Joplin vs TriliumNext Notes

Both are self-hosted note-taking & editors projects. This page compares how well each one is actually maintained — the part you cannot see from a feature list.

TriliumNext Notes scores 99 against Joplin's 92, putting it slightly ahead. That measures project health, not feature fit — Joplin may still be the right choice if it does what you need.
JoplinTriliumNext Notes
Health score 92/100 99/100
Commits (11 mo) 2018 16259
Commits (last 3 mo) 554 5808
Stars 57k 38k
Latest release 25 Sept 2026 25 Sept 2026
Licence MIT AGPL-3.0
Built with Nodejs Nodejs, Docker, K8S
Typical RAM 2 GB 2 GB

Joplin

Note taking application with markdown editor and encryption support for mobile and desktop platforms. Runs client-side and syncs through a self hosted Nextcloud instance or similar (alternative to Evernote).

92/100
Thriving

High commit volume, frequent releases and growing activity.

Maintenance 36/40
Releases 25/25
Community 19/20
Momentum 12/15

Commit activity more than 89% of tracked projects; popularity more than 97%. How this is calculated.

Commits, last 11 months

2025-10: 200 commits 2025-11: 162 commits 2025-12: 126 commits 2026-01: 163 commits 2026-02: 193 commits 2026-03: 212 commits 2026-04: 155 commits 2026-05: 253 commits 2026-06: 195 commits 2026-07: 197 commits 2026-08: 162 commits

TriliumNext Notes

Cross-platform hierarchical note taking application with focus on building large personal knowledge bases (fork of Trilium Notes).

99/100
Thriving

High commit volume, frequent releases and growing activity.

Maintenance 40/40
Releases 25/25
Community 19/20
Momentum 15/15

Commit activity in the top 1% of tracked projects; popularity more than 94%. How this is calculated.

Commits, last 11 months

2025-10: 1421 commits 2025-11: 1191 commits 2025-12: 1712 commits 2026-01: 996 commits 2026-02: 981 commits 2026-03: 1214 commits 2026-04: 1652 commits 2026-05: 1284 commits 2026-06: 1724 commits 2026-07: 1848 commits 2026-08: 2236 commits

How to read this

Everything above is measured, not opinion: commit counts and release dates come from the public repositories, and the health score ranks each project against all 1352 projects we track. Read the full method.

What this comparison deliberately does not do is tell you which has the better feature set. Maintenance health tells you which project will still be receiving security fixes in two years. Decide that first, then compare features on the projects that survive the filter.

See every option in this category: self-hosted note-taking & editors.