memos vs Scratch

Comparing two open source alternatives to Obsidian and Notion and Evernote. 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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Scratch

MIT

Scratch is a minimalist, offline-first markdown note-taking app for macOS, Windows, and Linux. Plain text files, keyboard-driven, with no cloud lock-in or account required.

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Side-by-side comparison

	memos	Scratch
License	MIT	MIT
Self-hostable	Yes	Yes
GitHub Stars	62,667	1,564
Forks	4,703	150
Open Issues	43	77
Last Commit	Aug 31, 2026	Jul 28, 2026
First Released	Dec 8, 2021	Jan 31, 2026
Categories	Note Taking & Knowledge Management Tools	Note Taking & Knowledge Management Tools
Tags	#markdown #memo #note taking #microblog	#markdown #note taking #offline #cross-platform #desktop-app

GitHub stars over time

memos62,667

Scratch

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