Anytype vs Trilium Notes

The one question that decides this

The real split is not “which one is the better Notion clone?” It is whether you want a local-first, encrypted personal knowledge system with sync/networking ambitions, or a self-hosted hierarchical notes app for building a big personal knowledge base. Anytype’s own pitch is “Local-first, encrypted personal knowledge OS,” while Trilium Notes says it is a “Hierarchical note-taking application with focus on building large personal knowledge bases.” Same broad Notion-replacement bucket, very different center of gravity.

What each one is actually trying to be

Anytype: local-first Notion energy, with encryption and P2P in the pitch

Anytype is trying to be more than a notes app. The GitHub description is plain enough: “Official Anytype client for MacOS, Linux, and Windows.” But the product positioning is much bigger: “Local-first, encrypted personal knowledge OS.” That phrase is doing a lot of work, and it tells you what Anytype wants to be judged against: not just Markdown files, not just a wiki, but a private workspace where your stuff lives locally and sync is not supposed to mean “please upload your brain to a VC-backed spreadsheet.”

That makes Anytype the more Notion-shaped option in spirit. It is aimed at people who want a personal operating layer for notes, knowledge, objects, relationships, and organization — without defaulting to the usual SaaS custody model. The tradeoff is that “personal knowledge OS” products can drift into abstraction soup if you are not careful. If you just want a blunt, dependable place to write and organize notes, Anytype may feel like it brought a philosophy seminar to a grocery list.

Trilium Notes: a serious hierarchical knowledge base, not a lifestyle brand

Trilium Notes is much more direct about what it is. Its tagline says: “Hierarchical note-taking application with focus on building large personal knowledge bases.” The GitHub description says: “Build your personal knowledge base with TriliumNext Notes.” That is refreshingly un-mystical. It is not trying to make “objects” happen, or rebrand note-taking as a second brain chakra alignment system.

Trilium Notes is for the person who wants structure first. Hierarchy is not fashionable, because the internet decided everything must be a graph, a canvas, or a vibe. But for large personal knowledge bases, trees still work. Trilium’s positioning says: give me notes, give me organization, give me a system I can grow over time. It also lists both Notion and Obsidian as products it can replace, which is a pretty clear signal: this is closer to a self-hosted knowledge base and power-user notes environment than a collaborative SaaS workspace.

Head-to-head: the metrics

On GitHub, Anytype lives at anyproto/anytype-ts. It has 8,639 stars, 571 forks, 207 open issues, a last push date of 2026-08-15, and its license is listed as NOASSERTION. The primary language is TypeScript. Those are strong attention numbers, and the recent push date suggests an active repository, at least by the simplest possible “is anyone touching this?” test.

Trilium Notes lives at TriliumNext/Notes. It has 2,929 stars, 153 forks, 1 open issue, a last push date of 2025-06-24, and an AGPL-3.0 license. It is also TypeScript. The star count is smaller than Anytype’s, but still very real; this is not some weekend repo with a README, a dream, and three abandoned Docker Compose files.

The license difference matters. Anytype’s license field is NOASSERTION in the provided GitHub data, which means we should not pretend it is clearly MIT, Apache, AGPL, or anything else. Trilium Notes is AGPL-3.0, which is a strong copyleft license and usually a better fit for people who care about software freedom in networked/self-hosted contexts. If licensing is part of your SaaS-escape plan, do not hand-wave this bit. “Open source-ish” is where procurement hope goes to die.

The metrics tell us a few useful things. Anytype has more GitHub attention, more forks, and a fresher last push date in the data. Trilium Notes has fewer stars and forks, but the open issue count shown is only 1, which is unusually tidy from the outside. What the metrics do not tell us is which app will fit your brain, whether sync will behave the way you expect, how painful migration will be, or whether the project’s design decisions will annoy you after two weeks. Stars are applause, not a product review.

Self-hosting

Anytype supports self-host, official-cloud, and p2p according to the provided hosting options. Its deploy difficulty is 4 out of 5, so this is not the “copy one Docker command and go make coffee” tier. That matches the product’s ambition: local-first plus encrypted plus P2P plus official cloud is a more complex beast than a plain web app with a database. If you want flexibility, Anytype offers more hosting/sync shapes. If you want boring operations, complexity is still complexity, even when it wears a privacy hoodie.

Trilium Notes lists self-host as its hosting option. Its deploy difficulty is 3 out of 5, so it lands in the middle: not effortless, not ridiculous. That feels consistent with its scope. Trilium is not trying to be a federated encrypted knowledge universe; it is trying to be a self-hosted hierarchical knowledge base. For the classic homelab person who already has a server, a reverse proxy, and strong opinions about backups, Trilium is probably the less dramatic weekend.

Community signals

Anytype has a Hacker News top story titled “Anytype – local-first, P2P Notion alternative” with 414 points and 273 comments, posted by TTTZ on 2023-07-20. That is a strong signal that the pitch hits a nerve: people want a Notion alternative that does not feel like renting a filing cabinet from a company with a growth team. The provided HN mentions over the last 90 days are 1, which is not exactly “the discourse is on fire,” but there is at least some recent HN trace.

Trilium Notes has a Hacker News top story titled “Show HN: Trilium Notes – Scriptable note-taking application” with 328 points and 124 comments, posted by The_Colonel on 2019-01-06. That is older, but still meaningful: Trilium has been around the kind of audience that cares about scriptable tools, personal knowledge bases, and not being trapped inside whatever SaaS dashboard got redesigned this quarter. Its provided HN mentions over the last 90 days are 0, so do not confuse historical Hacker News interest with current front-page momentum.

The Reddit data is also worth reading carefully instead of doing the usual content-marketing séance. Trilium Notes appears in a top provided Reddit post titled “The Self-hosted tools and apps that I rely on” in r/selfhosted, with 1,220 upvotes and 117 comments. That is at least contextually relevant: self-hosters discussing the tools they rely on is exactly the room Trilium wants to be in. Anytype’s provided Reddit top post is titled “40th birthday pulls” in r/MagicCardPulls, with 372 upvotes and 16 comments, which is not useful evidence for evaluating a Notion alternative unless your knowledge base is mostly Charizard logistics. So: cited, but not meaningful.

What we'd do

Pick Anytype if you want the more ambitious Notion replacement: local-first, encrypted, cross-device, and closer to a personal workspace than a plain notes tree. Pick Trilium Notes if you want a self-hosted, hierarchical knowledge base that is less interested in being a movement and more interested in helping you organize a lot of notes. For privacy-forward Notion refugees who like polished product direction, Anytype wins. For self-hosters and structure goblins who want their notes in a serious hierarchy, Trilium Notes is the cleaner bet.