head to head · open source
Logseq vs marksman
Logseq has 45,467 GitHub stars, 2,866 forks, 942 open issues and last shipped yesterday. marksman has 3,385 stars, 77 forks, 134 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. Logseq leads on adoption by 1,243% (45,467 vs 3,385 stars). Logseq is written in Clojure under AGPL-3.0; marksman is written in F# under MIT. Logseq has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, marksman 2%. Logseq was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (markdown, 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
| Logseq | marksman | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 45K | ★ 3.4K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Clojure | F# |
| Last push | 2026-11-03 | 2026-09-14 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.9K | ⑂ 77 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Logseq if
- You weight community size — 45K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Clojure
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick marksman if
- You want the marksman feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches F#
- You evaluated both and marksman fits your workflow better
About Logseq
Logseq A privacy first, open source platform for knowledge management and collaboration Home Page Blog Documentation Roadmap Table of Contents 🚀 Database Version 🤔 Why Logseq? 👀 How can I use it? 📚 Learn more 🫶 Support Logseq Development 💡 Feature requests 🔌 Plugin API 🌟 Contributing to Logseq 🛠️ Setting Up a Development Environment ✨ Inspiration 🙏 Thank You 🚀 Database Version The Database version (DB version) of Logseq introduces DB graphs. See this page to get an overview of the main features for DB graphs. If you are an existing user, see changes with the DB version. The DB version has its own new…
read the full Logseq overview →
About marksman
Marksman Write Markdown with code assist and intelligence in the comfort of your favourite editor. Marksman is a program that integrates with your editor to assist you in writing and maintaining your Markdown documents. Using [LSP protocol][lsp main] it provides completion , goto definition , find references , rename refactoring, diagnostics , and more. In addition to regular Markdown, it also supports wiki link style references that enable [Zettelkasten like][zettel wiki][^roam research] , [^markdown memo] note taking. See more about Marksman's features below. Marksman works on MacOS, Linux, and Windows and is…
read the full marksman overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Logseq or marksman more popular?
Logseq has 45,467 GitHub stars and marksman has 3,385. Logseq has the larger community by that measure.
Are Logseq and marksman free?
Both are open source. Logseq is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and marksman under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Logseq and marksman?
Logseq is written in Clojure and marksman in F#. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Logseq or marksman?
Choose Logseq if you want the larger community (45,467 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose marksman if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.