head to head · open source
Joplin vs silverbullet
Joplin has 56,994 GitHub stars, 6,390 forks, 652 open issues and last shipped yesterday. silverbullet has 6,445 stars, 527 forks, 345 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Joplin leads on adoption by 784% (56,994 vs 6,445 stars). Joplin is written in TypeScript under a custom or non-standard licence; silverbullet is written in TypeScript under MIT. Joplin has attracted 11% as many forks as stars, silverbullet 8%. silverbullet 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 | silverbullet | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 57K | ★ 6.4K |
| License | Custom / other | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.4K | ⑂ 527 |
| 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 silverbullet if
- You want the silverbullet feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and silverbullet 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 silverbullet
SilverBullet SilverBullet is a Programmable, Private, Browser based, Open Source, Self Hosted, Personal Knowledge Database — a fancy term for a "notes app on steroids". Yowza! That surely is a lot of adjectives to describe a browser based Markdown editor programmable with Lua. Let’s get more specific. SilverBullet combines a clean live preview editor with wiki style linking, a built in database and query language, and a fully integrated Space Lua scripting environment, turning your notes into a programmable system that grows with you. In SilverBullet you keep your content as a collection of Markdown Pages…
read the full silverbullet overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Joplin or silverbullet more popular?
Joplin has 56,994 GitHub stars and silverbullet has 6,445. Joplin has the larger community by that measure.
Are Joplin and silverbullet free?
Both are open source. Joplin has no licence declared in this registry, and silverbullet is licensed under MIT. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Joplin and silverbullet?
Joplin is written in TypeScript and silverbullet 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 silverbullet?
Choose Joplin if you want the larger community (56,994 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose silverbullet if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.