head to head · open source
Memos vs marksman
Memos has 64,258 GitHub stars, 4,934 forks, 67 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. marksman has 3,385 stars, 77 forks, 134 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. Memos leads on adoption by 1,798% (64,258 vs 3,385 stars). Memos is written in Go under MIT; marksman is written in F# under MIT. Memos has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, marksman 2%. Memos was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (markdown, 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 | marksman | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 64K | ★ 3.4K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | Go | F# |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-09-14 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.9K | ⑂ 77 |
| 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 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 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 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 Memos or marksman more popular?
Memos has 64,258 GitHub stars and marksman has 3,385. Memos has the larger community by that measure.
Are Memos and marksman free?
Both are open source. Memos is licensed under MIT and marksman under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Memos and marksman?
Memos is written in Go 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, Memos or marksman?
Choose Memos if you want the larger community (64,258 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose marksman if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.