head to head · open source
nnn vs memories
nnn has 21,895 GitHub stars, 817 forks, 1 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. memories has 3,840 stars, 169 forks, 473 open issues and last shipped yesterday. nnn leads on adoption by 470% (21,895 vs 3,840 stars). nnn is written in C under BSD-2-Clause; memories is written in PHP under AGPL-3.0. nnn has attracted 4% as many forks as stars, memories 4%. memories was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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
| nnn | memories | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 22K | ★ 3.8K |
| License | BSD-2-Clause | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | C | PHP |
| Last push | 2026-09-16 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 817 | ⑂ 169 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick nnn if
- You weight community size — 22K stars and counting
- You want the BSD-2-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches C
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick memories if
- You want the memories feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- You evaluated both and memories fits your workflow better
About nnn
nnn (n³) is a tiny, nearly zero config terminal file manager written in C and released under the BSD 2 Clause licence, built for developers, sysadmins, and command line users who want fast filesystem browsing, disk usage analysis, batch renaming, and file picking without leaving the shell.
About memories
Memories is a fast, modern photo management suite that runs as a Nextcloud app, built for people who host their own Nextcloud instance and want a timeline first photo and video library without handing their media to a commercial cloud service.
read the full memories overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is nnn or memories more popular?
nnn has 21,895 GitHub stars and memories has 3,840. nnn has the larger community by that measure.
Are nnn and memories free?
Both are open source. nnn is licensed under BSD-2-Clause and memories under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between nnn and memories?
nnn is written in C and memories in PHP. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, nnn or memories?
Choose nnn if you want the larger community (21,895 stars) or its BSD-2-Clause licence terms. Choose memories if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.