying?

If the answer is yes, Kanka is the pick. Its free tier lets you control who sees what, and World Anvil's free tier does not. For a private D&D campaign, that decides it for most people.

If paying 54 a year is fine with you, the question becomes a matter of how you work. World Anvil rewards writing. Kanka rewards tracking. A DM who builds a setting ahead of play and takes pleasure in presenting it will feel at home on World Anvil. A DM who needs to know which NPC owes the party money in session thirty will feel at home on Kanka.

LegendKeeper vs World Anvil: which one?

This matchup is tighter, since both are polished and both require money for serious use.

Speed and groups are where LegendKeeper wins. Its editor is faster to work in, real-time co-editing comes built in, and your players join at no cost. Depth and audience are where World Anvil wins. Its templates reach further, it offers more ways to show a world publicly, and the manuscript tool is included.

A simple rule: if the wiki mainly serves you, choose LegendKeeper. If it mainly serves readers, choose World Anvil.

What all three leave to you

One shared trait tends to go unmentioned in comparison posts: every page is yours to write and update on all three.

That sounds obvious until you are twelve sessions into a campaign. The wiki that seemed perfect in week one now claims the duke is alive, the party still owes the thieves' guild, and the cleric has not met her sister yet. Every one of those stopped being true sessions ago. After each game someone must sit down and update the pages, and for most tables the habit fades somewhere in the first dozen sessions.

A manual wiki behaves that way by design. Before you choose, ask yourself whether you will really keep it current.

If the honest answer is no, another type of tool suits better. Saga20 is a campaign wiki that can still be built by hand, with hidden pages, GM notes that stay out of the player view, interactive maps and custom sections. The difference is that recording a session also updates the character, location and faction pages from what happened at the table. Players read the wiki from a link without an account, and player accounts are free if they want to claim a character. For the DM who wants a wiki but knows they will not maintain one by hand, it works best. A DM who takes pleasure in writing lore page by page will get more from World Anvil.

For anyone already on World Anvil who recognizes this as their problem, the World Anvil alternatives comparison covers in more detail what carries over. Saga20's import reads World Anvil material and suggests entries for you to review, so the lore you already wrote is not wasted.

So which campaign wiki should you pick?

• Choose World Anvil if building a setting is what you love, you want readers, or you write fiction in the same world. Set aside 54 a year for privacy.
• Choose Kanka if you want the most available for free, run long campaigns, or want the option to self-host.
• Choose LegendKeeper if you prep quickly, co-DM, or want players to join without paying anything.
• Choose Saga20 if you know you will not update a wiki by hand after every session and want it kept current for you.

Whichever you choose, run two real sessions on it before you commit. Each of these has a free tier or a trial.

For a wider view that includes general note apps like Notion and Obsidian, see the D&D note-taking apps comparison. If you are set on Obsidian, the guide to using Obsidian for D&D walks through a working setup.

What other DMs say

Long community threads hold the most useful opinions on these tools, since people there describe what broke for them a year in. A few worth reading:

• Can someone clarify how Kanka works? on r/worldbuilding, for a plain explanation of Kanka's entity structure from people who use it.
• World Anvil vs Campfire vs LegendKeeper, a long thread with real reasons people switched.
• In search of a free World Anvil alternative, which covers the privacy question from the free tier side.
• Campaign management tools on EN World, a running discussion among GMs who have tried most of them.