category

Open Source Note Taking & Knowledge Management Tools

Open source note taking & knowledge management tools

projects 63 combined stars ★ 656K refresh nightly
Note Taking & Knowledge Management is one of the most active slices of the open source world — the 25 projects below are ranked by GitHub stars, which makes this page roughly a community-voted shortlist rather than a vendor-curated catalogue. Every card shows the license and the last-commit date, so you can filter out the two failure modes of free software in one glance: restrictive licensing that blocks your use case, and abandonment that leaves you maintaining a fork. When two projects look comparable, prefer the one with more recent activity and the more permissive license (MIT/Apache-2.0 over AGPL) unless copyleft specifically serves your goals. Hover into any project for its full README — the documentation quality is usually the honest tell of engineering quality.

All Note Taking & Knowledge Management tools

AppFlowy ★ 78K

AI workspace for docs, projects, and wikis you control

rank001 licenseAGPL-3.0 written inDart typeNote Taking & Knowledge Management
Memos ★ 64K

Self-hosted timeline for quick notes, logs, and snippets

rank002 licenseMIT written inGo typeNote Taking & Knowledge Management
Joplin ★ 57K

Encrypted note-taking that syncs across all your devices

rank003 licenseNOASSERTION written inTypeScript typeNote Taking & Knowledge Management
SiYuan ★ 47K

Privacy-first knowledge management with block-level linking

rank004 licenseAGPL-3.0 written inTypeScript typeNote Taking & Knowledge Management
Logseq ★ 45K

Privacy-first knowledge base that connects your notes

rank005 licenseAGPL-3.0 written inClojure typeNote Taking & Knowledge Management
Open-Notebook ★ 41K

AI-powered research notebook with full privacy control

rank006 licenseMIT written inTypeScript typeNote Taking & Knowledge Management
Outline ★ 41K

Fast, collaborative wiki for teams who need organized docs

rank007 licenseNOASSERTION written inTypeScript typeNote Taking & Knowledge Management
Khoj ★ 38K

AI second brain for research, automation, and personal agents

rank008 licenseAGPL-3.0 written inPython typeNote Taking & Knowledge Management
Docmost ★ 22K

Self-hosted wiki with AI, compliance, and real-time editing

rank009 licenseAGPL-3.0 written inTypeScript typeNote Taking & Knowledge Management
Tolaria ★ 20K

Local-first, Git-native personal knowledge base with AI

rank010 licenseAGPL-3.0 written inTypeScript typeNote Taking & Knowledge Management
SurfSense ★ 17K

Privacy-first knowledge base with any AI model you choose

rank011 licenseApache-2.0 written inPython typeNote Taking & Knowledge Management
Zotero ★ 16K

Collect, organize, cite, and share research in one place

rank012 licenseNOASSERTION written inJavaScript typeNote Taking & Knowledge Management
Notesnook ★ 15K

Zero-knowledge encrypted notes that sync across all devices

rank013 licenseGPL-3.0 written inTypeScript typeNote Taking & Knowledge Management
vnote ★ 13K

A pleasant note-taking platform in native C++.

rank014 licenseLGPL-3.0 written inC++ typeNote Taking & Knowledge Management
Blinko ★ 11K

AI-Powered Note Taking App

rank015 licenseGPL-3.0 written inTypeScript typeNote Taking & Knowledge Management
Anarlog ★ 9.7K

Private meeting notes, no bots, files you own

rank016 licenseMIT written inRust typeNote Taking & Knowledge Management
AnyType ★ 9.0K

Private workspace for notes, tasks, and databases

rank017 licenseNOASSERTION written inTypeScript typeNote Taking & Knowledge Management
MiaoYan ★ 8.7K

⛷ Lightweight Markdown app to help you write great sentences.

rank018 licenseMIT written inSwift typeNote Taking & Knowledge Management
fsnotes ★ 7.6K

Fast Markdown note-taking app for Mac and iPhone

rank019 licenseMIT written inSwift typeNote Taking & Knowledge Management
Lorien ★ 6.9K

Infinite canvas drawing/whiteboarding app for Windows, Linux and macOS. Made with Godot.

rank020 licenseMIT written inGDScript typeNote Taking & Knowledge Management
Standard Notes ★ 6.7K

Secure, encrypted notes for your digital life

rank021 licenseAGPL-3.0 written inTypeScript typeNote Taking & Knowledge Management
silverbullet ★ 6.4K

An open source personal productivity platform built on Markdown, turbo charged with the scripting power of Lua

rank022 licenseMIT written inTypeScript typeNote Taking & Knowledge Management
QOwnNotes ★ 5.9K

QOwnNotes is a plain-text file notepad and todo-list manager with Markdown support and Nextcloud / ownCloud integration.

rank023 licenseGPL-2.0 written inC++ typeNote Taking & Knowledge Management
obsidian-mind ★ 5.5K

A self-organizing Obsidian vault that gives AI coding agents persistent memory. Claude Code, Codex CLI, Gemini CLI.

rank024 licenseMIT written inTypeScript typeNote Taking & Knowledge Management
tagspaces ★ 5.4K

TagSpaces is an offline, open source, document manager with tagging support

rank025 licenseAGPL-3.0 written inTypeScript typeNote Taking & Knowledge Management
saber ★ 5.0K

The cross-platform open-source app built for handwriting

rank026 licenseGPL-3.0 written inDart typeNote Taking & Knowledge Management
notes ★ 4.3K

Fast and beautiful note-taking app written in C++. Write down your thoughts.

rank027 licenseMPL-2.0 written inC++ typeNote Taking & Knowledge Management
GitJournal ★ 4.2K

Mobile first Note Taking integrated with Git

rank028 licenseAGPL-3.0 written inDart typeNote Taking & Knowledge Management
marksman ★ 3.4K

Write Markdown with code assist and intelligence in the comfort of your favourite editor.

rank029 licenseMIT written inF# typeNote Taking & Knowledge Management
dnote ★ 3.1K

A simple command line notebook

rank030 licenseApache-2.0 written inGo typeNote Taking & Knowledge Management
mindforger ★ 2.7K

Thinking notebook and Markdown editor.

rank031 licenseGPL-2.0 written inC++ typeNote Taking & Knowledge Management
MarkFlowy ★ 2.4K

A high-performance, cross-platform editor that supports WYSIWYG Markdown and general text editing.

rank032 licenseAGPL-3.0 written inTypeScript typeNote Taking & Knowledge Management
Butterfly ★ 2.1K

🎨 Powerful, minimalistic, cross-platform, opensource note-taking app

rank033 licenseAGPL-3.0 written inDart typeNote Taking & Knowledge Management
TidGi-Desktop ★ 2.0K

TidGi is an privacy-in-mind, automated, auto-git-backup, freely-deployed knowledge management Desktop note app, based on Tiddlywiki, with REST API for web-clipp

rank034 licenseMPL-2.0 written inTypeScript typeNote Taking & Knowledge Management
Vrite ★ 2.0K

Collaborative content creation for technical teams

rank035 licenseNOASSERTION written inTypeScript typeNote Taking & Knowledge Management
zotero-AI-Butler ★ 1.9K

【Zotero AI 管家】调用大模型,自动精读论文库里的论文,总结为Zotero笔记。支持主流大模型平台!您只需像往常一样把文献丢进 Zotero, 管家会自动帮您精读论文,将文章揉碎了总结为笔记,让您“十分钟完全了解”这篇论文!

rank036 licenseAGPL-3.0 written inTypeScript typeNote Taking & Knowledge Management
iwe ★ 1.8K

Markdown knowledge graph — LSP for your editor, CLI + MCP memory for your AI agents

rank037 licenseApache-2.0 written inRust typeNote Taking & Knowledge Management
reflect-open ★ 1.6K

Open-source Reflect rewrite: A local-first AI agent-friendly Markdown note-taking app

rank038 licenseMIT written inTypeScript typeNote Taking & Knowledge Management
gtoolkit ★ 1.6K

Glamorous Toolkit is the Moldable Development Environment. It empowers you to make systems explainable through contextual micro tools.

rank039 licenseMIT written inSmalltalk typeNote Taking & Knowledge Management
nocturne_memory ★ 1.4K

A lightweight, rollbackable, and visual Long-Term Memory Server for MCP Agents. Say goodbye to Vector RAG and amnesia. Empower your AI with persistent, graph-li

rank040 licenseMIT written inPython typeNote Taking & Knowledge Management
Beaver Notes ★ 1.4K

Local-first notes app with no cloud, no AI, no tracking

rank041 licenseMIT written inJavaScript typeNote Taking & Knowledge Management
XWiki ★ 1.3K

Open-source knowledge management and collaboration platform

rank042 licenseLGPL-2.1 written inJava typeNote Taking & Knowledge Management
MoeMemosAndroid ★ 1.2K

An app to help you capture thoughts and ideas

rank043 licenseGPL-3.0 written inKotlin typeNote Taking & Knowledge Management
dstask ★ 1.2K

Git powered terminal-based todo/note manager -- markdown note page per task. Single binary!

rank044 licenseMIT written inGo typeNote Taking & Knowledge Management
Zen ★ 1.2K

Clean, distraction-free note-taking with local storage

rank045 licenseAGPL-3.0 written inJavaScript typeNote Taking & Knowledge Management
IdeaMemo ★ 1.2K

A Beautiful Memo App written with Jetpack Compose. 开源Android闪念笔记App。

rank046 licenseGPL-3.0 written inKotlin typeNote Taking & Knowledge Management
pm-brain ★ 952

PM Brain OS: The Second Brain for Product Managers, Made of Markdown

rank047 licenseMIT written inPython typeNote Taking & Knowledge Management
MoeMemos ★ 915

An app to help you capture thoughts and ideas

rank048 licenseMPL-2.0 written inSwift typeNote Taking & Knowledge Management
projectmem ★ 874

Open-source coding agents memory. Records issues, attempts, fixes and decisions, then warns your agent before it repeats an approach that already failed. Native

rank049 licenseMIT written inPython typeNote Taking & Knowledge Management
second-brain-cloudflare ★ 841

One memory layer, every AI tool. Store anything once — recall it in Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, or any MCP client. Self-hosted on Cloudflare's free tier.

rank050 licenseMIT written inTypeScript typeNote Taking & Knowledge Management
NotelyVoice ★ 819

A 100% private AI voice transcription app that converts speech to text in 100+ languages. Built with Compose Multiplatform for Android & iOS using Whisper AI -

rank051 licenseGPL-3.0 written inC++ typeNote Taking & Knowledge Management
NotallyX ★ 787

Minimalistic Android note taking App | Notally, but eXtended.

rank052 licenseGPL-3.0 written inKotlin typeNote Taking & Knowledge Management
thoughtdag ★ 730

Your thinking deserves a map: an infinite canvas where LLM conversations grow into an editable thought graph. Wires are the context.

rank053 licenseMIT written inTypeScript typeNote Taking & Knowledge Management
OpenWiki ★ 644

OpenWiki — Mac desktop AI knowledge management tool. Capture clipboard, build personal wiki, get AI insights.

rank054 licenseMIT written inRust typeNote Taking & Knowledge Management
DeepNotes ★ 608

End-to-end encrypted visual note-taking tool with deep page navigation.

rank055 licenseAGPL-3.0 written inTypeScript typeNote Taking & Knowledge Management
brain.md ★ 593

A persistent, file-based memory layer for coding agents — give Claude Code, Codex & others a project brain (durable decisions, requirements, constraints) via a

rank056 licenseApache-2.0 written inJavaScript typeNote Taking & Knowledge Management
Paperling ★ 592

A minimal, distraction-free markdown editor built with Tauri, React, and TypeScript

rank057 licenseApache-2.0 written inTypeScript typeNote Taking & Knowledge Management
Textus ★ 577

The next-generation Markdown editor, with an AI writing assistant. Free and open source for macOS, Windows and Linux.

rank058 licenseMIT written inTypeScript typeNote Taking & Knowledge Management
kition ★ 575

Kition brings Markdown, DataTable, WhiteBoard, a tool-using AI agent, browser research, and visual workflows into one desktop workspace.

rank059 licenseApache-2.0 written inTypeScript typeNote Taking & Knowledge Management
Darkwrite ★ 320

Distraction-free note-taking with powerful features

rank060 licenseAGPL-3.0 written inTypeScript typeNote Taking & Knowledge Management
OpenNotas ★ 179

Fast, secure, and free personal note-taking app

rank061 licenseNOASSERTION written inVue typeNote Taking & Knowledge Management
Justnote ★ 67

Privacy-focused note-taking made simple and fast

rank062 licenseGPL-2.0 written inTypeScript typeNote Taking & Knowledge Management
itsnotes ★ 43

Self-hosted sticky notes with better organization

rank063 licenseMIT written inJavaScript typeNote Taking & Knowledge Management

Frequently asked questions

How many open source Note Taking & Knowledge Management tools are there?

This registry tracks 63 open source Note Taking & Knowledge Management projects, with 655,544 combined GitHub stars. The list is ranked by stars and refreshed nightly.

What is the most popular open source Note Taking & Knowledge Management project?

AppFlowy leads this category with 78,112 GitHub stars, followed by Memos.

Are these Note Taking & Knowledge Management tools free?

Yes — every project listed here is open source. Some also offer paid hosted versions alongside the free self-hosted option; the licence for each project is shown on its card.