head to head · open source
Joplin vs Docmost
Joplin has 56,994 GitHub stars, 6,390 forks, 652 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Docmost has 22,202 stars, 1,661 forks, 326 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Joplin leads on adoption by 157% (56,994 vs 22,202 stars). Joplin is written in TypeScript under a custom or non-standard licence; Docmost is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0. Joplin has attracted 11% as many forks as stars, Docmost 7%. Joplin 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
| Joplin | Docmost | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 57K | ★ 22K |
| License | Custom / other | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.4K | ⑂ 1.7K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Joplin if
- You weight community size — 57K stars and counting
- You want the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Docmost if
- You want the Docmost feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and Docmost fits your workflow better
About Joplin
Joplin is a free, open source note taking and to do application, which can handle a large number of notes organised into notebooks. The notes are searchable, can be copied, tagged and modified either from the applications directly or from your own text editor. The notes are in Markdown format. Notes exported from Evernote can be imported into Joplin, including the formatted content (which is converted to Markdown), resources (images, attachments, etc.) and complete metadata (geolocation, updated time, created time, etc.). Plain Markdown files can also be imported. Joplin is "offline first", which means you…
read the full Joplin overview →
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 →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Joplin or Docmost more popular?
Joplin has 56,994 GitHub stars and Docmost has 22,202. Joplin has the larger community by that measure.
Are Joplin and Docmost free?
Both are open source. Joplin has no licence declared in this registry, and Docmost is licensed under AGPL-3.0. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Joplin and Docmost?
Joplin is written in TypeScript and Docmost in TypeScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Joplin or Docmost?
Choose Joplin if you want the larger community (56,994 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose Docmost if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.