head to head · open source
MiaoYan vs saber
MiaoYan has 8,647 GitHub stars, 512 forks, 3 open issues and last shipped today. saber has 4,817 stars, 371 forks, 401 open issues and last shipped 5 days ago. MiaoYan leads on adoption by 80% (8,647 vs 4,817 stars). MiaoYan is written in Swift under MIT; saber is written in Dart under GPL-3.0. MiaoYan has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, saber 8%. MiaoYan was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (macos, 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 | saber | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 8.6K | ★ 4.8K |
| License | MIT | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Swift | Dart |
| Last push | 2026-09-20 | 2026-09-15 |
| Forks | ⑂ 512 | ⑂ 371 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick MiaoYan if
- You weight community size — 8.6K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Swift
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick saber if
- You want the saber feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Dart
- You evaluated both and saber 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 saber
Saber is a cross platform, open source handwriting notes app for Android, iOS, Linux, macOS and Windows, built for students, professionals and anyone else who writes by hand on a screen and wants their notes to stay on their own terms.
read the full saber overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is MiaoYan or saber more popular?
MiaoYan has 8,647 GitHub stars and saber has 4,817. MiaoYan has the larger community by that measure.
Are MiaoYan and saber free?
Both are open source. MiaoYan is licensed under MIT and saber under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between MiaoYan and saber?
MiaoYan is written in Swift and saber in Dart. 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 saber?
Choose MiaoYan if you want the larger community (8,647 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose saber if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.