head to head · open source
Memos vs Joplin
Memos has 64,235 GitHub stars, 4,935 forks, 67 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Joplin has 56,994 stars, 6,390 forks, 652 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Memos leads on adoption by 13% (64,235 vs 56,994 stars). Memos is written in Go under MIT; Joplin is written in TypeScript under a custom or non-standard licence. Memos has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, Joplin 11%. 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
| Memos | Joplin | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 64K | ★ 57K |
| License | MIT | Custom / other |
| Written in | Go | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.9K | ⑂ 6.4K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Memos if
- You weight community size — 64K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Joplin if
- You want the Joplin feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and Joplin fits your workflow better
About Memos
✨ Featured sponsor: CodeRabbit — Industry leading AI code reviews. Memos Fast enough for every thought. Private enough for all of them. Memos is an open source, self hosted home for short form thinking. Daily notes, links, work logs, and snippets flow into a chronological Markdown timeline—on infrastructure you control, without the overhead of an all in one workspace. Run with Docker · Try the live demo · Read the docs Why Memos? Capture quickly — Write in Markdown, attach media, and save without choosing a title, folder, or template. Organize lightly — Revisit notes through the timeline, search, tags, and pins…
read the full Memos overview →
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 →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Memos or Joplin more popular?
Memos has 64,235 GitHub stars and Joplin has 56,994. Memos has the larger community by that measure.
Are Memos and Joplin free?
Both are open source. Memos is licensed under MIT, and Joplin has no licence declared in this registry. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Memos and Joplin?
Memos is written in Go and Joplin 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, Memos or Joplin?
Choose Memos if you want the larger community (64,235 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose Joplin if its feature set, stack or Custom / other licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.