head to head · open source
silverbullet vs iwe
silverbullet has 6,466 GitHub stars, 529 forks, 345 open issues and last shipped yesterday. iwe has 1,815 stars, 94 forks, 1 open issues and last shipped yesterday. silverbullet leads on adoption by 256% (6,466 vs 1,815 stars). silverbullet is written in TypeScript under MIT; iwe is written in Rust under Apache-2.0. silverbullet has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, iwe 5%. silverbullet was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (knowledge-management, markdown), 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
| silverbullet | iwe | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 6.5K | ★ 1.8K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-11-05 | 2026-11-05 |
| Forks | ⑂ 529 | ⑂ 94 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick silverbullet if
- You weight community size — 6.5K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick iwe if
- You want the iwe feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and iwe fits your workflow better
About silverbullet
SilverBullet SilverBullet is a Programmable, Private, Browser based, Open Source, Self Hosted, Personal Knowledge Database — a fancy term for a "notes app on steroids". Yowza! That surely is a lot of adjectives to describe a browser based Markdown editor programmable with Lua. Let’s get more specific. SilverBullet combines a clean live preview editor with wiki style linking, a built in database and query language, and a fully integrated Space Lua scripting environment, turning your notes into a programmable system that grows with you. In SilverBullet you keep your content as a collection of Markdown Pages…
read the full silverbullet overview →
About iwe
IWE Memory system for you and your AI agents Turn your thinking into queryable context IWE turns a directory of markdown files into a knowledge graph — a connected structure you browse from your editor and your AI queries from the command line. Same files, same links, two interfaces. No cloud, no database, no lock in. Version everything with git. IWE is for people who want database style queries on their notes — "all drafts under this subtree", "every accepted decision in Q1" — without moving them into an actual database. Write in Markdown , structure with links, give AI agents the tools to navigate your…
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Frequently asked questions
Is silverbullet or iwe more popular?
silverbullet has 6,466 GitHub stars and iwe has 1,815. silverbullet has the larger community by that measure.
Are silverbullet and iwe free?
Both are open source. silverbullet is licensed under MIT and iwe under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between silverbullet and iwe?
silverbullet is written in TypeScript and iwe in Rust. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, silverbullet or iwe?
Choose silverbullet if you want the larger community (6,466 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose iwe if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.