head to head · open source
Joplin vs marksman
Joplin has 57,014 GitHub stars, 6,393 forks, 656 open issues and last shipped today. marksman has 3,385 stars, 77 forks, 134 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. Joplin leads on adoption by 1,584% (57,014 vs 3,385 stars). Joplin is written in TypeScript under a custom or non-standard licence; marksman is written in F# under MIT. Joplin has attracted 11% as many forks as stars, marksman 2%. Joplin was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (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
| Joplin | marksman | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 57K | ★ 3.4K |
| License | Custom / other | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | F# |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-09-14 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.4K | ⑂ 77 |
| 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 marksman if
- You want the marksman feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches F#
- You evaluated both and marksman 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 marksman
Marksman Write Markdown with code assist and intelligence in the comfort of your favourite editor. Marksman is a program that integrates with your editor to assist you in writing and maintaining your Markdown documents. Using [LSP protocol][lsp main] it provides completion , goto definition , find references , rename refactoring, diagnostics , and more. In addition to regular Markdown, it also supports wiki link style references that enable [Zettelkasten like][zettel wiki][^roam research] , [^markdown memo] note taking. See more about Marksman's features below. Marksman works on MacOS, Linux, and Windows and is…
read the full marksman overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Joplin or marksman more popular?
Joplin has 57,014 GitHub stars and marksman has 3,385. Joplin has the larger community by that measure.
Are Joplin and marksman free?
Both are open source. Joplin has no licence declared in this registry, and marksman is licensed under MIT. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Joplin and marksman?
Joplin is written in TypeScript and marksman in F#. 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 marksman?
Choose Joplin if you want the larger community (57,014 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose marksman if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.