head to head · open source
SiYuan vs pm-brain
SiYuan has 47,039 GitHub stars, 3,095 forks, 18 open issues and last shipped yesterday. pm-brain has 952 stars, 193 forks, 3 open issues and last shipped 6 months ago. SiYuan leads on adoption by 4,841% (47,039 vs 952 stars). SiYuan is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; pm-brain is written in Python under MIT. SiYuan has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, pm-brain 20%. SiYuan 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
| SiYuan | pm-brain | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 47K | ★ 952 |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | Python |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-05-20 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.1K | ⑂ 193 |
| 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 pm-brain if
- You want the pm-brain feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and pm-brain 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 pm-brain
PM Brain A second brain for product managers. Plain markdown files in a folder on your laptop. Claude reads them before answering, writes to them after, sweeps them every Friday. No vector DB. No cloud. No agent memory tricks. You manage one product. Your context is scattered across Notion, Linear, Slack, your dashboards, and your head. You ship a feature. Six weeks later, nobody remembers why you killed the other option. PM Brain fixes that. See it in action: A week with PM Brain: Lena's first five days is a short story of one PM using it on a real team. New here? Start there. Research preview. The architecture…
read the full pm-brain overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is SiYuan or pm-brain more popular?
SiYuan has 47,039 GitHub stars and pm-brain has 952. SiYuan has the larger community by that measure.
Are SiYuan and pm-brain free?
Both are open source. SiYuan is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and pm-brain under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between SiYuan and pm-brain?
SiYuan is written in TypeScript and pm-brain in Python. 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 pm-brain?
Choose SiYuan if you want the larger community (47,039 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose pm-brain if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.