EvernoteAbout Trilium Notes
Trilium Notes is built for one specific job: holding a genuinely large personal knowledge base without falling apart. Notes nest hierarchically to any depth, and attributes and relations let you attach structured metadata to them.
Power users get scripting hooks to automate note creation and organization, and a self-hosted sync server keeps everything under your own control. It's free, open source under AGPL-3.0, and now maintained by the community as TriliumNext.
What makes it different
Nest notes as deeply as you need — Trilium is built specifically for very large note trees.
Attach structured attributes to notes and script automations directly inside the app.
Mark individual notes as protected and encrypt them with a password.
Run your own sync server to keep your knowledge base entirely on infrastructure you control.
Electron
SQLiteThe honest read
- Built specifically for very large personal knowledge bases
- Scripting and attributes for real automation
- Per-note encryption available
- Self-hosted sync keeps data fully under your control
- Free and open source
- Steeper learning curve than most note apps
- Interface feels dated compared to newer PKM tools
- Smaller community than Obsidian or Logseq
- Mobile experience is more limited than desktop
Quick answers
Yes — Trilium is free and open source under AGPL-3.0, including self-hosted sync.
Yes — Trilium ships a sync server you can run yourself to keep your entire knowledge base under your own control.
Yes — it's specifically designed for very large, deeply nested personal knowledge bases, with scripting and structured attributes to keep them organized.
Trilium focuses on deep hierarchy, scripting and attributes for power users, while Joplin emphasizes simplicity and encryption and Logseq focuses on outlining and backlinks.
More open-source picks
Encrypted markdown notes with web clipper and sync everywhere.
Privacy-first outliner for networked notes over plain markdown.
Collaborative wiki and documentation for growing teams.
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