head to head · open source
Joplin vs pm-brain
Joplin has 56,994 GitHub stars, 6,391 forks, 658 open issues and last shipped today. pm-brain has 952 stars, 193 forks, 3 open issues and last shipped 6 months ago. Joplin leads on adoption by 5,887% (56,994 vs 952 stars). Joplin is written in TypeScript under a custom or non-standard licence; pm-brain is written in Python under MIT. Joplin has attracted 11% as many forks as stars, pm-brain 20%. 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 | pm-brain | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 57K | ★ 952 |
| License | Custom / other | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | Python |
| Last push | 2026-11-03 | 2026-05-20 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.4K | ⑂ 193 |
| 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 pm-brain if
- You want the pm-brain feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and pm-brain 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 pm-brain
PM Brain A second brain for product managers. Plain markdown files in a folder on your laptop. Claude reads them before answering, writes to them after, sweeps them every Friday. No vector DB. No cloud. No agent memory tricks. You manage one product. Your context is scattered across Notion, Linear, Slack, your dashboards, and your head. You ship a feature. Six weeks later, nobody remembers why you killed the other option. PM Brain fixes that. See it in action: A week with PM Brain: Lena's first five days is a short story of one PM using it on a real team. New here? Start there. Research preview. The architecture…
read the full pm-brain overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Joplin or pm-brain more popular?
Joplin has 56,994 GitHub stars and pm-brain has 952. Joplin has the larger community by that measure.
Are Joplin and pm-brain free?
Both are open source. Joplin has no licence declared in this registry, and pm-brain is licensed under MIT. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Joplin and pm-brain?
Joplin is written in TypeScript and pm-brain in Python. 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 pm-brain?
Choose Joplin if you want the larger community (56,994 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose pm-brain if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.