head to head · open source
freeplane vs Alexandrie
freeplane has 4,368 GitHub stars, 498 forks, 453 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Alexandrie has 2,757 stars, 195 forks, 29 open issues and last shipped 6 days ago. freeplane leads on adoption by 58% (4,368 vs 2,757 stars). freeplane is written in Java under GPL-2.0; Alexandrie is written in Vue under MIT. freeplane has attracted 11% as many forks as stars, Alexandrie 7%. freeplane was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (knowledge-management, markdown, note-taking), 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
| freeplane | Alexandrie | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 4.4K | ★ 2.8K |
| License | GPL-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Java | Vue |
| Last push | 2026-09-19 | 2026-09-14 |
| Forks | ⑂ 498 | ⑂ 195 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick freeplane if
- You weight community size — 4.4K stars and counting
- You want the GPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Alexandrie if
- You want the Alexandrie feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Vue
- You evaluated both and Alexandrie fits your workflow better
About freeplane
Freeplane is a free and open source desktop application for mind mapping, concept mapping and information mapping, written in Java with OSGi and Java Swing. It lives in the Java desktop ecosystem and is distributed under the GPL 2.0 license, with source hosted on GitHub and binary downloads published through SourceForge. The project has been under development for roughly 14 years and sits in the business software category of project and work management tools.
read the full freeplane overview →
About Alexandrie
Alexandrie is an open source, self hosted knowledge base and project & work management tool. It lives in the Vue/Nuxt, Golang, Docker, and offline first web app ecosystem. It provides an extended Markdown editor for organizing, searching, sharing, and exporting notes from desktop or mobile devices.
read the full Alexandrie overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is freeplane or Alexandrie more popular?
freeplane has 4,368 GitHub stars and Alexandrie has 2,757. freeplane has the larger community by that measure.
Are freeplane and Alexandrie free?
Both are open source. freeplane is licensed under GPL-2.0 and Alexandrie under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between freeplane and Alexandrie?
freeplane is written in Java and Alexandrie 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, freeplane or Alexandrie?
Choose freeplane if you want the larger community (4,368 stars) or its GPL-2.0 licence terms. Choose Alexandrie if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.