Memos
Open source self-hosted note-taking
The Lens
By Erik Loyd, SaaS CEO and former COO/CFO of an AWS Premier Partner.
Updated Oct 2026
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.
Free vs Self-Hosted vs Paid
fully freeFree: Everything. Memos is MIT licensed with one codebase and no premium tier: writing, Markdown, tags, search, views, sharing, Spaces and API access are all included. No seat fees, note limits or API usage fees.
Self-hosted: docker run -d --name memos -p 5230:5230 -v ~/.memos:/var/opt/memos neosmemo/memos:stable, and everything Memos keeps sits in ~/.memos, so backing up that folder is the backup plan. Also runs via Docker Compose, Kubernetes or a native binary on Linux, macOS or Windows, on SQLite, PostgreSQL or MySQL. Releases are moving to calendar tags (YY.MM.N); the Docker stable tag is still v0.31.0 (Sept 19, 2026) while 26.10 is in release candidate. Upgrades from anything older than 0.31.0 must run 0.31.0 first (and pre-0.22 installs must run 0.25.3 before that). Keep current: a December 2025 batch of advisories, including arbitrary account creation (CVE-2025-65795, high), was fixed in 0.25.3.
Paid: None. The project sells no plans, hosting or premium features. Your only costs are the server, domain and backup storage you choose. Optional support through GitHub Sponsors.
Free, with no paid tier and no hosted plan from the project. Your only cost is the box you run it on.
What to do by team size
- Solo
- free; one docker run and quick capture is the whole point
- Small team
- free; Spaces work for shared notes, but admins can read private memos since 0.31.0
- Medium team
- free as a scratchpad next to a real wiki such as Outline or BookStack
- Large team
- free, but too informal to be an org knowledge base
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