Readers choosing a notes or knowledge-base tool need to separate a good workflow fit from a project with strong evidence of health and shipping. This October 2026 snapshot uses the supplied ToolVitals records, including scores, health, shipping, openness, license, and GitHub-star data.
The ranking covers open/source-visible tools and orders them by ToolVitals score descending, then health and shipping for equal scores. GitHub stars are context only and do not determine the ordering.
Rankings
| Rank | Tool | Openness | License | Health | Shipping | GitHub Stars | Score | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Trilium.cc | OSI-approved OSS | AGPL-3.0 | 98 | 98 | 38192 | 98 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 2 | Trilium | OSI-approved OSS | AGPL-3.0 | 97 | 98 | 38188 | 98 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 3 | Anarlog | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 97 | 98 | 9429 | 97 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 4 | Logseq | OSI-approved OSS | AGPL-3.0 | 97 | 96 | 45119 | 97 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 5 | Minutes | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 96 | 96 | 1526 | 96 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 6 | Athenaeum | OSI-approved OSS | Apache-2.0 | 95 | 96 | 12 | 96 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 7 | Memos | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 96 | 94 | 63485 | 95 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 8 | SilverBullet | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 95 | 94 | 6208 | 95 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 9 | SiYuan | OSI-approved OSS | AGPL-3.0 | 94 | 97 | 46625 | 95 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 10 | QOwnNotes | OSI-approved OSS | GPL-2.0 | 94 | 95 | 5893 | 95 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 11 | AFFiNE | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 95 | 93 | 73204 | 94 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 12 | Basic Memory | OSI-approved OSS | AGPL-3.0 | 95 | 93 | 4083 | 94 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 13 | Butterfly | OSI-approved OSS | AGPL-3.0 | 94 | 95 | 2044 | 94 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 14 | Freeplane | OSI-approved OSS | GPL-2.0 | 94 | 94 | 4390 | 94 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 15 | note-gen | OSI-approved OSS | GPL-3.0 | 94 | 94 | 12868 | 94 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 16 | Understand Anything | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 94 | 92 | 85193 | 93 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 17 | Notesnook | OSI-approved OSS | GPL-3.0 | 94 | 91 | 14709 | 93 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 18 | Saber | OSI-approved OSS | GPL-3.0 | 94 | 91 | 4871 | 93 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 19 | Standard Notes | OSI-approved OSS | AGPL-3.0 | 92 | 91 | 6642 | 92 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 20 | massCode | OSI-approved OSS | AGPL-3.0 | 92 | 91 | 7013 | 92 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 21 | Poznote | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 91 | 95 | 899 | 92 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 22 | Eidos | OSI-approved OSS | AGPL-3.0 | 87 | 94 | 3191 | 90 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 23 | NoteDiscovery | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 91 | 86 | 2818 | 89 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 24 | Glyph | OSI-approved OSS | AGPL-3.0 | 86 | 92 | 179 | 89 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 25 | Meetily | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 88 | 88 | 31442 | 88 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 26 | iwe | OSI-approved OSS | Apache-2.0 | 87 | 88 | 1749 | 88 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 27 | FSNotes | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 84 | 80 | 7517 | 83 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 28 | OpenWriter | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 80 | 80 | 32 | 80 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 29 | TideMind | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 80 | 78 | 11 | 79 | 🟢 Good |
| 30 | Atomic | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 73 | 67 | 1972 | 71 | 🟢 Good |
| 31 | Bangle | OSI-approved OSS | AGPL-3.0 | 68 | 51 | 1233 | 61 | 🟢 Good |
| 32 | Spool | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 57 | 46 | 591 | 53 | 🟡 Fair |
| 33 | Lokus | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 56 | 43 | 812 | 51 | 🟡 Fair |
| 34 | TidGi Desktop | OSI-approved OSS | MPL-2.0 | 58 | 38 | 2002 | 50 | 🟡 Fair |
| 35 | Ephe | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 53 | 39 | 585 | 47 | 🟡 Fair |
| 36 | Blinko | OSI-approved OSS | GPL-3.0 | 54 | 34 | 11057 | 46 | 🟡 Fair |
| 37 | Clearly | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 52 | 34 | 1180 | 44 | 🟡 Fair |
| 38 | Noeko | OSI-approved OSS | AGPL-3.0 | 53 | 29 | 6 | 43 | 🟡 Fair |
| 39 | Notabase | OSI-approved OSS | AGPL-3.0 | 36 | 24 | 912 | 32 | 🔴 Needs Attention |
| 40 | Notty | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 36 | 24 | 505 | 31 | 🔴 Needs Attention |
| 41 | Lydie | OSI-approved OSS | AGPL-3.0 | 33 | 10 | 48 | 24 | 🔴 Needs Attention |
| 42 | dnote | OSI-approved OSS | Apache-2.0 | 32 | 13 | 3087 | 24 | 🔴 Needs Attention |
| 43 | Owlistic | OSI-approved OSS | GPL-3.0 | 34 | 0 | 435 | 21 | 🔴 Needs Attention |
| 44 | Surf | OSI-approved OSS | Apache-2.0 | 28 | 3 | 3590 | 18 | 🔴 Needs Attention |
| 45 | Lumina Note | OSI-approved OSS | Apache-2.0 | 26 | 5 | 918 | 18 | 🔴 Needs Attention |
| 46 | SwarmVault | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 20 | 5 | 708 | 14 | 🔴 Needs Attention |
| 47 | Eclaire | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 13 | 2 | 922 | 9 | 🔴 Needs Attention |
| 48 | GitJournal | OSI-approved OSS | AGPL-3.0 | 14 | 0 | 4234 | 8 | 🔴 Needs Attention |
| 49 | DevLune Voltex Notes | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 11 | 3 | 2 | 8 | 🔴 Needs Attention |
| 50 | AirDesktop | OSI-approved OSS | GPL-3.0 | 11 | 2 | 0 | 8 | 🔴 Needs Attention |
Top 3 Highlights
Trilium.cc ranks first with a ToolVitals score of 98, health score of 98, and shipping score of 98. It is described as a personal knowledge base and labeled OSI-approved OSS under AGPL-3.0. Its 38,192 GitHub stars provide context, but are not a ranking factor.
Trilium ranks second with a ToolVitals score of 98, health score of 97, and shipping score of 98. The supplied description focuses on building a personal knowledge base with Trilium Notes. It carries the OSI-approved OSS and AGPL-3.0 labels, points to the same TriliumNext/Trilium repository as Trilium.cc, and has 38,188 GitHub stars as context.
Anarlog ranks third with a ToolVitals score of 97, health score of 97, and shipping score of 98. Its supplied description calls it an open source Granola AI alternative, distinguishing it from the general personal-knowledge-base tools above it. Anarlog is labeled OSI-approved OSS under MIT, with 9,429 GitHub stars shown as context.
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