Quartz vs Trilium Notes
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted apps from related categories — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
Not the right match-up?
Quartz
Publish a digital garden from Markdown notes
VS
Trilium Notes
Hierarchical note-taking for building knowledge bases
| Feature | Quartz | Trilium Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Blogging Platforms | Notes & Knowledge Base |
| License | MIT | AGPL-3.0 |
| Language | TypeScript | TypeScript |
| Setup difficulty | Easy | Easy |
| Min. RAM | 256 MB | 256 MB |
| Deployment | source, binary | docker, bare-metal |
| GitHub stars | ★ 12,960 | ★ 37,298 |
| First released | 2021 | 2017 |
| Replaces | Notion, Medium | Evernote, Notion |
Why pick each one
Choose Trilium Notes if…
- Powerful for big knowledge bases
- Flexible structure
- Scriptable
Frequently asked questions
Is Quartz or Trilium Notes better?
Neither is universally better. Trilium Notes has the larger community; both share a easy setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.
Are Quartz and Trilium Notes free and open-source?
Yes. Quartz is licensed under MIT and Trilium Notes under AGPL-3.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Quartz and Trilium Notes with Docker?
Quartz: check the project docs for container support. Trilium Notes: yes.