head to head · open source
Memos vs Beaver Notes
Memos has 64,235 GitHub stars, 4,935 forks, 67 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Beaver Notes has 1,361 stars, 66 forks, 18 open issues and last shipped 17 days ago. Memos leads on adoption by 4,620% (64,235 vs 1,361 stars). Memos is written in Go under MIT; Beaver Notes is written in JavaScript under MIT. Memos has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, Beaver Notes 5%. Memos was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (notes, open-source), 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
| Memos | Beaver Notes | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 64K | ★ 1.4K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | Go | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.9K | ⑂ 66 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Memos if
- You weight community size — 64K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Beaver Notes if
- You want the Beaver Notes feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and Beaver Notes fits your workflow better
About Memos
✨ Featured sponsor: CodeRabbit — Industry leading AI code reviews. Memos Fast enough for every thought. Private enough for all of them. Memos is an open source, self hosted home for short form thinking. Daily notes, links, work logs, and snippets flow into a chronological Markdown timeline—on infrastructure you control, without the overhead of an all in one workspace. Run with Docker · Try the live demo · Read the docs Why Memos? Capture quickly — Write in Markdown, attach media, and save without choosing a title, folder, or template. Organize lightly — Revisit notes through the timeline, search, tags, and pins…
read the full Memos overview →
About Beaver Notes
Beaver Notes Built for people who actually read privacy policies. Your notes, your rules: on your device, your server, or ours. Website · Blog · Docs · Downloads · Roadmap You're on the tauri branch. The v5 rewrite. This is where Beaver Notes is heading. The current stable release lives on development . Most note taking apps make the same quiet trade: your convenience in exchange for access to your data. It's easy to miss in the onboarding flow, buried somewhere in a terms of service document most people never open. Beaver Notes starts from a different place. Your notes live on your device. They're not indexed…
read the full Beaver Notes overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Memos or Beaver Notes more popular?
Memos has 64,235 GitHub stars and Beaver Notes has 1,361. Memos has the larger community by that measure.
Are Memos and Beaver Notes free?
Both are open source. Memos is licensed under MIT and Beaver Notes under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Memos and Beaver Notes?
Memos is written in Go and Beaver Notes in JavaScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Memos or Beaver Notes?
Choose Memos if you want the larger community (64,235 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose Beaver Notes if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.