Open-source Evernote alternatives

Memos is a personal timeline for quick notes that you host yourself. The idea is to write first and organize later: you save a thought in Markdown without choosing a title or folder, optionally attach images and files, and it lands on a chronological feed.

Finding things again relies on search, tag filters and a view of any given day on the timeline. You can pin important memos and save frequently used filters as views. New memos are private, and you decide per memo whether to keep it to yourself, show it to signed-in users or invite specific people, or make it public with a link. The project advertises zero telemetry and a full export of your data.

Memos is MIT licensed and built with Go on the back end, React on the front end and SQLite for storage. The quickest way to run it is a Docker container, with other options in the deployment guide, and there is a live demo to try first. Releases follow a year-and-month version scheme.

Joplin is a note-taking and to-do application, free and open source, that can manage large collections of notes organized into notebooks. Notes are written in Markdown, are searchable, can be tagged, and can be edited either in the app or in your own text editor. Apps are available for Windows, macOS, Linux, Android and iOS.

The app is offline first, so all your data lives on your phone or computer and stays accessible without a connection. Notes can be synchronized with end-to-end encryption through services such as Nextcloud, Dropbox, OneDrive and Joplin Cloud, and topics also mention WebDAV. Full-text search is available on every platform, and plugins and themes let you customize the app. A web clipper saves pages, and notes exported from Evernote can be imported with formatting, attachments and metadata intact; plain Markdown files can be imported as well.

The repository license is listed as 'Other', so check its terms if you plan to redistribute. Joplin is a popular choice for people who want an Evernote replacement that keeps data local or on storage they already control.

SiYuan is an open-source, privacy-first personal knowledge management system. Its distinctive feature is fine-grained, block-level referencing: any block can be linked to or embedded elsewhere, with two-way links, custom attributes and SQL query embeds. Editing is Markdown WYSIWYG, and the project describes itself as a workspace where humans and AI agents work together. It is local-first and self-hostable.

The editor supports block-style writing, list outlines, block zoom-in, very large documents, math formulas, charts, flowcharts and Gantt charts. Web clipping, PDF annotation links, flashcards with spaced repetition, a database table view, Tesseract OCR and multi-tab split-screen layouts are included. You can export blocks and embeds, standard Markdown with assets, or PDF, Word and HTML. AI writing and Q and A chat can use the OpenAI API, and template and JavaScript or CSS snippets allow customization.

SiYuan is AGPL-3.0 licensed and available as desktop apps, mobile apps for Android, iOS and HarmonyOS, an installation package, a package manager, and Docker, Kubernetes, Unraid and TrueNAS hosting. A command line interface and an app market for extensions exist. Most features are free, even for commercial use.

Paperless-ngx is document management software that converts physical paperwork into an online archive you can search, so you end up keeping less paper. It succeeds the original Paperless and Paperless-ng projects, and a team of contributors shares the work of advancing and supporting it. The backend is Python with Django, the interface uses Angular, and it is released under the GPL-3.0 license.

Its topics point to OCR, machine learning and AI support alongside archiving and PDF handling, so scanned documents can be indexed and found by their text. The documentation has a full feature list and screenshots, and the project provides a public demo whose content is reset frequently and should not contain confidential information.

The easiest deployment is Docker Compose, using files in the repository that pull images from the GitHub container registry, and an install script can set up a compose environment. Step-by-step guides cover other installation methods, and migrating from Paperless-ng means switching to the new image. It suits households, freelancers and small offices who want a private, searchable archive of their paperwork.

Trilium Notes is a free, open-source, cross-platform note-taking application focused on building large personal knowledge bases. Notes are arranged in a tree of arbitrary depth, and a single note can be cloned into several places in the tree, which lets you organize the same material along different lines without duplicating it.

The editor is a rich WYSIWYG one with tables, images, math and Markdown autoformatting, and there is also support for source code notes with syntax highlighting. Navigation relies on fast jumps between notes, full-text search and note hoisting. Notes are versioned automatically, and attributes can be used to organize, query and script notes. The interface is available in several languages, and built-in documentation opens with F1.

The project, now maintained as TriliumNext, is AGPL-3.0 licensed and built with TypeScript and Electron. It provides desktop builds as well as a server setup with Docker, so you can keep your notes on your own hardware. Stable releases are recommended, with nightly builds available for those who want the newest changes.

Notesnook is a note-taking app that puts privacy first. Everything is encrypted on your device with XChaCha20-Poly1305 and Argon2 before it syncs, following zero-knowledge principles, and the whole thing is open source. It is presented as an end-to-end encrypted alternative to Evernote, aiming to show that privacy does not have to cost convenience.

The repository contains all the code needed to build and use the web, desktop and mobile clients. They are built mainly with TypeScript and React, with Electron for desktop and React Native for mobile, and parts of the code base are still being ported from JavaScript. A server component written with .NET appears in the topics. The website covers the full feature list, roadmap and downloads, and the team encourages community involvement through Discord.

Notesnook is licensed under GPL-3.0. A hosted sync service is operated by the company behind it, and the open-source code lets you inspect how encryption is handled. It suits people moving away from Evernote or other cloud notes who want strong encryption and cross-platform apps.

Anytype Desktop is the official desktop client for Anytype, a personal knowledge base for macOS, Windows and Linux. It lets you collect pages, tasks, wikis and journals and link them together, while keeping data stored locally and encrypted across your devices.

The client is built around composable blocks such as text, databases, kanban boards and calendars, and you can define your own Types to shape the data model. Storage is offline-first with optional peer-to-peer sync, and encryption relies on the any-sync protocol. It is an Electron application written in TypeScript, and it can be extended through a gRPC API and AI agents described in the repository.

Sign-in uses an Any-ID, and installers are published on the releases page and the download site. The code is published under the Any Source Available License 1.0 rather than a standard open-source licence, and the README includes instructions for building from source and updating the middleware.

TiddlyWiki is a personal web notebook with a non-linear structure, usable by anyone and kept indefinitely without depending on any company. It is a complete interactive wiki written in JavaScript, in which content is stored as small units called tiddlers that can be linked, tagged and rearranged.

It can be used as one self-contained HTML file in the browser, or run as a Node.js application with a client and server setup for advanced users. The whole interface is implemented in WikiText, which makes it highly customizable, and there is a plugin ecosystem. The project description also mentions that it can run in places such as AWS Lambda.

The community talks on the Talk TiddlyWiki forum, a Google Group that dates back to 2005, GitHub Discussions, Reddit and Discord, and developer documentation is published on the project site. The repository lists the licence as Other. TiddlyWiki is suited to personal knowledge bases, journals, task lists and small documentation sets.

FSNotes is a native notes app for macOS and iOS built around the idea of owning your notes. Each note is stored as a portable Markdown or plain-text file rather than in a proprietary database, so the notes can be opened with any compatible app now or years later.

The app focuses on writing and quick retrieval. It handles several folders, external editors, sync through iCloud Drive or Dropbox, and Git backups if you want them, and connects ideas with tags and double-bracket links. Private notes can be protected with AES-256 encryption, and it renders code blocks, Mermaid diagrams and MathJax math. Search and navigation are designed to stay smooth across large note collections.

FSNotes is written in Swift and released under the MIT licence. The apps are sold through the App Store, and those purchases support continued development, while the source code is open. It suits Apple users who want local Markdown notes with sync through their own storage service.

Standard Notes is a note-taking app with end-to-end encryption, built for digitalists and professionals, aiming to keep notes, files and life's work in one secure place. Only the user can read their notes, and sync across devices is encrypted by default.

You register for an account on the web app and install clients for Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS and Android. The README highlights fast, free and encrypted sync on an unlimited number of devices, public source code, the option of hosting your own server with a few steps, and a focus on longevity and sustainability. A companion service called Listed turns notes into an online publication with email newsletters, and developers can build and publish extensions.

The web app compiles to static HTML, JavaScript and CSS files that can be served from any web server, and the README includes build and development instructions. Standard Notes is written in TypeScript and licensed under AGPL-3.0, with a forum and help pages for support. It suits privacy-minded users who want encrypted notes with the option to host their own backend.