head to head · open source
Memos vs vnote
Memos has 64,235 GitHub stars, 4,935 forks, 67 open issues and last shipped yesterday. vnote has 13,029 stars, 1,295 forks, 270 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Memos leads on adoption by 393% (64,235 vs 13,029 stars). Memos is written in Go under MIT; vnote is written in C++ under LGPL-3.0. Memos has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, vnote 10%. vnote 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 | vnote | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 64K | ★ 13K |
| License | MIT | LGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | C++ |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.9K | ⑂ 1.3K |
| 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 vnote if
- You want the vnote feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the LGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches C++
- You evaluated both and vnote 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 vnote
VNote 简体中文 Project on Gitee A pleasant note taking platform. For more information, please visit VNote's Home Page . Description VNote is a Qt based, free and open source note taking application, focusing on Markdown now. VNote is designed to provide a pleasant note taking platform with excellent editing experience. VNote is NOT just a simple editor for Markdown. By providing notes management, VNote makes taking notes in Markdown simpler. In the future, VNote will support more formats besides Markdown. Utilizing Qt, VNote could run on Linux , Windows , and macOS . Downloads Continuous builds on master branch…
read the full vnote 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 vnote more popular?
Memos has 64,235 GitHub stars and vnote has 13,029. Memos has the larger community by that measure.
Are Memos and vnote free?
Both are open source. Memos is licensed under MIT and vnote under LGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Memos and vnote?
Memos is written in Go and vnote in C++. 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 vnote?
Choose Memos if you want the larger community (64,235 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose vnote if its feature set, stack or LGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.