A privacy-first personal knowledge management software, written in typescript and golang.
SiYuan is an open-source knowledge management tools project positioned as an alternative to Note-taking/ Knowledge management, Note-taking / Personal Knowledge Management, with 46k GitHub stars and a health score of 100/100. It committed 6966 times in the last twelve months across 12 of those months, and its status is actively maintained. Licence: AGPL-3.0. It has real momentum, so treat it as a live competitor rather than a stale repository.
| Status | Actively maintained — Committed within the last 45 days. |
|---|---|
| Last commit | 2026-08-12 |
| Days since last commit | 5 |
| Commits, last 3 months | 3601 |
| Commits, last 12 months | 6966 |
| Months with activity | 12 of 12 |
| Last release | 2026-08-15 |
| Archived | No |
| Licence | AGPL-3.0 |
| Category | Knowledge Management Tools |
| Positioned against | Note-taking/ Knowledge management, Note-taking / Personal Knowledge Management |
Health score combines commit recency, twelve-month commit volume, months with activity, release recency and archive state. Metadata refreshed August 2026.
Copyleft (GPL, AGPL, MPL): derivative work must stay open. AGPL also covers software offered over a network, which blocks most closed SaaS wrappers.
This matters most when you plan to sell a hosted version. A permissive licence means anyone — including a competitor with more capital — can do the same, so your defensibility has to come from distribution, support or data, not from the code.
SiYuan is shipping code consistently, so a buyer comparing your product will find a maintained free option. Price and position against the total cost of self-hosting it, not against the paid incumbent's list price.
Winnable, but differentiation is not optional. Pick one underserved segment and be visibly better for it rather than competing feature-for-feature with a free tool.
Actively maintained. SiYuan recorded 6966 commits over the last twelve months, with activity in 12 of those months and 3601 commits in the last quarter. Last commit: 2026-08-12. Last release: 2026-08-15. Committed within the last 45 days.
SiYuan is published under AGPL-3.0. Copyleft (GPL, AGPL, MPL): derivative work must stay open. AGPL also covers software offered over a network, which blocks most closed SaaS wrappers.
SiYuan targets the same job as Note-taking/ Knowledge management, Note-taking / Personal Knowledge Management and is actively shipping. Adoption sits at 46k stars. Whether it is a good replacement depends on your deployment constraints: self-hosting adds infrastructure, upgrade and security work that a commercial subscription absorbs for you.
8 open-source implementations, 3 of them actively maintained, led by AFFiNE Community Edition at 72k stars. Saturation score 41/100 — Contested. Several maintained alternatives exist, but no one owns the category.
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