head to head · open source
MiaoYan vs IdeaMemo
MiaoYan has 8,653 GitHub stars, 512 forks, 3 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. IdeaMemo has 1,158 stars, 164 forks, 12 open issues and last shipped 1 months ago. MiaoYan leads on adoption by 647% (8,653 vs 1,158 stars). MiaoYan is written in Swift under MIT; IdeaMemo is written in Kotlin under GPL-3.0. MiaoYan has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, IdeaMemo 14%. MiaoYan was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (notes-app), 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
| MiaoYan | IdeaMemo | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 8.7K | ★ 1.2K |
| License | MIT | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Swift | Kotlin |
| Last push | 2026-09-20 | 2026-08-16 |
| Forks | ⑂ 512 | ⑂ 164 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick MiaoYan if
- You weight community size — 8.7K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Swift
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick IdeaMemo if
- You want the IdeaMemo feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Kotlin
- You evaluated both and IdeaMemo fits your workflow better
About MiaoYan
MiaoYan is a lightweight, local first Markdown note taking app for macOS, written in Swift and released under the MIT licence, aimed at people who want fast plain text notes on their own disk without accounts, telemetry, or a hosted service.
read the full MiaoYan overview →
About IdeaMemo
IdeaMemo is a free, open source Android quick capture memo app written in Kotlin with Jetpack Compose under the GPL 3.0 licence, for Android users who want to record short ideas in a local database and optionally sync them to their own WebDAV cloud.
read the full IdeaMemo overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is MiaoYan or IdeaMemo more popular?
MiaoYan has 8,653 GitHub stars and IdeaMemo has 1,158. MiaoYan has the larger community by that measure.
Are MiaoYan and IdeaMemo free?
Both are open source. MiaoYan is licensed under MIT and IdeaMemo under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between MiaoYan and IdeaMemo?
MiaoYan is written in Swift and IdeaMemo in Kotlin. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, MiaoYan or IdeaMemo?
Choose MiaoYan if you want the larger community (8,653 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose IdeaMemo if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.