head to head · open source
Memos vs Butterfly
Memos has 64,258 GitHub stars, 4,934 forks, 67 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Butterfly has 2,089 stars, 159 forks, 47 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Memos leads on adoption by 2,976% (64,258 vs 2,089 stars). Memos is written in Go under MIT; Butterfly is written in Dart under AGPL-3.0. Memos has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, Butterfly 8%. Butterfly was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (note-taking, notes), 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 | Butterfly | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 64K | ★ 2.1K |
| License | MIT | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | Dart |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-03 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.9K | ⑂ 159 |
| 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 Butterfly if
- You want the Butterfly feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Dart
- You evaluated both and Butterfly 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 Butterfly
Butterfly 🎨 Take notes, draw freely, and organize ideas across an endless workspace 🎨 Website • Download • Crowdin • Matrix • Discord • Mastodon • Bluesky • Linwood • Contribute Think visually. Keep your canvas yours. Butterfly is an open source app for people who think better with space around their ideas. Instead of writing everything from top to bottom on a fixed page, you get an endless workspace where you can place notes, sketches, diagrams, images, and documents wherever they make sense. Use it for class notes, meeting notes, research, math, worksheets, planning, whiteboarding, storyboards, product…
read the full Butterfly overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Memos or Butterfly more popular?
Memos has 64,258 GitHub stars and Butterfly has 2,089. Memos has the larger community by that measure.
Are Memos and Butterfly free?
Both are open source. Memos is licensed under MIT and Butterfly under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Memos and Butterfly?
Memos is written in Go and Butterfly in Dart. 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 Butterfly?
Choose Memos if you want the larger community (64,258 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose Butterfly if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.