head to head · open source
vibe-kanban vs mdSilo-app
vibe-kanban has 28,112 GitHub stars, 3,013 forks, 540 open issues and last shipped yesterday. mdSilo-app has 849 stars, 48 forks, 65 open issues and last shipped yesterday. vibe-kanban leads on adoption by 3,211% (28,112 vs 849 stars). vibe-kanban is written in Rust under Apache-2.0; mdSilo-app is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0. vibe-kanban has attracted 11% as many forks as stars, mdSilo-app 6%. mdSilo-app was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (kanban), 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
| vibe-kanban | mdSilo-app | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 28K | ★ 849 |
| License | Apache-2.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Rust | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.0K | ⑂ 48 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick vibe-kanban if
- You weight community size — 28K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick mdSilo-app if
- You want the mdSilo-app feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and mdSilo-app fits your workflow better
About vibe-kanban
Vibe Kanban is an open source, Apache 2.0 kanban board written in Rust that lets software engineers plan work as issues and hand each issue to a coding agent such as Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI or Amp inside an isolated workspace.
read the full vibe-kanban overview →
About mdSilo-app
mdSilo is a local first knowledge base and feed reader, distributed as a desktop application under the AGPL 3.0 license. The project is written in TypeScript and built with React and Tauri, the Rust based cross platform application framework, with ProseMirror providing the editor layer. It lives in the note taking and personal knowledge management ecosystem, alongside other plain text, file based writing tools, and it targets Windows, macOS, and Linux as native builds with an additional web version hosted at mdsilo.com.
read the full mdSilo-app overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is vibe-kanban or mdSilo-app more popular?
vibe-kanban has 28,112 GitHub stars and mdSilo-app has 849. vibe-kanban has the larger community by that measure.
Are vibe-kanban and mdSilo-app free?
Both are open source. vibe-kanban is licensed under Apache-2.0 and mdSilo-app under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between vibe-kanban and mdSilo-app?
vibe-kanban is written in Rust and mdSilo-app in TypeScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, vibe-kanban or mdSilo-app?
Choose vibe-kanban if you want the larger community (28,112 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose mdSilo-app if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.