Memos
Notes & Knowledge BaseLightweight self-hosted note and memo hub
Replaces Notion, Google Keep
Best Lightweight Notes & Knowledge Base for self-hosting
The 6 best Lightweight notes & knowledge base you can self-host, ranked by community traction.
Dillinger
Notes & Knowledge BaseCloud-enabled Markdown editor you can self-host
Replaces StackEdit
DokuWiki
Notes & Knowledge BaseSimple, file-based wiki without a database
Replaces Confluence
Flatnotes
Notes & Knowledge BaseSelf-hosted, database-less note-taking web app
Replaces Evernote, Simplenote
Dnote
Notes & Knowledge BaseSimple command-line notebook with multi-device sync
Replaces Evernote, Simplenote
QuillPad
Notes & Knowledge BaseMinimal note-taking app with notebooks and tags
Replaces Google Keep, OneNote
No apps match these filters.
At a glance
| App | Deploy effort | Difficulty | Min. RAM | License | ★ Stars |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Memos | Under-an-hour setup | Easy | 64 MB | MIT | 63,768 |
| Dillinger | Under-an-hour setup | Easy | 256 MB | MIT | 8,292 |
| DokuWiki | Under-an-hour setup | Easy | 128 MB | GPL-2.0 | 4,727 |
| Flatnotes | Under-an-hour setup | Easy | 128 MB | MIT | 3,258 |
| Dnote | Under-an-hour setup | Easy | 128 MB | AGPL-3.0 | 3,087 |
| QuillPad | Read-the-docs project | Easy | 128 MB | GPL-3.0 | 1,408 |
Quick picks
- Most adopted: Memos (63,768 GitHub stars).
- Lightest footprint: Memos (from 64 MB RAM, against 256 MB for the heaviest here).
- Licensing: 3 of 6 use MIT; check the rest individually if you plan to modify and redistribute.
Every option here is open-source and self-hostable, tagged Lightweight within the notes & knowledge base category. Deploy effort is graded from published container recipes, not vendor claims — see the methodology.