head to head · open source
gollum vs flatnotes
gollum has 14,325 GitHub stars, 1,560 forks, 91 open issues and last shipped 10 months ago. flatnotes has 3,223 stars, 214 forks, 124 open issues and last shipped 22 days ago. gollum leads on adoption by 344% (14,325 vs 3,223 stars). gollum is written in Ruby under MIT; flatnotes is written in Vue under MIT. gollum has attracted 11% as many forks as stars, flatnotes 7%. flatnotes was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (markdown, wiki), 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
| gollum | flatnotes | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 14K | ★ 3.2K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | Ruby | Vue |
| Last push | 2025-11-24 | 2026-08-29 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.6K | ⑂ 214 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick gollum if
- You weight community size — 14K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Ruby
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick flatnotes if
- You want the flatnotes feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Vue
- You evaluated both and flatnotes fits your workflow better
About gollum
Gollum is a simple wiki system built on top of Git. A Gollum wiki is simply a Git repository of a specific nature: its contents are human editable text or markup files, pages may be organized into directories in any way the author chooses, and other content such as images, PDFs, and headers or footers for pages can also be included. Pages may be written in a variety of markups, edited either with a favourite editor (changes become visible after committing) or through the built in web interface, and displayed in all versions or reverted. The project lives in the Ruby ecosystem, is distributed under the MIT license…
read the full gollum overview →
About flatnotes
flatnotes is a self hosted, database less note taking web app that keeps every note as a Markdown file in a flat folder, built for individuals and small teams who want a browser based editor without handing ownership of their notes to a hosted service.
read the full flatnotes overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is gollum or flatnotes more popular?
gollum has 14,325 GitHub stars and flatnotes has 3,223. gollum has the larger community by that measure.
Are gollum and flatnotes free?
Both are open source. gollum is licensed under MIT and flatnotes under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between gollum and flatnotes?
gollum is written in Ruby and flatnotes in Vue. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, gollum or flatnotes?
Choose gollum if you want the larger community (14,325 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose flatnotes if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.