Best Free & Open Source Alternatives to Google Keep

Joplin is a free, open-source note-taking and to-do application designed with privacy at its core. It supports markdown editing and organises notes into notebooks with tags, making it easy to structure large collections of notes.

One of its standout features is end-to-end encryption combined with flexible sync options — you can sync via Joplin Cloud, Nextcloud, WebDAV, Dropbox, OneDrive, or your own server. This makes Joplin a strong self-hosted alternative to Evernote, removing the need to trust a proprietary cloud with your data.

Available on Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, and iOS, Joplin also supports a web clipper browser extension for capturing web content. It is scriptable via plugins and has an active community ecosystem, making it suitable for both casual note-takers and power users.

Memos is an open-source, self-hosted note-taking platform built for capturing and organizing thoughts quickly. Written in Go with a React frontend, it runs as a single lightweight binary and can be deployed in minutes via Docker. Every note is stored in your own database, giving you full ownership of your data without relying on third-party cloud services.

Notes are written in plain markdown with support for tags, mentions, and inline formatting. Memos includes a built-in AI assistant powered by local or remote LLMs for summarization, tagging, and semantic search, while remaining fully functional offline. The web UI is fast and minimalist, with keyboard shortcuts, dark mode, and a mobile-friendly responsive layout that works well across devices.

With an active community and 60k+ stars on GitHub, Memos strikes a balance between the structure of a knowledge base and the simplicity of a quick-capture journal. It is MIT-licensed and ideal for individuals and small teams who want a private, low-maintenance alternative to Notion, Obsidian, or Evernote.

Files.md is a minimal, local-first note-taking application built around plain Markdown files. Unlike complex knowledge management tools, it focuses on simplicity and portability: there is no build system, no database, and no vendor lock-in. You open web/index.html in your browser and start writing.

The app supports notes, documents, projects, journals, habits, checklists, and tasks. All data lives in local .md files that you fully own. A Telegram bot provides on-the-go access, and the server is a single binary for those who want self-hosted sync. The project is deliberately small enough that a single developer (or an LLM) can understand the entire codebase.

Compared to Notion, Obsidian, or Evernote, Files.md trades advanced features for extreme simplicity and data ownership. There are no plugins, no graph views, and no AI workflows—just plain text files that work offline and sync via iCloud, Dropbox, or Google Drive.

NoteDiscovery is an open-source, self-hosted knowledge base designed for personal note-taking and knowledge management. Built with a modern JavaScript stack and FastAPI backend, it provides a clean interface for capturing and organizing your thoughts.

The application supports markdown formatting, making it easy to write and format notes. It is designed around the Zettelkasten methodology, a powerful system for connecting ideas and building a personal knowledge network.

As a self-hosted solution, NoteDiscovery gives you complete control over your data and privacy. It can be easily deployed using Docker, making setup straightforward for users familiar with containerization. Whether you are looking to replace Notion, Evernote, or Obsidian with a privacy-focused alternative, NoteDiscovery offers a compelling option.

Atomic is a self-hosted personal knowledge base that stores information as atoms — markdown notes that are automatically chunked, embedded, and linked by semantic similarity. It builds a knowledge graph from your notes and lets you explore connections on a spatial canvas powered by force-directed layout.

Key features include semantic vector search (sqlite-vec), LLM-powered wiki synthesis that generates articles from your notes with inline citations, an agentic chat interface for RAG-style conversations with your knowledge base, automatic tag extraction, RSS feed sync, a browser extension for web clipping, and an MCP server for Claude integration. AI providers are pluggable — use OpenRouter for cloud models or Ollama for fully local AI.

Atomic runs as a Tauri desktop app (macOS, Windows, Linux), a self-hosted Docker server, or deployed to Fly.io. A native iOS SwiftUI app is also available. Compared to Obsidian, Atomic has AI-powered synthesis and semantic search built in without plugins; compared to NotebookLM, it is fully self-hosted and supports local AI via Ollama; compared to Notion, it is open source and designed around a personal, linked knowledge graph rather than collaborative databases.

kuku is an open-source, local-first Markdown workspace for macOS designed for people who want their notes to stay portable, private, and useful to AI. It edits ordinary .md files in a local vault, then layers search, graph navigation, AI assistance, Second Brain workflows, and encrypted sync on top.

The app connects notes with [[wikilinks]], backlinks, and 2D/3D graph navigation, turning your vault into a personal wiki. AI features include Agent, Ask, and Inline editing modes with diff-based approval, so proposed changes are always reviewable before they are applied. Decision documents help AI context improve explicitly over time by turning proposals into traceable memory and wiki updates.

Built as a full-stack open-source project, kuku includes the macOS client, web app, Go server, protobuf contracts, Rust AI/indexing crates, and Docker infrastructure. You can use it entirely offline, sign in for managed convenience, or self-host the complete stack yourself.

Jotty (jotty·page) is a self-hosted app for personal notes and checklists that keeps everything in plain files. The recommended install is a single Docker container with data, config and optional cache volumes, and there are also a Proxmox community script and an Unraid template. Notes and checklists are stored as Markdown, with JSON for users, sessions, sharing and encryption keys, so the whole instance is a directory you can back up with tar or rsync rather than a database you have to dump. The first account created becomes the admin.

Notes use a TipTap WYSIWYG editor with GitHub Flavored Markdown and syntax highlighting, plus wikilinks and a graph-style brain view. Checklists support drag-and-drop ordering, progress bars and categories, and can grow into task projects with Kanban boards and time tracking. Users can share items with other accounts on the same instance or publish them as public links, and the admin panel manages users and sessions. Around that sit 14 built-in themes with custom themes and emojis, community translations, per-item PGP encryption, OIDC single sign-on for providers such as Authentik, Keycloak, Okta, Google and Entra ID, MFA, and a REST API with per-user keys for scripting and integrations.

Against Notion, Obsidian, Evernote or Google Keep it is deliberately narrow: there are no databases, block layouts or plugin marketplace, and no native desktop or mobile apps. What you get instead is a small AGPL-3.0 service that deploys in minutes, leaves your content readable on disk, and needs no proprietary sync. The PWA is mobile-first and caches pages you have already visited, but creating or editing while offline is not supported yet, and the file-based model means one shared data directory rather than a horizontally scaled backend.

Anchor is an offline-first, self-hostable note-taking application built around speed, privacy, and reliability across web and mobile. Notes are stored locally, fully editable without an internet connection, and synced across devices when you come back online, so your data is always available and always under your control.

The app ships with a rich text editor (bold, italic, underline, headings, lists, checkboxes), custom tags with colors, image and audio attachments, customizable note backgrounds, pinning, archiving, and a soft-delete trash with a recovery period. Notes can be shared with other users on the same instance as either viewers or editors, and an admin panel handles user management, registration control, and system statistics. Authentication is handled locally or via any OIDC provider such as Pocket ID, Authelia, Authentik, or Keycloak.

Unlike Google Keep, which is locked to Google's ecosystem and account system, Anchor runs as a single Docker container (with an optional external PostgreSQL database) that you host on your own infrastructure. There is no telemetry, no vendor lock-in, and your notes never leave your server unless you explicitly share them. It is a great fit for anyone who wants Keep's lightweight feel combined with the privacy, portability, and long-term control of self-hosted software.

Kept is a self-hosted notes app modelled on Google Keep and built for fast capture. It runs as a web app on your own server or as native iOS and Android apps that can work entirely on-device with no server or account. Notes come in several types: text notes, nested checklists, images, drawings, links, and file attachments. Labels, binders, colours, background images, pinned notes, archive, and trash keep everything organised, while search and filters support note type, labels, and date-style queries.

Beyond capture, Kept covers reminders (browser push notifications for time reminders and location-based reminders on mobile), real-time collaborative sharing between users on the same instance, link previews, quick share from the iOS and Android share sheets, and Android home-screen widgets. Downloaded notes can be edited offline and sync automatically when the server is reachable, and a device-only library can be moved to a server later. A Google Keep Takeout importer brings existing notes across.

Self-hosting is a single Docker image with a SQLite database and a ./data volume: start the container, open port 6767, and create the first admin account. Local accounts, optional 2FA, OIDC single sign-on, scoped OAuth 2.1 API access, and local or remote MCP servers for AI agents are all included. Kept Cloud is an optional managed hosting plan with automatic backups and updates; the software itself is AGPL-3.0 and free to self-host.

Quillpad is a fully free and open-source note-taking app for Android. It takes a privacy-first approach: no ads, no unnecessary permissions, and no uploading of your notes anywhere without your knowledge. Notes are written in markdown, organized into notebooks and tags, and stay on your device unless you choose to sync them.

Beyond plain notes, Quillpad handles task lists with reminders, pinned favorites, hidden notes for anything private, voice recordings and file attachments, and full-text search. You can archive what you no longer need, switch between light and dark mode, and pick from multiple color schemes. For keeping notes portable, it can sync plain markdown files to a local or cloud folder, or sync with Nextcloud (experimental) via the Nextcloud Notes app.

Compared to Google Keep, Quillpad trades live collaboration and tight Google account integration for local ownership of your data, markdown portability, and freedom from vendor lock-in. Compared to Evernote, it is far lighter and entirely free, without usage quotas or a subscription tier. It is a community continuation of the abandoned Quillnote app, available on F-Droid and Google Play.