the catalog · 🧠 Notes & knowledge
Trilium Notes
★ 37kHierarchical note-taking app for building large personal knowledge bases
Trilium Notes does the job of Evernote and Notion, self-hosted. It is AGPL-licensed, so a hosted fork has to publish its changes, and it installs in about one command. Evernote bills $10-15 for it. 37k stars on GitHub.
Open-source replacement for Evernote, Notion.
- Licence
- AGPL-3.0
- Self-hosting
- Easy
- The paid one costs
- $10-15
- GitHub stars
- 37k
Is it actually a replacement?
We have written a verdict on what it replaces — what you lose, and why people still pay:
How Trilium Notes runs
Where it runs
Trilium Notes runs on your machine or their cloud.
Installing it
Desktop release package, or Docker Compose/image for a server and browser client.
Where your data lives
Notes, hierarchy, attributes, revisions, and most attachments live in a local or server-side SQLite database named document.db; notes can be exported to HTML, Markdown, or OPML.
What setup takes
The desktop app is straightforward, but cross-device sync and browser access require operating a Trilium server, persisting document.db, and handling backups and upgrades.
The catch compared with Anytype
Trilium uses a hierarchical note tree and client-server sync rather than Anytype's typed object graph and encrypted peer-to-peer space model.
Trilium Notes questions
Is Trilium Notes open source?
Yes — it is released under AGPL-3.0.
Can Trilium Notes replace Evernote?
Our verdict on Evernote is YES. AppFlowy (75k stars), AFFiNE (71k stars), Memos (62k stars) are mature open-source replacements for Evernote — self-host with docker and stop paying $14.99/mo.
Can I self-host Trilium Notes?
Yes — we rate it easy to self-host, and it runs on your machine or their cloud. Desktop release package, or Docker Compose/image for a server and browser client.