head to head · open source
SiYuan vs brain.md
SiYuan has 47,137 GitHub stars, 3,104 forks, 18 open issues and last shipped yesterday. brain.md has 594 stars, 59 forks, 0 open issues and last shipped 5 days ago. SiYuan leads on adoption by 7,836% (47,137 vs 594 stars). SiYuan is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; brain.md is written in JavaScript under Apache-2.0. SiYuan has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, brain.md 10%. SiYuan was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| SiYuan | brain.md | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 47K | ★ 594 |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-09 | 2026-11-05 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.1K | ⑂ 59 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick SiYuan if
- You weight community size — 47K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 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 SiYuan
From thought to insight, with agents English 中文 日本語 Türkçe Table of Contents 💡 Introduction 🔮 Features 🏗️ Architecture and Ecosystem 🗺️ Roadmap 🚀 Download Setup App Market Installation Package Package Manager Docker Hosting Unraid Hosting TrueNAS Hosting Test Channels ⌨️ Command line Interface 🏘️ Community 🛠️ Development Guide ❓ FAQ How does SiYuan store data? Does it support data synchronization through a third party sync disk? Is SiYuan open source? How to upgrade to a new version? What if some blocks (such as paragraph blocks in list items) cannot find the block icon? What should I do if the data repo…
read the full SiYuan overview →
About brain.md
brain.md A persistent, file based memory layer for your coding agents. An open, agent agnostic standard for capturing a project's durable knowledge as plain Markdown — read and written through one small CLI. It lives in your repo and travels across agents, machines, and models. Why · Quick start · See it work · CLI · How it works This repository is the toolkit , not a brain itself. Install it once, then in any project run brain init : it scaffolds a BRAIN.md protocol file, a brain/ directory, and default wires agent config files into your repo. From then on, any coding agent — Claude Code, Codex, anything that…
read the full brain.md overview →
More in Productivity & Utilities
Related comparisons
More Note Taking & Knowledge Management projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Note Taking & Knowledge Management field.
Frequently asked questions
Is SiYuan or brain.md more popular?
SiYuan has 47,137 GitHub stars and brain.md has 594. SiYuan has the larger community by that measure.
Are SiYuan and brain.md free?
Both are open source. SiYuan is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and brain.md under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between SiYuan and brain.md?
SiYuan 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, SiYuan or brain.md?
Choose SiYuan if you want the larger community (47,137 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose brain.md if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.