head to head · open source
Fizzy vs freeplane
Fizzy has 8,212 GitHub stars, 1,194 forks, 67 open issues and last shipped yesterday. freeplane has 4,368 stars, 498 forks, 453 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Fizzy leads on adoption by 88% (8,212 vs 4,368 stars). Fizzy is written in Ruby under a custom or non-standard licence; freeplane is written in Java under GPL-2.0. Fizzy has attracted 15% as many forks as stars, freeplane 11%. freeplane was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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
| Fizzy | freeplane | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 8.2K | ★ 4.4K |
| License | Custom / other | GPL-2.0 |
| Written in | Ruby | Java |
| Last push | 2026-09-19 | 2026-09-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.2K | ⑂ 498 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Fizzy if
- You weight community size — 8.2K stars and counting
- You want the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches Ruby
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick freeplane if
- You want the freeplane feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You evaluated both and freeplane fits your workflow better
About Fizzy
Fizzy is an open source kanban tool for tracking issues and ideas, published by 37signals as a Ruby on Rails application, and it is aimed at teams that want a fast, simple board together with the source code and the option to run that board on their own server.
read the full Fizzy overview →
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 →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Fizzy or freeplane more popular?
Fizzy has 8,212 GitHub stars and freeplane has 4,368. Fizzy has the larger community by that measure.
Are Fizzy and freeplane free?
Both are open source. Fizzy has no licence declared in this registry, and freeplane is licensed under GPL-2.0. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Fizzy and freeplane?
Fizzy is written in Ruby and freeplane in Java. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Fizzy or freeplane?
Choose Fizzy if you want the larger community (8,212 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose freeplane if its feature set, stack or GPL-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.