Overview

Kanka organizes a campaign into about 20 categories, including characters, locations, families, items, quests, journals, calendars, events, and abilities. Categories can be disabled campaign by campaign, making the structure adaptable to different TTRPG systems or to projects with no game system at all. Unlimited campaigns and entries on the free plan make it feasible to maintain separate worlds without a basic content-count ceiling.

Collaboration controls are more substantial than a shared document’s simple invite list. Owners can assign roles, control what members see and do, and preview a campaign from a member’s perspective. That is useful for groups with different responsibilities; a solo writer may get less value from those controls.

Key features

Connected settings

Linked relations, timelines, custom calendars, and interactive maps with layers and pins help keep people, places, and events connected. The rich-text editor supports @mentions. This suits a setting that needs cross-referenced detail; a group wanting only lightweight session notes may find the category-based approach more than it needs.

Integration and control

The REST API is available on every account and supports scripts, campaign backups, Discord bots, dashboards, VTT integrations, and data synchronization. The default limit is 30 requests per minute, rising to 90 for subscribers. That is a useful route into a team’s existing stack, but the cap matters for integrations that make frequent calls.

Premium campaigns add community plugins, custom CSS and themes, family trees, role-specific dashboards, and webhooks that send updates to Discord and other tools. These options make paid access relevant not just for more campaigns, but for teams that want to tailor workflows and presentation.

Kanka says its servers and user data are hosted in the EU, data is encrypted in transit via SSL, and database backups are made twice daily and regularly tested. Users can download their content at any time and export a whole campaign, which provides a practical exit path if a group later changes platforms.

Pricing

Kanka is freemium, with no free trial. Kobold is free forever and includes unlimited entries and campaigns, making it a capable starting point for groups that do not need premium campaign features. The free tier is not a time-limited preview, but premium campaign capacity and larger upload allowances require a paid plan.

Kobold: 0.00 USD per free. Unlimited entries and campaigns.
Owlbear: 4.16 USD per year (billed $4.16/month, billed yearly). Includes 1 active premium campaign, 10 MiB file and map sizes, ad-free use, a private Discord channel, and roadmap voting. It fits a group that wants premium tools for one main campaign.
Wyvern: 8.33 USD per year (billed $8.33/month, billed yearly). Includes 3 active premium campaigns and 25 MiB file and map sizes, plus ad-free use, a private Discord channel, and roadmap voting. It suits users managing several active settings or needing more room for files and maps.
Elemental: 20.82 USD per year (billed $20.82/month, billed yearly). Includes 7 active premium campaigns and 100 MiB file and map sizes, plus ad-free use, a private Discord channel, roadmap voting, and high impact on future features through Discord. It is the tier for a larger portfolio of premium campaigns or larger media needs.

All paid prices are billed yearly, so the monthly figures are not month-to-month terms. The free plan’s unlimited entries and campaigns do not remove the paid tiers’ active premium-campaign limits or file and map size caps. Kanka also has a 3 GB storage limit, which teams with substantial media libraries should weigh alongside the per-file limits.

Platforms

Kanka is available on the web and has an API. Its interface adapts to smaller screens and its features work on mobile devices, but there is no dedicated mobile app. Self-hosting is possible with the free version, but premium features such as larger uploads, plugins, and custom CSS are unavailable on self-hosted installations, and the team does not provide self-hosting support. That makes it a poor fit for teams that require both self-managed hosting and Kanka’s premium toolkit.

Who it's for

Kanka suits game masters, players, worldbuilders, writers, and content creators who want a shared, organized home for a setting, with access controls and connections between its records. It can accommodate any TTRPG system or none. Builders who need API access without a paid subscription have a clear entry point; teams with heavy API traffic should account for the 30-requests-per-minute default and subscriber cap of 90.

Pros and cons

Pro: Unlimited free campaigns and entries make it practical to keep multiple worlds without a basic content quota.
Pro: Roles, granular visibility and action controls, and member-view previews support collaboration with differentiated access.
Pro: REST API access on all accounts and whole-campaign export support integration and portability.
Con: API requests are capped at 30 per minute by default and 90 per minute for subscribers, constraining high-frequency integrations.
Con: Self-hosting excludes premium features and comes without support from the team.
Con: There is no dedicated mobile app, and paid plans cap active premium campaigns and individual file and map sizes.

Alternatives

Game Wiki Software is the broader category to explore when comparing wiki-oriented options. Choose World Anvil instead if a worldbuilding service with a free Freeman plan—2 worlds, 42 articles, 100 MB storage, and 1 MB uploads—is a closer fit. Nectory is worth considering for a team wiki: its free plan supports one wiki space, three team members, 1 GB storage, public wikis, full-text search, and draft-and-publish workflow.

Obsidian Portal may suit a group whose free needs fit within two campaigns, 2 MB per campaign, and one map, or whose paid needs match its Ascendant plan at 5.99 USD per month for unlimited campaigns and 10 GB per Ascendant GM. Campfire is another alternative. For teams seeking free wiki hosting with open-source code and more than 300 extensions and skins, consider Miraheze. wiki.gg offers free hosting subject to application and case-by-case acceptance, with a wiki.gg subdomain only. Wikily is another option for creating and reading wikis, and Fandom is a free alternative.

Verdict

Choose Kanka if your group wants a structured campaign and worldbuilding hub with member-level controls, an API on every account, and no free-tier cap on campaigns or entries. Its main advantage is combining those organizational and collaboration tools with broad integration potential. Look elsewhere if self-hosting is essential alongside premium customization, if you need a dedicated mobile app, or if your API workload exceeds its request limits.

	Arcane Circle	Kanka
Free plan	No	Yes
Free trial	No	No
Paid from	—	$0.35/mo
Open source	No	No
Platforms	Web	api, self-hosted, Web
Paid from	2.99 /mo	4.16 /mo
Role permissions	Yes	Yes
Revision history	Yes	Yes
Free plan	—	Yes
Custom domain	—	No
Media uploads	—	Yes
API access	—	Yes
Storage limit	—	3 GB

Arcane Circle vs Kanka

Arcane Circle

Kanka