Trilium

Build a self-hosted second brain and personal wiki.

Editorially reviewedChecked Oct 2026How we review·9 visited this week

note-taking#practical-oss#open-source#self-hosted#knowledge

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Free plan Self-hosted Offline mode

Toolglade’s take

An unusually deep, scriptable knowledge base that shines for power users managing tens of thousands of notes, with cloning, attributes, and an API that few note apps match. It is best for technical self-hosters who want long-term ownership and are willing to climb a learning curve; people wanting a simple, pretty note app or a hands-off cloud service will likely find it complex, and its AI features are newer and less central than the note-taking core.

Should you use Trilium?

Biggest strength: Handles very large knowledge bases (100,000+ notes) with a deep, cloneable note tree
Biggest weakness: Steep learning curve and a power-user, feature-dense interface
Pricing: Free plan
Top alternative: Anytype · see all

Facts & pricing last checked October 2026. How we review

About Trilium

Trilium is a hierarchical note-taking app for building large personal knowledge bases and wikis. It is self-hosted and designed for power users who want to organize a lot of information their own way.

Trilium (maintained as TriliumNext) is a free, open-source, cross-platform note-taking app built specifically for large personal knowledge bases. Notes live in an arbitrarily deep tree, and a single note can be "cloned" into several places at once. It includes a rich WYSIWYG editor with tables, math, and code notes, fast full-text search, note versioning, and powerful organization through attributes that can also drive scripting and queries. More advanced note types cover canvas sketching, mind maps, relation maps, and geo maps, and there is a REST API for automation. It is designed to stay usable and fast well beyond 100,000 notes. You run it as a desktop app (Windows, macOS, Linux) or self-host a server, which you can then reach through a browser or sync across devices, with per-note encryption for sensitive content. It is AGPL-3.0 licensed. TriliumNext is the community continuation after the original author handed the project to the community, and it has been adding optional LLM/AI integrations; it suits power users and self-hosters who want a scriptable, long-term knowledge vault.

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Pros & cons

Pros

Handles very large knowledge bases (100,000+ notes) with a deep, cloneable note tree
Attributes, scripting, and a REST API enable powerful automation and custom organization
Rich editor plus specialized note types: canvas, mind maps, relation maps, and geo maps
Self-hostable with sync, per-note encryption, and OpenID/TOTP login
Actively maintained community continuation (TriliumNext) of the original project

Cons

Steep learning curve and a power-user, feature-dense interface
AGPL-3.0 license may limit some commercial or embedded reuse
Self-hosting a sync server adds setup and maintenance overhead
AI/LLM integration is relatively new and secondary to the core note-taking features