Evernote vs Memos
Evernote and Memos are both note-taking software. Evernote is a commercial product from Bending Spoons. Memos is open source under MIT, with 64k GitHub stars.
Which to pick
- Pick Evernote when
- You already keep years of notes in Evernote, or want strong web clipping and scanned-document search.
- Pick Memos when
- You want a quick place to jot thoughts and links on your own server.
Side by side
A note-taking app with notebooks, tags, web clipping, document scanning and search inside images and PDFs.
A self-hosted note app that shows short Markdown notes in a timeline, like a private microblog, with tags and sharing.
Since Bending Spoons bought it, prices rose and the free plan was cut to one notebook and 50 notes.
Designed for short notes, not long documents or structured knowledge bases.
Production-ready (both)
Cloud service, desktop app and mobile app
Self-hosted server
Not published
Go, TypeScript, React, SQLite and PostgreSQL
Closed source, sold by Bending Spoons
Open source, MIT (permissive)
Closed source: you use it under the maker's terms and cannot change or resell the code.
You can build it into a product you sell, as long as you keep its copyright notice.
2k Wikipedia readers a month on phones
64k GitHub stars
Not known
Established: started 4 years ago, latest release 26.11.0.
Other comparisons
More note-taking apps
Both sides were judged on 2026-11-03 from makers' descriptions, Wikipedia, READMEs and GitHub data. License, age and popularity lines are worked out directly.