head to head · open source
Khoj vs Notesnook
Khoj has 37,946 GitHub stars, 2,529 forks, 148 open issues and last shipped 3 months ago. Notesnook has 14,875 stars, 1,042 forks, 1,012 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Khoj leads on adoption by 155% (37,946 vs 14,875 stars). Khoj is written in Python under AGPL-3.0; Notesnook is written in TypeScript under GPL-3.0. Khoj has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, Notesnook 7%. Notesnook 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
| Khoj | Notesnook | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 38K | ★ 15K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Python | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-08-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.5K | ⑂ 1.0K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Khoj if
- You weight community size — 38K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Notesnook if
- You want the Notesnook feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and Notesnook fits your workflow better
About Khoj
Your AI second brain 📑 Docs • 🌐 Web • 🔥 App • 💬 Discord • ✍🏽 Blog 🎁 New Meet 🌶️ Pipali our open source AI coworker that runs on your computer. Read about Khoj's excellent performance on modern retrieval and reasoning benchmarks. Overview Khoj is a personal AI app to extend your capabilities. It smoothly scales up from an on device personal AI to a cloud scale enterprise AI. Chat with any local or online LLM (e.g llama3, qwen, gemma, mistral, gpt, claude, gemini, deepseek). Get answers from the internet and your docs (including image, pdf, markdown, org mode, word, notion files). Access it from your…
About Notesnook
Notesnook An end to end encrypted note taking alternative to Evernote. Website About us Roadmap Downloads Twitter Discord Overview Notesnook is a free (as in speech) & open source note taking app focused on user privacy & ease of use. To ensure zero knowledge principles, Notesnook encrypts everything on your device using XChaCha20 Poly1305 & Argon2 . Notesnook is our proof that privacy does not (always) have to come at the cost of convenience. We aim to provide users peace of mind & 100% confidence that their notes are safe and secure. The decision to go fully open source is one of the most crucial steps towards…
read the full Notesnook overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Khoj or Notesnook more popular?
Khoj has 37,946 GitHub stars and Notesnook has 14,875. Khoj has the larger community by that measure.
Are Khoj and Notesnook free?
Both are open source. Khoj is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and Notesnook under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Khoj and Notesnook?
Khoj is written in Python and Notesnook 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, Khoj or Notesnook?
Choose Khoj if you want the larger community (37,946 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose Notesnook if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.