NoteDiscovery vs Pad

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

NoteDiscovery

MIT

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

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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

	NoteDiscovery	Pad
License	MIT	Apache-2.0
Self-hostable	Yes	Yes
GitHub Stars	2,741	120
Forks	232	21
Open Issues	1	20
Last Commit	Aug 12, 2026	Aug 13, 2026
First Released	Nov 5, 2025	Mar 26, 2026
Categories	Note Taking & Knowledge Management Tools	Project Management
Tags	#knowledge-management #note taking #markdown #docker #self hosted	#local-first #cli #ai-agents #agent-tools #mcp-server

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