head to head · open source
Memos vs silverbullet
Memos has 64,235 GitHub stars, 4,935 forks, 67 open issues and last shipped yesterday. silverbullet has 6,445 stars, 527 forks, 345 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Memos leads on adoption by 897% (64,235 vs 6,445 stars). Memos is written in Go under MIT; silverbullet is written in TypeScript under MIT. Memos has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, silverbullet 8%. silverbullet 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| Memos | silverbullet | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 64K | ★ 6.4K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | Go | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.9K | ⑂ 527 |
| 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 silverbullet if
- You want the silverbullet feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and silverbullet 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 silverbullet
SilverBullet SilverBullet is a Programmable, Private, Browser based, Open Source, Self Hosted, Personal Knowledge Database — a fancy term for a "notes app on steroids". Yowza! That surely is a lot of adjectives to describe a browser based Markdown editor programmable with Lua. Let’s get more specific. SilverBullet combines a clean live preview editor with wiki style linking, a built in database and query language, and a fully integrated Space Lua scripting environment, turning your notes into a programmable system that grows with you. In SilverBullet you keep your content as a collection of Markdown Pages…
read the full silverbullet overview →
More in Productivity & Utilities
Related comparisons
More Note Taking & Knowledge Management projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Note Taking & Knowledge Management field.
Frequently asked questions
Is Memos or silverbullet more popular?
Memos has 64,235 GitHub stars and silverbullet has 6,445. Memos has the larger community by that measure.
Are Memos and silverbullet free?
Both are open source. Memos is licensed under MIT and silverbullet under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Memos and silverbullet?
Memos is written in Go and silverbullet in TypeScript. 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 silverbullet?
Choose Memos if you want the larger community (64,235 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose silverbullet if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.