Note-Taking Apps

Memos64.0k★

Memos is a self-hosted notes app built for quick capture: no title, no folder, just type and post into a personal timeline. You get Markdown, tags, attachments, links between memos, reactions and comments, plus REST and gRPC APIs. It's MIT licensed and the whole thing costs $0. There is no paid tier and no hosted plan. Setup is one docker run with a volume, and everything lives in that one folder, so backup means copying it. SQLite, PostgreSQL or MySQL all work. Extras include a web clipper for Chrome and Firefox, a Telegram bot and an MCP server for AI tools. Solo: this is the sweet spot. Small teams and families: Spaces let people write together while each keeps their own memos. Medium and large: it's a scratchpad, not a wiki, so look at Outline or BookStack. The catch: the project moves fast and breaks things. v0.31.0 removed RSS feeds and let instance admins read everyone's private memos. The upcoming 26.10 release drops the /api/v1 paths, so every integration must update, and older installs must step through 0.31.0 first. There's no importer from other note apps either. Pin your version and read the release notes.

Joplin56.8k★

Joplin is the Evernote replacement that actually respects your data. Markdown-native note-taking with notebooks, tags, to-dos, and a web clipper that grabs full pages from Chrome and Firefox. Your notes sync via Nextcloud, Dropbox, OneDrive, or Joplin's own cloud service. End-to-end encryption is built in. Desktop and mobile apps cover every platform: Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android. The desktop experience is solid, with a split editor/preview, rich plugins, and custom themes. Importing from Evernote is a first-class feature, preserving formatted content, attachments, and metadata in one shot. Solo users who left Evernote (or want to) get everything they need for free. Self-hosters running Joplin Server get team sync without paying for cloud. Casual users just point it at Dropbox and never think about infrastructure. The catch: no real-time collaboration. The sync model is file-based, not operational transforms, so conflict resolution is basic. Mobile apps have historically lagged the desktop. And if you need Notion-style databases and kanban boards alongside your notes, Joplin doesn't do that.

llm_wiki20.9k★

LLM Wiki turns your documents into a wiki an LLM writes and keeps current. Most chat-with-your-files tools search from scratch on every question; this one reads each source once, writes linked pages that cite it, then updates them as you add more. It's a free GPL-3.0 desktop app built on Andrej Karpathy's LLM Wiki pattern, and the output opens as an Obsidian vault. Install is a download for Apple Silicon Macs, Windows or Linux. Nothing works until you add a model: OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Ollama, or any compatible endpoint. Every source costs two LLM calls. On Ollama that's free and private; on a hosted API, ingest is the bill. Deep Research also needs a Tavily or SerpApi key, or your own SearXNG. No paid tier, no account. Solo researchers with a document pile: free, worth trying. Teams: there's no shared instance, so everyone runs their own. A local API and MCP server let Claude Code or Codex query your wiki. The catch: a wiki written by an LLM is full of LLM claims. Source links tell you where a sentence came from, not whether it's right. Ship a product built on this code and GPL-3.0 sends your source along.

notesnook14.8k★

Notesnook is the note-taking app for people who actually care about privacy. End-to-end encrypted with XChaCha20-Poly1305 and Argon2, everything is encrypted on-device before it touches any server. Web app, desktop (Electron), and mobile (React Native) all ship for free. The encryption isn't bolted on as an afterthought. It's the foundation. Notes, notebooks, tags, attachments, everything gets encrypted client-side. The sync infrastructure handles encrypted blobs only. This makes it a credible Evernote replacement for anyone who's uncomfortable with their notes sitting in plaintext on someone else's server. Solo users and small teams who value privacy over collaboration features will love this. The editor is solid, markdown support works well, and the apps are polished. Real-time collaboration and deep integrations with other tools are where Notion or Evernote still win. For personal note-taking with actual security, Notesnook is the best option in this space. The catch: the open source version is the full product, but self-hosting the sync server isn't officially documented. You're trusting their sync infrastructure or going without sync entirely.

obsidian-copilot7.9k★

Obsidian Copilot puts an AI assistant inside Obsidian without sending your notes to a service. The plugin is AGPL-3.0 frontend. You bring your own API key for OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, Cohere, OpenRouter, or any OpenAI-compatible endpoint, including local models through Ollama or LM Studio. Your vault stays on your machine. Install through Obsidian's community plugin browser, paste your API key, and you have chat over your notes, vault-wide semantic search with embeddings, command palette workflows, and image understanding for screenshots in your notes. Setup is a five-minute job. Solo writers and researchers: free tier is genuinely useful with a personal API key. Plus tier ($0.99/month as of mid-2026, may vary) adds autonomous agents, time-window queries (find notes I wrote about X last month), PDF and video summarization, and web search. Teams: each user pays their own LLM costs, and Plus covers the heavier features. The catch is the AGPL label is misleading. The plugin frontend is open, but Plus features run against a proprietary backend the developer controls. That is fine as a business model, but do not pick this expecting a fully self-hostable AI stack. If you need that, look at Khoj or pair raw Obsidian with a local Ollama setup.

reflect-open1.6k★

Reflect-open is the note app Reflect rebuilt in the open: local-first, every note a plain Markdown file on disk, daily notes, wiki-links with backlinks, audio memos with transcription. AI features run through an API key you bring (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google), so there's no bundled AI subscription. The Mac app is MIT licensed and free permanently, per the company itself. There's no backend to run; sync is iCloud or a git repo, which is the whole local-first point. The company line matters here: the desktop app stays free, the iPhone app is free in beta but planned to become paid, and the original $10/mo proprietary Reflect keeps running as a separate product. Obsidian is the obvious comparison, and it's the more mature choice today with its plugin ecosystem. Reflect-open's pitch over it: actual open source rather than a free proprietary app, and company backing rather than volunteer maintenance. Logseq covers the outliner crowd. The catch: Apple-only, deliberately, with Windows and Android as stated non-goals. It's beta, and the free/paid line runs through platforms, so wanting it on your phone long-term likely means paying.