Many Notes vs NoteDiscovery
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted notes & knowledge base options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
Many Notes
Markdown note-taking web app designed for simplicity
VS
NoteDiscovery
Self-hosted Markdown knowledge base with graph view
| Feature | Many Notes | NoteDiscovery |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 83 · Excellent | 87 · Excellent |
| Category | Notes & Knowledge Base | Notes & Knowledge Base |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Language | PHP | JavaScript |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 256 MB | 256 MB |
| Deployment | docker, source | docker, source |
| GitHub stars | ★ 1,087 | ★ 2,812 |
| First released | 2024 | 2024 |
| Replaces | Obsidian, Notion | Obsidian, Notion |
What are Many Notes and NoteDiscovery?
Many Notes
Many Notes is a self-hosted Markdown note-taking web application built with Laravel. It supports multiple vaults per user, links and backlinks, tags, templates, and OAuth login from many providers.
- Multiple vaults per user
- Links, backlinks, and tags
- Smart Markdown editor
- Wide OAuth provider support
NoteDiscovery
NoteDiscovery is a self-hosted Markdown knowledge base featuring wikilinks, a graph view, a drawing editor, and LaTeX and Mermaid rendering. It is designed for building and exploring a connected personal knowledge base.
- Wikilinks and graph view
- Drawing editor
- LaTeX and Mermaid support
- Self-hosted knowledge base
Many Notes vs NoteDiscovery: key differences
Many Notes is written in PHP, while NoteDiscovery is built with JavaScript. NoteDiscovery has the considerably larger community, at 2,812 GitHub stars versus 1,087.
Why pick each one
Choose Many Notes if…
- Released under the MIT license
- First-class Docker support for quick deployment
- Active community (1.1k GitHub stars)
- Written in PHP
Choose NoteDiscovery if…
- Released under the MIT license
- First-class Docker support for quick deployment
- Active community (2.8k GitHub stars)
- Written in JavaScript
Frequently asked questions
Is Many Notes or NoteDiscovery better?
Neither is universally better. NoteDiscovery has the larger community; both share a medium setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.
Are Many Notes and NoteDiscovery free and open-source?
Yes. Many Notes is licensed under MIT and NoteDiscovery under MIT. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Many Notes and NoteDiscovery with Docker?
Many Notes: yes. NoteDiscovery: yes.