People look for an open source notes app for one of three reasons, and they lead to different answers.
Some want privacy, meaning nobody can read the notes. Some want durability, meaning the app cannot be discontinued out from under them. Some want control, meaning self-hosting, plugins, or the ability to fix things themselves. Open source helps with all three, but it only guarantees the second, and it does not guarantee it in the way most people assume.
The short answer
| App | Licence | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Joplin | AGPL-3.0 | The default. Mature, cross-platform, E2E encrypted, huge plugin ecosystem |
| Standard Notes | AGPL-3.0 | Privacy first, longest track record on encryption, now owned by Proton |
| Notesnook | GPL-3.0 | The closest open-source Evernote replacement, good mobile apps |
| Logseq | AGPL-3.0 | Outlining, daily notes, backlinks, local Markdown files |
| Trilium (TriliumNext) | AGPL-3.0 | Self-hosted personal knowledge base that scales to huge note counts |
| AppFlowy | AGPL-3.0 | The nearest open-source answer to Notion: docs plus databases |
| Anytype | Source-available, not OSI | Local-first, encrypted, peer-to-peer sync |
If you want one recommendation: Joplin. It is the boring correct answer. It runs everywhere including the terminal, stores notes as Markdown, does end-to-end encryption, syncs to whatever backend you point it at, and has been maintained steadily for years. Nothing about it is exciting, which is the point.
Note the last row. Anytype is source-available, not open source under an OSI-approved licence, and it is frequently listed as though it were. If the licence is the reason you are here, that distinction matters.
Also worth stating plainly because it comes up constantly: Obsidian is not open source. It is free for personal use, it stores your notes as plain Markdown files on your disk, and its source is closed. That file format is why people recommend it in these conversations, and the reasoning is sound, but it is a different property from an open licence.
The contenders
Joplin
The safe pick. Notes and notebooks, Markdown, tags, web clipper, end-to-end encryption, and sync to Dropbox, OneDrive, Nextcloud, WebDAV, S3 or Joplin's own paid cloud. Desktop, mobile and a terminal client.
Its strength is coverage: whatever you need, it probably does it, possibly through a plugin. Its weakness is that it feels like software from a decade ago. The editor is plain, the interface is functional, and nobody has ever called it a pleasure to write in.
Good at: reliability, sync flexibility, migration from Evernote, plugins. Weak at: aesthetics, mobile polish, linking between notes.
Standard Notes
The privacy specialist, acquired by Proton in 2024. Encryption has been the entire product thesis from the start rather than a feature added later, and the codebase has been audited repeatedly.
The free tier is deliberately plain text. Rich text, Markdown editors, themes and file attachments sit behind the paid tier, which is an honest model but surprises people. The Proton acquisition is reassuring on funding and mildly concerning on independence; so far the promise to keep it open source and separately priced has held.
Good at: encryption, longevity, cross-platform basics. Weak at: rich content, organisation beyond tags, free tier limits.
See Standard Notes vs Obsidian and the best private notes app.
Notesnook
The most direct replacement for Evernote in this list, and the one to try if the others feel too technical. End-to-end encrypted, genuinely good mobile apps, notebooks and tags, web clipper, and an open-source sync server if you want to run your own.
Younger than Joplin and Standard Notes, which is the main caution. It is doing everything right and has less track record.
Good at: mobile, encryption, ease of switching from Evernote. Weak at: maturity, plugin ecosystem.
Logseq
An outliner built around daily notes and backlinks, storing everything as local Markdown or Org files. If you think in bullets and want a networked notebook rather than a document store, it is the most interesting option here.
The caveat is development pace. A long-running rewrite onto a database backend has kept the project in an extended transitional state, and progress on the stable version has been slow for a while. Your files remain plain Markdown regardless, which limits the downside considerably. Check the project's current status before committing.
Good at: outlining, linked thinking, local files, daily notes. Weak at: long-form documents, release cadence, mobile.
See Obsidian vs Logseq.
Trilium and TriliumNext
A self-hosted personal knowledge base rather than a notes app, and unusually capable if that is what you want: note hierarchies with cloning, attributes, scripting, a REST API, encryption, and comfortable handling of very large collections.
The original author stepped back and development continues under TriliumNext, which is now the repository to follow. That transition is itself a decent advertisement for open source: the project changed hands rather than disappearing.
Good at: scale, structure, self-hosting, power features. Weak at: mobile, approachability, design.
AppFlowy
The open-source answer to Notion, with documents, databases, kanban boards and AI features, free when self-hosted. It is the right pick if the reason you want an alternative is that you liked Notion and disliked depending on it.
Still maturing, and Notion is a very large target to be closing on.
Good at: databases plus documents, self-hosting, Notion familiarity. Weak at: maturity, offline reliability, ecosystem.
Anytype
Local-first, end-to-end encrypted, with peer-to-peer sync and no central server holding your keys. Technically ambitious and genuinely different.
The licence is the catch, as above. It is source-available under its own terms rather than an OSI-approved open source licence, which may or may not matter to you but should be a decision rather than an accident.
What actually protects your notes
This is the part worth internalising, because it is not the licence.
1. The file format, not the licence. An open-source app storing notes in an undocumented database is more fragile than a closed-source app storing plain Markdown files in a normal folder. If the project dies, the files are what you keep. Plain text notes and Markdown are the actual insurance policy.
2. Whether you can export today. Not whether export exists in principle. Run it, look at the output, check that attachments and links survived. See export your notes.
3. Whether the project has more than one maintainer. Most open-source notes apps are one person. That is fine until it is not, and the Trilium handover is the good outcome rather than the typical one. Check the commit history and the number of contributors before you commit years of writing.
4. Whether you will actually use it. The most common failure here is not abandonment by the maintainer, it is abandonment by the user. Open-source notes apps skew towards rougher edges, and an ideologically correct app you avoid opening is worse than a proprietary one you use daily. Be honest about this before migrating five years of notes.
5. Backups you control. Open source is not a backup and self-hosting is not a backup. See how to back up your notes and syncing notes across devices, which are not the same thing.
About us
Clair Mind is not open source, so it does not belong on this list and we have not put it there. If an open licence is a requirement for you, use one of the apps above; that is a legitimate requirement and we do not meet it.
What we would say is that the underlying concerns are usually export, encryption and not being locked in, and those are worth checking on any app you consider, ours included.
More in the best private notes app, the best free notes app, the best markdown notes app, and the wider best notes apps section.