head to head · open source
Docmost vs brain.md
Docmost has 22,202 GitHub stars, 1,661 forks, 326 open issues and last shipped yesterday. brain.md has 593 stars, 60 forks, 0 open issues and last shipped 13 days ago. Docmost leads on adoption by 3,644% (22,202 vs 593 stars). Docmost is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; brain.md is written in JavaScript under Apache-2.0. Docmost has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, brain.md 10%. Docmost was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (ai-agents), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| Docmost | brain.md | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 22K | ★ 593 |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-21 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.7K | ⑂ 60 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Docmost if
- You weight community size — 22K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick brain.md if
- You want the brain.md feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and brain.md fits your workflow better
About Docmost
Docmost Open source collaborative wiki and documentation software. Website Documentation Twitter / X Getting started To get started with Docmost, please refer to our documentation or try our cloud version . Features Real time collaboration Diagrams (Draw.io, Excalidraw and Mermaid) Spaces Permissions management Groups Comments Page history Search File attachments Embeds (Airtable, Loom, Miro and more) Translations (10+ languages) Screenshots License Docmost core is licensed under the open source AGPL 3.0 license. Enterprise features are available under an enterprise license (Enterprise Edition). All files in the…
read the full Docmost overview →
About brain.md
brain.md A persistent, file based memory layer for your coding agents. An open, agent agnostic standard for capturing a project's durable knowledge as plain Markdown — read and written through one small CLI. It lives in your repo and travels across agents, machines, and models. Why · Quick start · See it work · CLI · How it works This repository is the toolkit , not a brain itself. Install it once, then in any project run brain init : it scaffolds a BRAIN.md protocol file, a brain/ directory, and default wires agent config files into your repo. From then on, any coding agent — Claude Code, Codex, anything that…
read the full brain.md overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Docmost or brain.md more popular?
Docmost has 22,202 GitHub stars and brain.md has 593. Docmost has the larger community by that measure.
Are Docmost and brain.md free?
Both are open source. Docmost is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and brain.md under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Docmost and brain.md?
Docmost is written in TypeScript and brain.md in JavaScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Docmost or brain.md?
Choose Docmost if you want the larger community (22,202 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose brain.md if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.