Confluence is Atlassian's team wiki — focused on structured pages, hierarchical spaces, and tight Jira integration for engineering and product teams. SharePoint is Microsoft's enterprise document collaboration and intranet platform — focused on Office files, team sites, and deep Microsoft 365 integration. Confluence wins for engineering teams building living documentation. SharePoint wins for enterprises standardized on Microsoft 365 with heavy Word / Excel / PowerPoint workflows.
| Feature | C Confluence | S SharePoint |
|---|---|---|
| Primary use case | Team wiki and structured pages | Document collaboration + intranet portals |
| Content unit | Pages (block-based since 2024 redesign) | Files (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF) + lists |
| Structure | Spaces → Page tree (hierarchical) | Sites → Libraries → Lists / Files |
| Free plan | Up to 10 users | No standalone free (requires Microsoft 365) |
| Paid plan starts at | $5.16 / user / mo (Standard) | Bundled with Microsoft 365 Business ($6/user/mo) |
| Jira integration | Native, deep (same vendor) | Via add-ons |
| Office files (Word / Excel / PPT) | Attached or embedded | Native edit in-browser or desktop |
| Permissions model | Space + page level | Site + library + item level (more granular) |
| Templates | Pre-built page templates (meeting notes, requirements, retro) | Site templates + Office templates |
| Search | Strong, content-focused | Strongest, includes Office file content + metadata |
| Best for | Engineering / product teams | Microsoft-shop enterprises |
| Learning curve | Moderate | Steeper (especially for admins) |
Confluence is wiki-shaped.
Every team has Spaces; every Space has a tree of Pages; every Page is a block-based document you edit inline. The 2024 redesign moved Confluence closer to Notion's block-editor experience — typed blocks for tables, headings, panels, code, decision-records, and macros (embedded content from Jira, Figma, Lucidchart, etc.). For teams writing structured knowledge — specs, runbooks, decision logs, onboarding docs — Confluence's wiki shape feels natural.
SharePoint is document-shaped. The primary unit is files (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF) stored in Document Libraries inside Team Sites, with metadata, permissions, and version history per file. There are also SharePoint Pages (built from web parts and lists), but the platform's center of gravity is file management, not wiki authoring. For teams whose work product is Office files — proposals, contracts, financial models, executive decks — SharePoint's file-first model is the right fit. For teams whose work product is structured Markdown-style pages, Confluence is closer to the target.
Confluence's biggest advantage is Jira integration.
The same vendor, the same user system, the same permissions model. Engineering teams can link Confluence pages to Jira issues bidirectionally — every spec page can show the linked epic, every retro page can list the resolved tickets, and macros pull live Jira data into Confluence pages. For engineering organizations on Jira, Confluence is the path of least resistance.
SharePoint's biggest advantage is the rest of Microsoft 365. Teams chat, Outlook calendar, OneDrive personal storage, Office desktop apps, Power Automate workflow automation, Power BI dashboards — all integrate cleanly with SharePoint because they share the same underlying tenant and identity. For enterprises that run on Microsoft 365 (which is most Fortune 500 companies), SharePoint is the wiki-and-intranet layer that fits the existing stack. The ecosystem question dominates the platform choice: are you Atlassian-aligned (Jira + Confluence) or Microsoft-aligned (Microsoft 365 + SharePoint)?
Confluence prices per user with a generous free tier.
The free plan supports up to 10 users on Standard features. Paid Standard starts at $5.16/user/month, Premium at $9.73/user/month (with analytics + IP allowlisting + admin features), and Enterprise at custom pricing for 800+ users. Atlassian also offers self-hosted Data Center licenses for organizations that need on-premise deployment.
SharePoint has no meaningful standalone pricing — it ships bundled with Microsoft 365 Business Basic ($6/user/mo), Business Standard ($12.50/user/mo), or Enterprise plans (E3 $36/user/mo, E5 $57/user/mo). The marginal cost of SharePoint inside Microsoft 365 is effectively zero — you're not deciding whether to pay for SharePoint, you're deciding whether to pay for Microsoft 365 (and almost every enterprise already is).
For companies already on Microsoft 365, SharePoint costs nothing additional. For companies starting fresh and evaluating wikis, Confluence's per-user pricing is more direct and the free tier is a real evaluation path. The cost question rarely drives the platform choice — ecosystem alignment usually does.
Both platforms support granular permissions, but at different granularities.
Confluence permissions work at the Space level (most common) or the Page level (when needed). Most teams use Space-level permissions and trust members within a Space. The model is simple and works for organizations where team boundaries roughly match Space boundaries.
SharePoint permissions go deeper — Site / Library / Folder / File / List Item all support custom permissions. Legal, finance, HR, and compliance teams use this to enforce "this folder is visible to executives only, this file is editable only by the CFO" rules at file-level granularity. Combined with Microsoft Purview compliance and DLP (data loss prevention), SharePoint is the stronger fit for enterprises with heavy regulatory or audit requirements.
For most knowledge-base use cases, Confluence's simpler permissions are an advantage — easier to administer, less likely to lock content behind permission walls users can't navigate. For enterprise governance, SharePoint's depth is required.
SharePoint search is one of the strongest enterprise search products available.
It indexes file content (the words inside your Word docs, Excel sheets, and PowerPoint slides), metadata, lists, pages, and people — and ranks results using Microsoft Graph signals about who works with whom. For finding "that proposal from Q3 2023 someone showed me," SharePoint search is hard to beat.
Confluence search is good for wiki content — pages, attachments, and Jira-linked items — and the 2024 redesign improved search ranking significantly. But Confluence doesn't try to index every Word and Excel file the way SharePoint does. If your knowledge graph includes thousands of Office files, SharePoint search wins. If your knowledge graph is wiki pages with occasional attachments, Confluence search is more than adequate.
Confluence onboards content creators quickly.
The block-based editor since 2024 is intuitive enough that engineers write specs without complaint, and templates (meeting notes, decision records, requirements) lower the activation energy further. Confluence's risk is at the consumer side — teams that don't link their wiki pages or update them after launch end up with a graveyard of stale docs. Solution: pair Confluence with a writing culture that values documentation.
SharePoint has a steeper learning curve, especially for admins. Setting up site structure, navigation, permissions, and metadata schemas requires upfront investment. Once configured, content consumers (people reading files) find SharePoint reasonably intuitive — it looks like a file system with search. Content creators face more friction: "do I save this in OneDrive or SharePoint?" "Which library?" "What's the document type?" Some of this friction is good (governance) but it does slow down casual contributors. For teams that need explicit governance, SharePoint's friction is a feature; for teams that need fluid contribution, Confluence is friendlier.
Confluence ties you to Atlassian; SharePoint ties you to Microsoft 365. Both work well inside their respective ecosystems but become friction if you outgrow the parent platform. AFFiNE is an open-source workspace combining block-based docs (like Confluence's modern editor) with an infinite whiteboard and a flexible relational database. Source on GitHub — MIT-licensed editor, AFFiNE Enterprise Edition license for the backend, free for self-hosted personal use. For teams that want wiki-quality docs without ecosystem lock-in, AFFiNE is worth a look. For enterprises deeply standardized on Atlassian or Microsoft 365, stay with the native tool — we'd say the same.