head to head · open source
obsidian-mind vs brain.md
obsidian-mind has 4,668 GitHub stars, 536 forks, 7 open issues and last shipped 23 days ago. brain.md has 553 stars, 51 forks, 0 open issues and last shipped 14 days ago. obsidian-mind leads on adoption by 744% (4,668 vs 553 stars). obsidian-mind is written in TypeScript under MIT; brain.md is written in JavaScript under Apache-2.0. obsidian-mind has attracted 11% as many forks as stars, brain.md 9%. brain.md was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (ai-agents, claude-code, knowledge-management), 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
| obsidian-mind | brain.md | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 4.7K | ★ 553 |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-02 | 2026-09-11 |
| Forks | ⑂ 536 | ⑂ 51 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick obsidian-mind if
- You weight community size — 4.7K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick brain.md if
- You want the brain.md feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and brain.md fits your workflow better
About obsidian-mind
obsidian mind is a self organizing Obsidian vault template that gives AI coding agents persistent memory, built for developers and knowledge workers who run Claude Code, Codex CLI, or Gemini CLI and want every session to build on the last.
read the full obsidian-mind overview →
About brain.md
brain.md is an open, agent agnostic, file based memory layer for coding agents such as Claude Code and Codex, distributed as a zero dependency JavaScript CLI under the Apache 2.0 licence, and it is aimed at developers and teams who want a project's durable decisions, requirements and constraints to survive beyond a single chat session.
read the full brain.md overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is obsidian-mind or brain.md more popular?
obsidian-mind has 4,668 GitHub stars and brain.md has 553. obsidian-mind has the larger community by that measure.
Are obsidian-mind and brain.md free?
Both are open source. obsidian-mind is licensed under MIT and brain.md under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between obsidian-mind and brain.md?
obsidian-mind is written in TypeScript and brain.md in JavaScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, obsidian-mind or brain.md?
Choose obsidian-mind if you want the larger community (4,668 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose brain.md if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.