Open-source Knowledge Base tools

2 SaaS tools with self-hostable alternatives

Obsidian alternatives

Obsidian is a local-first Markdown note-taking app with a plugin ecosystem of 1,000+ community plugins, backlinks, graph view, and optional sync. It stores notes as plain Markdown files on your local filesystem — you own the data format entirely. A growing portion of its user base uses it as a personal knowledge management system with Zettelkasten or linking-based workflows.

2 OSS alts · ★ 78,561

Roam Research alternatives

Roam Research is a note-taking tool built around bidirectional linking and daily pages, popularizing block-based hierarchical note structure and the 'second brain' networked thought approach. It uses a proprietary graph database backend and targets power users building dense knowledge graphs through linked blocks. Roam's influence on subsequent note-taking tools (Logseq, Obsidian) is significant.

2 OSS alts · ★ 78,561