Choosing a notes or knowledge-base tool means weighing how it organizes information, handles privacy, and continues to ship. This August 2026 ranking uses ToolVitals data on project health, shipping activity, licensing, openness, and GitHub popularity.
The list includes only open/source-visible tools and orders them by ToolVitals score. GitHub stars serve as a secondary popularity signal and break score ties; for example, Logseq ranks above Notesnook at the same ToolVitals score of 97 because it has more GitHub stars.
Rankings
| Rank | Tool | Openness | License | Health | Shipping | GitHub Stars | Score | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | AFFiNE | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 95 | 100 | 71362 | 98 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 2 | Logseq | OSI-approved OSS | AGPL-3.0 | 98 | 94 | 44363 | 97 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 3 | Notesnook | OSI-approved OSS | GPL-3.0 | 94 | 98 | 14391 | 97 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 4 | Basic Memory | OSI-approved OSS | AGPL-3.0 | 91 | 100 | 3612 | 96 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 5 | SilverBullet | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 95 | 95 | 5809 | 95 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 6 | SiYuan | OSI-approved OSS | AGPL-3.0 | 90 | 95 | 45689 | 93 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 7 | Memos | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 90 | 89 | 62129 | 92 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 8 | Trilium.cc | OSI-approved OSS | AGPL-3.0 | 92 | 87 | 37319 | 92 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 9 | note-gen | OSI-approved OSS | GPL-3.0 | 86 | 95 | 12581 | 92 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 10 | Anarlog | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 87 | 93 | 8990 | 92 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 11 | Freeplane | OSI-approved OSS | GPL-2.0 | 86 | 100 | 4282 | 92 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 12 | Atomic | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 88 | 93 | 1640 | 92 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 13 | Minutes | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 87 | 95 | 1414 | 92 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 14 | Eidos | OSI-approved OSS | AGPL-3.0 | 84 | 93 | 3172 | 91 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 15 | Spool | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 79 | 98 | 588 | 91 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 16 | NoteDiscovery | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 87 | 90 | 2738 | 90 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 17 | Butterfly | OSI-approved OSS | AGPL-3.0 | 83 | 95 | 1950 | 90 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 18 | Glyph | OSI-approved OSS | AGPL-3.0 | 81 | 93 | 162 | 90 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 19 | Athenaeum | OSI-approved OSS | Apache-2.0 | 79 | 95 | 11 | 89 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 20 | Trilium | OSI-approved OSS | AGPL-3.0 | 87 | 87 | 37319 | 88 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 21 | Poznote | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 81 | 95 | 757 | 88 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 22 | Saber | OSI-approved OSS | GPL-3.0 | 86 | 86 | 4664 | 87 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 23 | iwe | OSI-approved OSS | Apache-2.0 | 83 | 82 | 1370 | 87 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 24 | Standard Notes | OSI-approved OSS | AGPL-3.0 | 84 | 73 | 6577 | 85 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 25 | Understand Anything | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 79 | 80 | 78569 | 84 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 26 | massCode | OSI-approved OSS | AGPL-3.0 | 79 | 77 | 6946 | 84 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 27 | TidGi Desktop | OSI-approved OSS | MPL-2.0 | 81 | 72 | 1999 | 82 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 28 | QOwnNotes | OSI-approved OSS | GPL-2.0 | 87 | 89 | 5839 | 77 | 🟢 Good |
| 29 | Lokus | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 70 | 65 | 767 | 76 | 🟢 Good |
| 30 | OpenWriter | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 65 | 71 | 19 | 76 | 🟢 Good |
| 31 | Bangle | OSI-approved OSS | AGPL-3.0 | 67 | 63 | 1229 | 72 | 🟢 Good |
| 32 | TideMind | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 70 | 59 | 8 | 72 | 🟢 Good |
| 33 | Blinko | OSI-approved OSS | GPL-3.0 | 78 | 43 | 10849 | 71 | 🟢 Good |
| 34 | FSNotes | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 72 | 43 | 7438 | 67 | 🟢 Good |
| 35 | SwarmVault | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 60 | 40 | 648 | 64 | 🟢 Good |
| 36 | Meetily | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 56 | 31 | 28711 | 59 | 🟡 Fair |
| 37 | Clearly | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 55 | 35 | 1108 | 59 | 🟡 Fair |
| 38 | Lumina Note | OSI-approved OSS | Apache-2.0 | 49 | 46 | 904 | 57 | 🟡 Fair |
| 39 | Notty | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 54 | 32 | 500 | 56 | 🟡 Fair |
| 40 | Ephe | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 59 | 25 | 584 | 55 | 🟡 Fair |
| 41 | Notabase | OSI-approved OSS | AGPL-3.0 | 51 | 32 | 910 | 54 | 🟡 Fair |
| 42 | Noeko | OSI-approved OSS | AGPL-3.0 | 54 | 21 | 6 | 52 | 🟡 Fair |
| 43 | dnote | OSI-approved OSS | Apache-2.0 | 54 | 14 | 3051 | 50 | 🟡 Fair |
| 44 | Surf | OSI-approved OSS | Apache-2.0 | 51 | 10 | 3514 | 49 | 🟡 Fair |
| 45 | Owlistic | OSI-approved OSS | GPL-3.0 | 57 | 0 | 432 | 46 | 🟡 Fair |
| 46 | Eclaire | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 42 | 13 | 894 | 45 | 🟡 Fair |
| 47 | notes | OSI-approved OSS | MPL-2.0 | 46 | 7 | 0 | 45 | 🟡 Fair |
| 48 | GitJournal | OSI-approved OSS | AGPL-3.0 | 46 | 7 | 0 | 42 | 🟡 Fair |
| 49 | Lydie | OSI-approved OSS | AGPL-3.0 | 31 | 0 | 46 | 35 | 🔴 Needs Attention |
| 50 | LocalizeAI | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 28 | 0 | 5 | 35 | 🔴 Needs Attention |
Top 3 Highlights
AFFiNE ranks first with a ToolVitals score of 98, a health score of 95, and a shipping score of 100. Its first-party project pages describe a privacy-focused knowledge base that combines planning, organization, and content creation. It is labeled OSI-approved OSS under the MIT license and has 71,362 GitHub stars.
Logseq ranks second with a ToolVitals score of 97, the highest health score in the top three at 98, and a shipping score of 94. The project describes itself as a privacy-first platform for knowledge management and collaboration. It is labeled OSI-approved OSS under the AGPL-3.0 license and has 44,363 GitHub stars.
Notesnook ranks third with a ToolVitals score of 97, a health score of 94, and a shipping score of 98. Its first-party project pages present it as an end-to-end encrypted note-taking application and an alternative to Evernote. It is labeled OSI-approved OSS under the GPL-3.0 license and has 14,391 GitHub stars.
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