DISCLAIMER: This page is for information only. It is not legal, financial or procurement advice and does not replace your own due diligence. Licenses, ownership, features and certifications can change: confirm what your decision rests on with the official sources.
🩺 Vitals
- 🟢 Last active: 2026-11-02
- 📦 Latest release: 26.11.0 (2026-11-01)
- 🐞 Open issues: 54
- 🌟 Stars: 64.3k
What do these metrics mean?
- Last active: when code was last pushed, as of our last check. The dot is green when that was recent, grey otherwise. A long gap can mean a tool is finished and stable, not only unmaintained.
- Latest release: the most recent stable version the maintainers published as a release on the forge. Some healthy projects publish only tags, or publish their versions elsewhere.
- Open issues: unresolved reports and requests. A high number is normal for a popular project and is not a warning on its own.
- Stars: how many people bookmarked the project on its forge. A rough popularity signal, not a measure of quality.
🏗️ Profile
- Official: usememos.com
- Source: github.com/usememos/memos
- License: MIT
- Deployment: Docker Container | Kubernetes (K8s) | Native System (Binary/Linux)
- Jurisdiction: Undisclosed 🌐 (No Legal Entity)
- Compliance (SaaS): No managed service from the maintainers
- Compliance (Self-Hosted): Self-Hosted (User Managed)
- Complexity: Low (2/5) - One container with an embedded SQLite database; the cache runs inside the server, and MySQL or PostgreSQL are optional external databases
- Maintenance: Moderate (3/5) - Database migrations run at each upgrade with no downgrade, so a backup comes first; security fixes ship only in the latest release
- User Management: Low (2/5) - Admin and user roles, Space memberships and per-memo visibility, with OAuth2 sign-in through your identity provider; no audit log or SCIM, and TLS only at your reverse proxy
What the scores mean: Reading the Scores
1. The Executive Summary
What is it? Memos is a self-hosted note-taking app that collects quick thoughts in a personal timeline. Each memo is private, visible to every signed-in user, public, or shared with a Space, which brings members and their memos together inside one instance. It serves individuals who want a notebook on their own server and small teams that share notes without a cloud workspace.
The Strategic Verdict:
- 🔴 For teams with audit or compliance duties: Caution. The free build keeps no audit log and offers no SCIM, and security fixes reach only the latest release (User Management, Maintenance).
- 🟢 For individuals and small teams keeping notes in-house: Strong Buy. One container with an embedded database runs it, with no license fee (Complexity, Cost of Ownership).
2. Cost of Ownership
| Cost Component | Memos (Self-Hosted) |
|---|---|
| Pricing Model | No license fee |
| Operations | Single small VM, grows with attachments stored in the database; plus your team's time to run it (Maintenance, in the Profile) |
| Support | No paid support from the maintainers: community support or a paid service provider |
| Exit | Per-user export (Markdown with JSON metadata); leaves out accounts, settings and Space membership |
What each row covers: Total Cost of Ownership
3. Risk Assessment
- Jurisdiction: The project names no controlling legal entity with a disclosed domicile, so which law applies to whoever controls it cannot be assessed. The project runs no hosted service for Memos.
- The Compliance Shift: Anyone who can reach the instance can register an account until an admin turns registration off. Self-hosting moves the security and compliance duties of running the software to the operator (the operator's compliance checklist).
- License Risk: Memos is under MIT, an OSI-approved permissive license (what it allows and requires). MIT lets anyone, the maintainers included, release modified versions under other terms, closed ones too.
4. Market Landscape
🏢 Proprietary Incumbents
- Notion: Notion is a cloud workspace for notes, documents, wikis and databases.
Data held by: Notion Labs, Inc., United States 🇺🇸, subject to the US CLOUD Act for the data it holds, wherever it is stored.
Why teams leave: Its audit log and user provisioning come only on its top plan, priced per member.
Exit: Workspace export (Markdown and CSV, or HTML), partial export (other members' private pages, all but one view of a database) - Roam Research: Roam Research is a cloud note-taking app for networked thought.
Data held by: Roam Research, Inc., United States 🇺🇸, subject to the US CLOUD Act for the data it holds, wherever it is stored.
Why teams leave: Its privacy policy lets it share certain user data with companies it co-markets with, for their analysis.
Exit: Graph export (Markdown, JSON, EDN or MessagePack); attachments exported apart
With Memos: The project runs no hosted service that could hold your notes (Risk Assessment).
🤝 Open-Source Alternatives
- Blinko: GPL-3.0 AI-first note-taking app: a self-hosted second brain with RAG-powered recall on your own hardware, unlike cloud-bound Mem.ai. Built for personal knowledge management, not team collaboration.