Learn how Silverbullet 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.
Last 30 days
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Last 30 days
Last commit
Repository age
Version
License
Self-hosted
Repository

Both Silverbullet and SiYuan have their unique strengths and serve similar purposes effectively. Consider your specific needs regarding popularity, growth, activity, technology, maturity, licensing and features when making your decision.
SiYuan significantly outpaces Silverbullet in community adoption with 46,631 stars compared to 6,223 stars on GitHub. This 7.5x difference suggests SiYuan has a much larger and more active community. In terms of developer contributions, SiYuan has 3,041 forks, indicating strong developer engagement.
Silverbullet is growing faster, adding 223 stars in the last 30 days (+3.7%) against adding 457 stars for SiYuan (+1%). Silverbullet is the smaller project of the two, so it is closing the gap rather than extending a lead.
Both projects show recent activity, with Silverbullet last updated 17 hours ago and SiYuan 20 hours ago.
Both tools share common technology foundations, being built with JavaScript, Bash, Typescript, SCSS. However, they differ in their additional technology choices: Silverbullet uses JSX, Rust, Lua while SiYuan leverages CSS, Python, Golang.
SiYuan has been in development longer, starting 6 years ago, compared to Silverbullet which began 5 years ago. This 1.5-year head start suggests SiYuan may have more mature features and established processes.
Silverbullet uses the MIT license, which is more permissive than SiYuan's AGPL-3.0 license, potentially offering greater flexibility for commercial use and integration.
Both tools serve similar use cases in Note-Taking, Personal Knowledge Management (PKM).
Both Silverbullet and SiYuan offer self-hosting capabilities, giving you full control over your data and infrastructure.
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