Memos vs TiddlyWiki
| Tagline | Lightweight, self-hosted note-taking and memo hub | Reusable non-linear personal web notebook for capturing and organizing ideas |
| Category | Notes & Knowledge Base | Notes & Knowledge Base |
| Replaces | Evernote, Notion | Notion, Evernote, Obsidian |
| GitHub stars | 61k | 8.6k |
| Language | Go | Nodejs |
| License | MIT | BSD-3-Clause |
| Self-host difficulty | 2/5 Easy | 2/5 Easy |
| Deploy options | Docker Manual | Manual Docker |
| Managed hosting | ||
| Last updated | 3 days ago | 9 days ago |
| View repo | View repo |
Where each falls short
The honest trade-offs — what you give up with each, versus the proprietary tools they replace.
Memos
- Designed for short notes/memos, not long structured documents or wikis.
- No nested page hierarchy, databases, or board views.
- No real-time collaboration.
- Limited rich formatting compared to block editors.
TiddlyWiki
- No built-in real-time collaboration; multi-user editing requires workarounds
- UI feels dated compared to modern tools like Notion; steeper learning curve for non-technical users
- Mobile editing experience is limited and not optimized
- No built-in database views (kanban, gallery, table) found in Notion
Bottom line
Both are a similar lift to self-host; choose Memos for the larger community and ecosystem. Memos has seen more recent development. Open each guide below for deploy steps and the full feature gap.
TiddlyWiki
Reusable non-linear personal web notebook for capturing and organizing ideas