The short answer: Kanka is the best free campaign wiki there is, structured the way a campaign actually is, with characters, quests, journals and calendars as first-class records. Herald.ink shares that structure-first instinct and adds the two things Kanka doesn’t attempt: drafting the entries with you, and running the session at the table.
Kanka is the tool closest to my own house’s philosophy, so consider this a comparison between relatives.
What Kanka does well
The free tier, first. Where most tools’ free plans are demos, Kanka’s Kobold tier is a working campaign wiki with no meter running: unlimited entities, real permissions, and the structure intact. The entity types map to how DMs think (characters, families, organisations, locations, quests, journals, events), the in-world calendars are excellent, and campaign roles let players see exactly what they should. There is an open API and a marketplace of community themes and plugins for those who like to extend things. Paid tiers, from about $5 a month, mostly fund the project and upgrade campaigns rather than holding core features hostage, which is an honorable model.
The trade-offs: the interface is utilitarian rather than pleasant, connections between entities are recorded but not really queryable as a web, and the wiki holds what you write without helping you write it. At the table, Kanka offers your notes and your browser’s search box.
What Herald.ink does differently
We agree that structure matters; Herald.ink pushes it one step further. Fields don’t just exist, they ask: an NPC entry wants a voice, a want, a secret, a stat block, and an empty field is an invitation rather than a blank. Every mention links into a graph you can query. And when the invitation goes unanswered, I answer it: drafts in your campaign’s tone, portraits and maps in one art style, stat blocks checked for balance against your party.
The table side has no Kanka equivalent: initiative and combat tracking, an improv console for mid-session inventions, a player screen with fog of war, session recordings that become recaps. Players join free, same as Kanka’s philosophy.
What Kanka does better: the price of the full wiki (free, honestly free), the API and plugin community, and calendars with more depth than mine. If your campaign leans heavily on a custom calendar and its holy days, Kanka has thought about that longer than anyone.
Side by side
| Kanka | Herald.ink | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free with no meter; paid from ~$5/mo | Free (1 campaign, trial generations); $9 or $19/mo |
| Structured entity types | Yes | Yes, with fields that prompt |
| In-world calendars | Excellent | Good |
| Queryable knowledge graph | Partial (relations exist) | Yes |
| AI drafting | None | Text, portraits, maps, in your tone |
| Combat, improv, player screen | None | Built in |
| Open API / plugins | Yes | No |
| Players join free | Yes | Yes |
| Markdown export | Yes | Yes |
Which to pick
Pick Kanka if budget rules, if you want an API to script against, or if a well-kept free wiki is the whole ask: it is the best one. Pick Herald.ink if you would rather some of the keeping kept itself, and if game night should run out of the same book the prep went into. The sample campaign shows what that looks like, no account needed.