Scratch vs SilverBullet

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

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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SilverBullet

MIT

Self-hosted, programmable knowledge base: plain Markdown notes with live queries, backlinks, and an embedded Lua scripting runtime.

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Side-by-side comparison

	Scratch	SilverBullet
License	MIT	MIT
Self-hostable	Yes	Yes
GitHub Stars	1,596	6,320
Forks	158	513
Open Issues	83	365
Last Commit	Jul 28, 2026	Oct 13, 2026
First Released	Jan 31, 2026	Feb 16, 2022
Categories	Note Taking & Knowledge Management Tools	Note Taking & Knowledge Management Tools
Tags	#markdown #note taking #offline #cross-platform #desktop-app	#note taking #markdown #knowledge-management #self hosted

GitHub stars over time

Scratch1,596

SilverBullet

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