TriliumNext Notes vs Standard Notes
Both are alternatives to Evernote. Here's how they stack up — verified facts, no spin.
TriliumNext Notes
A self-hosted, tree-structured personal knowledge base built for power users with very large note collections.
TriliumNext Notes (the actively maintained community continuation of the original zadam/Trilium, which was archived) organizes notes as an unlimited-depth tree where a single note can be cloned into multiple places — a strong fit for readers building a large, deeply cross-referenced personal wiki rather than simple flat notebooks. It runs as a desktop app or a self-hosted server (Docker image available) with notes stored in a local SQLite database, plus per-note encryption, scripting, and a REST API for automation.
Standard Notes
A privacy-first, end-to-end encrypted notes app, open source and self-hostable, now part of Proton.
Standard Notes is built around zero-knowledge end-to-end encryption: notes are encrypted on-device before they ever reach a server, so not even Standard Notes (or Proton, which acquired the company in April 2024) can read them. The app is open source and its sync server can be self-hosted, though the free tier is limited to plain-text notes — rich text, Markdown, spreadsheets, and file attachments require a paid plan or self-hosted setup with community extensions.
Side by side
| TriliumNext Notes | Standard Notes | |
|---|---|---|
| Sovereignty Score | 87 | 80 |
| Open source | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hostable | Yes | Yes |
| Local-first | Yes | Yes |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Pricing | Free and open source, unlimited notes and self-hosting. A third-party paid sync-hosting service exists for readers who don't want to run their own server, but self-hosting the sync server yourself costs nothing. | Free tier: unlimited plain-text notes, unlimited devices, 100MB total storage, no rich text/attachments/history. Paid Productivity tier: $90/year (Markdown, rich text, spreadsheets, unlimited history). Professional tier: $120/year (adds 100GB encrypted file storage, family sharing). Self-hosting the sync server is free. |
TriliumNext Notes edges it on the Sovereignty Score, but the right pick depends on the trade-offs below.
TriliumNext Notes
Strengths
- +Handles very large note collections (100,000+ notes) smoothly — a genuine strength over flatter note apps at serious scale
- +Rich structural features (note cloning, relation maps, scripting, kanban/table/geo-map views) well beyond Evernote's flat notebook model
- +Fully free and self-hostable with an official Docker image and active weekly release cadence
- +Per-note AES-128 encryption for sensitive entries
Trade-offs
- −No official mobile app — mobile access is via browser/PWA or an unofficial third-party Android client (TriliumDroid)
- −The steep organizational power (tree + clones + relations) has a real learning curve versus Evernote's simple notebook-and-tag model
- −Notes live in a local SQLite database rather than plain files, so raw-file portability is lower than Joplin's Markdown-file approach
Standard Notes
Strengths
- +Audited zero-knowledge end-to-end encryption by default — stronger baseline privacy than Evernote's standard cloud storage
- +AGPL-3.0 open source, with a self-hostable sync server for readers who want full control
- +Unlimited notes and devices even on the free tier — no per-device cap like Evernote's single-device free plan
- +Backed by Proton's long-term privacy-focused funding model since the 2024 acquisition, a signal of stability
Trade-offs
- −Free tier is plain-text only — rich text, Markdown rendering, and file attachments require a paid subscription, a real step down from Evernote's richer free formatting
- −No OCR or document-scanning search comparable to Evernote's
- −100MB storage cap on the free tier is tight for anyone attaching files or images
More Evernote head-to-heads
Facts verified 2026-07-12. Licenses and pricing change — spotted something out of date? That's a correction we want.