Note-taking apps in 2026
4 commercial products, ranked by how many people read about each, or about its maker, on Wikipedia's mobile site. Of those with an article of their own, Obsidian has the most readers, about 6.2k a month. 30 open-source projects, ranked by GitHub stars and how recently each was worked on. AppFlowy leads with 78k stars, ahead of AFFiNE. 30 had code pushed in the last three months. Most common licenses: AGPL-3.0 (9), MIT (9) and GPL-3.0 (5).
Commercial note-taking apps
-
1
Obsidian Dynalist Inc.
The free and flexible app for your private thoughts.
Complete system Production-ready You want notes as plain files you own, work offline, and are happy to tune your setup with plugins.
6.2k readers a month Since 2020 Commercial -
2
Notion Notion Labs
Build Custom Agents, search across all your apps, and automate busywork. The AI workspace where teams get more done, faster.
Complete system Production-ready A small or mid-size team wants one flexible tool for docs, wiki and light project tracking.
4.1k readers a month Since 2016 Commercial -
3
Evernote Bending Spoons
Our note taking app helps you capture and prioritize ideas, projects and to-do lists, so nothing falls through the cracks. Start your free trial today!
Complete system Production-ready You already keep years of notes in Evernote, or want strong web clipping and scanned-document search.
2k readers a month Since 2008 Commercial -
4
Microsoft OneNote Microsoft
Capture your ideas with Microsoft OneNote online. Organize notes, clip web content, and collaborate with others from any device.
Complete system Production-ready You use Microsoft 365, take handwritten or pen notes, or want a free notebook that syncs through OneDrive.
1.3k readers a month Since 2012 Commercial
Open-source note-taking apps
Complete systems you can adopt 10
-
1
AppFlowy AppFlowy-IO
Bring projects, wikis, and teams together with AI. AppFlowy is the AI collaborative workspace where you achieve more without losing control of your data. The leading open source Notion alternative.
Complete system Usable You want a Notion alternative that keeps data local or on your own server.
★ 78k AGPL-3.0 Dart Active, pushed today -
2
AFFiNE toeverything
There can be more than Notion and Miro. AFFiNE(pronounced [ə‘fain]) is a next-gen knowledge base that brings planning, sorting and creating all together. Privacy first, open-source, customizable and ready to use.
Complete system Usable You want an open alternative to Notion that also does visual whiteboarding and can run offline.
★ 74k See repository TypeScript Active, pushed today -
3
Memos usememos
Memos is an open-source, self-hosted note-taking app that brings your everyday thoughts together in a personal timeline. Your data stays yours, and you choose what to keep private or share.
Complete system Production-ready You want a quick place to jot thoughts and links on your own server.
★ 64k MIT Go Active, pushed today -
4
Joplin laurent22
Joplin - the privacy-focused note taking app with sync capabilities for Windows, macOS, Linux, Android and iOS.
Complete system Production-ready You want an Evernote replacement you control, across all your devices.
★ 57k See repository TypeScript Active, pushed today -
5
SiYuan siyuan-note
An open-source, privacy-first, self-hosted knowledge workspace where humans and AI agents work together 开源、隐私优先、自托管的知识工作空间，让人与智能体在此协作
Complete system Production-ready You want Logseq or Roam-style block linking with richer document editing.
★ 47k AGPL-3.0 TypeScript Active, pushed today -
6
Trilium TriliumNext
Build your personal knowledge base with Trilium Notes
Complete system Usable You want a deep, scriptable personal knowledge base and like tree-structured notes.
★ 39k AGPL-3.0 TypeScript Active, pushed today -
7
Notesnook streetwriters
A fully open source & end-to-end encrypted note taking alternative to Evernote.
Complete system Production-ready Privacy matters most and you want encrypted notes synced across devices.
★ 15k GPL-3.0 TypeScript Active, pushed today -
8
VNote vnotex
A pleasant note-taking platform with native speed, majoring in Markdown, MindMap, Typst, and plain text.
Complete system Usable You want a fast desktop Markdown notes app rather than an Electron one.
★ 13k LGPL-3.0 C++ Active, pushed today -
9
NoteGen codexu
Capture first. Organize later. A local-first Markdown app that turns scattered records into clear notes with AI.
Complete system Usable You collect scattered snippets during the day and want AI to draft notes from them.
★ 13k GPL-3.0 TypeScript Active, pushed today -
10
Rnote flxzt
Sketch and take handwritten notes.
Complete system Usable You take handwritten notes on a Linux laptop or tablet.
★ 12k GPL-3.0 Rust Active, pushed yesterday
Compared head to head
Looking for an alternative to
Open-source licenses
- Permissive: 11. Use it anywhere, including in closed products. You keep the copyright notice; Apache-2.0 also grants patent rights.
- Network copyleft: 9. Like GPL, and running a changed version as a web service counts as distributing it, so its users get the source too.
- Strong copyleft: 7. If you distribute the program or anything built on it, you must release the whole source under the same license.
- Weak copyleft: 1. Changes to the licensed files must be shared, but you can link them into a closed program.
Languages
TypeScript 11, C++ 3, Dart 2, Go 2, Rust 2, Swift 2, Vue 2, Shell 1, Python 1, Kotlin 1, Java 1, PHP 1 and F# 1.
Made software that belongs here? Add it. Listing is free.