head to head · open source
Memos vs fsnotes
Memos has 64,235 GitHub stars, 4,935 forks, 67 open issues and last shipped yesterday. fsnotes has 7,560 stars, 588 forks, 2 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Memos leads on adoption by 750% (64,235 vs 7,560 stars). Memos is written in Go under MIT; fsnotes is written in Swift under MIT. Memos has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, fsnotes 8%. Memos 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
| Memos | fsnotes | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 64K | ★ 7.6K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Swift |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-01 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.9K | ⑂ 588 |
| 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 fsnotes if
- You want the fsnotes feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Swift
- You evaluated both and fsnotes 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 fsnotes
FSNotes 简体中文 · 繁體中文 Own your notes. Find them instantly. FSNotes is a fast, native notes app for macOS and iOS. It gives you a focused writing experience while keeping every note in portable Markdown or plain text files—not a proprietary database. Why choose FSNotes No lock in. Open and edit your notes with any compatible app, now or years from now. Fast at any scale. Search and navigate smoothly across collections of 10,000+ notes. Built around your workflow. Use multiple folders, external editors, iCloud Drive, Dropbox, and optional Git backups. More than basic Markdown. Connect ideas with tags and [[links]]…
read the full fsnotes overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Memos or fsnotes more popular?
Memos has 64,235 GitHub stars and fsnotes has 7,560. Memos has the larger community by that measure.
Are Memos and fsnotes free?
Both are open source. Memos is licensed under MIT and fsnotes under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Memos and fsnotes?
Memos is written in Go and fsnotes in Swift. 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 fsnotes?
Choose Memos if you want the larger community (64,235 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose fsnotes if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.