Evernote vs Trilium
Trilium is a strong direct alternative: it is a cross-platform personal knowledge-base and note-taking application covering persistent multimedia notes, hierarchical organization, search, web clipping, synchronization, and self-hosted deployment.
Decision guide
The practical reasons to choose either option, based on documented capabilities.
Choose Trilium if
- Self-hosting and control of your data are a priority and Trilium covers your required workflows. Its source code uses the AGPL-3.0 license.
Stay with Evernote if
- You rely on capabilities that are different, missing, or not yet documented for Trilium.
Feature fit
What Trilium covers
- Cross-platform note creation and retrieval
- Rich multimedia note editing
- Hierarchical note organization
- Full-text search
- Web clipping
- Cross-device synchronization
- Note sharing or publishing
What’s different or missing
- Document scanning is not explicitly documented
- Audio capture or transcription is not explicitly documented
- AI-powered search or organization is not explicitly documented
- Tasks within notes are not explicitly documented
- Calendar-linked notes are not explicitly documented
- Real-time collaborative editing is not explicitly documented
Project snapshot
- GitHub stars
- 37,438
- Contributors
- 428
- Language
- TypeScript
- Last commit
- Aug 15, 2026
- Latest release
- Jul 25, 2026
Categories: Document Collaboration, Knowledge Management, Project Management, Content Management Systems, AI Assistants, Business Intelligence, Data Integration, Note Taking, File Sync & Storage, Calendars & Scheduling, Task Management, Search Engines, Digital Whiteboards
Sources and editorial review7 linked sources
Public documentation supports this comparison. Automation assists collection and classification; editorial standards and corrections remain the responsibility of Kris.
Trilium Notes is a free and open-source, cross-platform hierarchical note taking application with focus on building large personal knowledge bases.
readme · github.comNotes can be arranged into arbitrarily deep tree. Single note can be placed into multiple places in the tree.
readme · github.comRich WYSIWYG note editor including e.g. tables, images and math.
readme · github.comFast and easy navigation between notes, full text search and note hoisting.
readme · github.comSynchronization with self-hosted sync server.
readme · github.comWeb Clipper for easy saving of web content.
readme · github.comTo install TriliumNext on your own server (including via Docker) follow the server installation docs.
readme · github.com
