Notes and knowledge base tools have to balance writing, retrieval, privacy, and long-term maintainability. For June 2026, ToolVitals compares open/source-visible projects in this category using supplied health, shipping, openness, license, GitHub star, and ToolVitals score data.
The ranking is limited to open/source-visible tools and is ordered by ToolVitals score first, with GitHub stars used only as a secondary popularity signal when scores are close.
Rankings
| Rank | Tool | Openness | License | Health | Shipping | GitHub Stars | Score | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Understand Anything | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 93 | 95 | 57547 | 94 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 2 | Anarlog | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 87 | 95 | 8627 | 92 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 3 | Atomic | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 87 | 95 | 1524 | 92 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 4 | Spool | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 84 | 95 | 558 | 92 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 5 | Butterfly | OSI-approved OSS | AGPL-3.0 | 83 | 95 | 1868 | 90 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 6 | Minutes | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 83 | 95 | 1270 | 90 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 7 | Eidos | OSI-approved OSS | AGPL-3.0 | 79 | 93 | 3141 | 89 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 8 | Poznote | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 81 | 95 | 615 | 88 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 9 | OpenWriter | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 77 | 93 | 14 | 88 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 10 | Trilium.cc | OSI-approved OSS | AGPL-3.0 | 86 | 77 | 36413 | 86 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 11 | note-gen | OSI-approved OSS | GPL-3.0 | 87 | 78 | 12136 | 86 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 12 | Clearly | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 77 | 89 | 1002 | 86 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 13 | massCode | OSI-approved OSS | AGPL-3.0 | 79 | 82 | 6815 | 85 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 14 | Standard Notes | OSI-approved OSS | AGPL-3.0 | 84 | 71 | 6504 | 84 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 15 | Athenaeum | OSI-approved OSS | Apache-2.0 | 71 | 84 | 9 | 82 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 16 | Lumina Note | OSI-approved OSS | Apache-2.0 | 67 | 93 | 873 | 79 | 🟢 Good |
| 17 | FSNotes | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 80 | 46 | 7400 | 72 | 🟢 Good |
| 18 | TidGi Desktop | OSI-approved OSS | MPL-2.0 | 76 | 45 | 1985 | 71 | 🟢 Good |
| 19 | BaseBlocks | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 57 | 35 | 13 | 58 | 🟡 Fair |
| 20 | DevLune Voltex Notes | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 52 | 39 | 2 | 57 | 🟡 Fair |
| 21 | Lokus | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 60 | 13 | 712 | 55 | 🟡 Fair |
| 22 | Ephe | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 59 | 18 | 578 | 53 | 🟡 Fair |
| 23 | GitJournal | OSI-approved OSS | AGPL-3.0 | 54 | 18 | 4166 | 51 | 🟡 Fair |
| 24 | AirDesktop | OSI-approved OSS | GPL-3.0 | 49 | 20 | 0 | 51 | 🟡 Fair |
| 25 | notes | OSI-approved OSS | MPL-2.0 | 54 | 14 | 4243 | 50 | 🟡 Fair |
| 26 | Lydie | OSI-approved OSS | AGPL-3.0 | 41 | 17 | 42 | 46 | 🟡 Fair |
| 27 | dnote | OSI-approved OSS | Apache-2.0 | 46 | 7 | 3040 | 45 | 🟡 Fair |
| 28 | Noeko | OSI-approved OSS | AGPL-3.0 | 35 | 11 | 6 | 41 | 🟡 Fair |
| 29 | Notabase | OSI-approved OSS | AGPL-3.0 | 41 | 0 | 905 | 39 | 🔴 Needs Attention |
| 30 | LocalizeAI | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 28 | 0 | 5 | 35 | 🔴 Needs Attention |
| 31 | CanvyDocs | OSI-approved OSS | AGPL-3.0 | 33 | 0 | 126 | 34 | 🔴 Needs Attention |
| 32 | Dendron | OSI-approved OSS | Apache-2.0 | 31 | 0 | 7431 | 33 | 🔴 Needs Attention |
| 33 | Revezone | OSI-approved OSS | AGPL-3.0 | 31 | 0 | 2619 | 32 | 🔴 Needs Attention |
| 34 | Clarity | OSI-approved OSS | Apache-2.0 | 24 | 0 | 4 | 32 | 🔴 Needs Attention |
| 35 | PGuide Docs | OSI-approved OSS | Apache-2.0 | 27 | 0 | 14 | 29 | 🔴 Needs Attention |
| 36 | Maila | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 23 | 0 | 6 | 27 | 🔴 Needs Attention |
| 37 | Omni-Notes | OSI-approved OSS | GPL-3.0 | 14 | 0 | 2795 | 25 | 🔴 Needs Attention |
Top 3 Highlights
Understand Anything ranks first with a ToolVitals score of 94, the highest score in the dataset. It also has the largest GitHub star count among the ranked tools at 57,547, with a 93 health score and 95 shipping score. Its supplied openness label is OSI-approved OSS and its license label is MIT.
Anarlog ranks second with a ToolVitals score of 92, matching the highest shipping score in the group at 95 while posting a health score of 87. It has 8,627 GitHub stars and is described as an open source Granola AI alternative. Its supplied openness label is OSI-approved OSS and its license label is MIT.
Atomic also scores 92 on ToolVitals, with the same 87 health score and 95 shipping score as Anarlog but fewer GitHub stars at 1,524, placing it third under the stated tie-breaker. It is described as a self-hosted, semantically connected personal knowledge base. Its supplied openness label is OSI-approved OSS and its license label is MIT.
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