What is the main difference between Justnote and SiYuan?

Justnote and SiYuan are both note-taking tools but differ in their approach, features, and target audience. Compare their GitHub stats, technology stack, and community adoption to make the best choice.

Which is better: Justnote or SiYuan?

The choice between Justnote and SiYuan depends on your specific needs, technical requirements, and team preferences. Both are quality open source solutions with active communities.

Can I migrate from Justnote to SiYuan?

Migration between Justnote and SiYuan is possible but requires careful planning. Consider data export/import capabilities, feature parity, and potential workflow changes.

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Justnote vs SiYuan

Learn how Justnote and SiYuan differ in their key features, development activity, technology stack and community adoption, so you can decide which of these note-taking tools is best for you.

Justnote

Justnote is a secure note-taking app that lets you easily create and sync notes across devices while maintaining full control of your data.

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Stars
66
Forks
5
Last commit
3 months ago
Repository age
5 years
License
GPL-2.0

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SiYuan

SiYuan is a personal knowledge management system that prioritizes privacy, supports Markdown, and offers block-level referencing and bidirectional linking.

Visit SiYuan Read more

Stars
42,949
Forks
2,720
Last commit
12 hours ago
Repository age
6 years
License
AGPL-3.0
Self-hosted
Yes

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Detailed Comparison

SiYuan appears to have several advantages over Justnote, particularly in popularity, activity and features. Consider your specific needs regarding popularity, activity, technology, maturity, licensing and features when making your decision.

SiYuan wins

Community & Popularity

SiYuan significantly outpaces Justnote in community adoption with 42,949 stars compared to 66 stars on GitHub. This 650.7x difference suggests SiYuan has a much larger and more active community. In terms of developer contributions, SiYuan has 2,720 forks, indicating strong developer engagement.

SiYuan wins

Development Activity

SiYuan shows more recent development activity with its last commit 12 hours ago, while Justnote was last updated 3 months ago. This suggests SiYuan is being more actively maintained.

Comparable

Technology Stack

Both tools share common technology foundations, being built with JavaScript, CSS, Typescript. However, they differ in their additional technology choices: Justnote uses JSX, C, Objective-C, Ruby, Swift, Kotlin, MATLAB while SiYuan leverages Bash, Python, SCSS, Golang.

Comparable

Project Maturity

Both projects started around the same time, with Justnote beginning 5 years ago and SiYuan 6 years ago.

Comparable

Licensing

The projects use different licenses: Justnote is licensed under GPL-2.0 while SiYuan uses AGPL-3.0. Consider the licensing requirements when choosing for your project.

Comparable

Use Cases & Features

Both tools serve similar use cases in Note-Taking, Personal Knowledge Management (PKM). However, they also have distinct specializations: Justnote also focuses on Secure & Encrypted Notes.

SiYuan wins

Hosting & Deployment

SiYuan provides self-hosting options for complete data control and customization, while Justnote may be primarily cloud-based or require different deployment approaches.