OpenAltFinder

Best Open Source Note Taking & Knowledge Management Tools in 2026

Apps for capturing notes, organizing information, and building personal knowledge systems and second brains.

The most popular pick this year is AFFiNE with 68,262 GitHub stars, but all 11 options below are worth considering depending on your needs.

11 open source note taking & knowledge management tools — ranked by GitHub stars. Browse all

AFFiNE

AFFiNE

Open-source knowledge base combining note-taking, whiteboard, and project planning in one workspace.

Alternative to:
NotionNotion
memos

memos

A modern, open-source, self-hosted knowledge management and note-taking platform designed for privacy-conscious users and organizations.

Alternative to:
ObsidianObsidian
Joplin

Joplin

Privacy-focused, open-source note-taking and to-do app with end-to-end encryption and multi-device sync.

Alternative to:
Evernote
TriliumNext Notes

TriliumNext Notes

Hierarchical personal knowledge base with powerful note-taking, rich text editing, and scripting capabilities.

Alternative to:
NotionNotion
HedgeDoc

HedgeDoc

Real-time collaborative markdown note editor you can self-host — write together with rich formatting and seamless sharing.

Alternative to:
Google DocsGoogle Docs
SilverBullet

SilverBullet

Markdown-based note-taking app with powerful live queries, templates, and a pluggable scripting system for power users.

Alternative to:
NotionNotion
Speakr

Speakr

Self-hosted AI transcription and intelligent note-taking platform that turns audio recordings into organized, searchable notes with speaker identification.

Alternative to:
Otter.aiOtter.ai
NoteDiscovery

NoteDiscovery

A self-hosted knowledge base for note-taking with markdown support, Zettelkasten methodology, and Docker deployment.

Alternative to:
NotionNotion
Jotty

Jotty

Lightweight self-hosted app for managing personal file-based notes and checklists.

Alternative to:
NotionNotion
Atomic

Atomic

A self-hosted personal knowledge base that turns markdown notes into an AI-augmented knowledge graph with semantic search and wiki synthesis.

Alternative to:
PinboardPinboard
Journal

Journal

A simple self-hosted journal and blog API written in Go, using SQLite for storage.

Alternative to:
Day OneDay One

How we rank these tools

Tools are ranked by GitHub stars as a proxy for community adoption and trust. Stars reflect how many developers found a project valuable enough to bookmark — a reasonable signal for quality in the open source world. We only list tools that are actively maintained and open source.

Looking for tools you can run yourself? Browse self-hosted note taking & knowledge management tools →