memos vs Pad

Comparing two open source alternatives to Notion . Use the comparison below to decide which one fits your needs.

memos

MIT

Privacy-first, self-hosted note-taking platform with markdown support, tagging, and built-in AI — a lightweight alternative to Notion and Obsidian.

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Pad

Apache-2.0

Local-first project management for developers and AI agents, with a CLI, web UI, SQLite backend, and native skills for Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, and more.

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Side-by-side comparison

	memos	Pad
License	MIT	Apache-2.0
Self-hostable	Yes	Yes
GitHub Stars	62,197	120
Forks	4,644	21
Open Issues	35	20
Last Commit	Aug 12, 2026	Aug 13, 2026
First Released	Dec 8, 2021	Mar 26, 2026
Categories	Note Taking & Knowledge Management Tools	Project Management
Tags	#markdown #memo #note taking #microblog	#local-first #cli #ai-agents #agent-tools #mcp-server

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