head to head · open source
Joplin vs orgnote
Joplin has 57,107 GitHub stars, 6,410 forks, 668 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. orgnote has 548 stars, 7 forks, 22 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Joplin leads on adoption by 10,321% (57,107 vs 548 stars). Joplin is written in TypeScript under a custom or non-standard licence; orgnote is written in Shell under GPL-3.0. Joplin has attracted 11% as many forks as stars, orgnote 1%. Joplin was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (android, electron, 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 | orgnote | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 57K | ★ 548 |
| License | Custom / other | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Shell |
| Last push | 2026-11-08 | 2026-11-08 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.4K | ⑂ 7 |
| 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 orgnote if
- You want the orgnote feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Shell
- You evaluated both and orgnote 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 orgnote
:PROPERTIES: :ID: orgnote :END: +html: +html: +html: +html: +TITLE: ✨ Org Note. Note taking application. +html: +html: +html: +html: +html: +html: +html: +html: +html: +html: +html: +html: +html: +html: +html: +html: +html: +html: +html: +html: +html: +html: Introduction +html: +html: +html: +html: What is this project for and who is it for? It's just a system of notes. There's another one. I've tried note taking in various apps like evernote, notion, obsidian, etc. for quite some time. Most of them, however, soon enough came to a state of littering. At this point, I simply gave up taking notes of any kind…
read the full orgnote overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Joplin or orgnote more popular?
Joplin has 57,107 GitHub stars and orgnote has 548. Joplin has the larger community by that measure.
Are Joplin and orgnote free?
Both are open source. Joplin has no licence declared in this registry, and orgnote is licensed under GPL-3.0. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Joplin and orgnote?
Joplin is written in TypeScript and orgnote in Shell. 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 orgnote?
Choose Joplin if you want the larger community (57,107 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose orgnote if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.