Joplin
Hacker ApprovedRanked 8 of 33 note-taking apps by recommenders
Free, open-source notes app with Markdown, to-do lists and end-to-end encryption that syncs to your own WebDAV, Nextcloud or S3 server. Critics find it heavy and say its data is not plain Markdown files.
Free, open-source notes app with Markdown, to-do lists and end-to-end encryption that syncs to your own WebDAV, Nextcloud or S3 server. Critics find it heavy and say its data is not plain Markdown files.
38 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 29
- criticize it
- 9
- approval share
- 76%
Recommended in 10 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 29 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 3.2 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 10 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Syncs to your own server
“I really like it as I run a webdav service and can read/write and sync notes between multiple Mac desktops and Android.”
Comment from 29 Jul 2026 in “Hubbele: Open-source notetaking app for you and your agents” “I've been a huge fan of the fact that my backend sync infrastructure is my own self-hosted S3 bucket”
Comment from 18 May 2026 in “Show HN: Files.md – open-source alternative to Obsidian” “share lists, notes, todos with family members via Joplin (stores data on my own WebDAV server)”
Comment from 2 Feb 2026 in “Termux” - Comment from 19 Jul 2026 in “I joined the IndieWeb, here's what I learned”
- Comment from 19 Apr 2026 in “Notion leaks email addresses of all editors of any public page”
- Comment from 9 Jul 2026 in “What is Bending Spoons? The little-known AOL and Vimeo owner that's now public”
Works across Mac, Android, iOS, Linux
“I really like it as I run a webdav service and can read/write and sync notes between multiple Mac desktops and Android.”
Comment from 29 Jul 2026 in “Hubbele: Open-source notetaking app for you and your agents” “I could use it on macOS, iOS, and Fedora with synchronization via Dropbox.”
Comment from 7 Dec 2025 in “Iced 0.14 has been released (Rust GUI library)” “Markdown, cross platform and good supports for todo lists.”
Comment from 28 Feb 2026 in “Customer Update on Simplenote” - Comment from 10 Mar 2026 in “Textadept”
Free and open source
“Joplin is open source, syncing setup between devices is one login to Dropbox, works for free”
Comment from 18 May 2026 in “Show HN: Files.md – open-source alternative to Obsidian” “Its completely FOSS and can sync with your private Nextcloud instance.”
Comment from 19 Apr 2026 in “Notion leaks email addresses of all editors of any public page” “cross-platform FOSS notes app featuring E2EE”
Comment from 10 Mar 2026 in “Textadept” Replaced Evernote for many users
“I actually use Joplin, which I switched to after deciding I needed to dump Evernote.”
Comment from 30 Jan 2026 in “Ask HN: Do you also "hoard" notes/links but struggle to turn them into actions?” “every Evernote customer would be better off if they were using Joplin”
Comment from 10 Jul 2026 in “What is Bending Spoons? The little-known AOL and Vimeo owner that's now public” “I finally switched from Evernote to Joplin”
Comment from 13 Oct 2026 in “"Today we're laying off a large part of the Airtable team "”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Heavy, slow, over-engineered
“it works well but I'm not much of a programmer and probably ended up with a crazy over engineered architecture”
Comment from 22 May 2026 in “Show HN: Files.md – open-source alternative to Obsidian” “it ended up being too heavy for me”
Comment from 25 Feb 2026 in “Show HN: Inkwell – A lightweight, portable Markdown editor” “it's slow and grouchy, a fairly poor Electron app”
Comment from 6 Mar 2026 in “Good software knows when to stop” - Comment from 12 Nov 2025 in “You will own nothing and be (un)happy”
Data not stored as plain Markdown
“Obsidian may not be open source, but its file format is definitely more open than Joplin's.”
Comment from 18 May 2026 in “Show HN: Files.md – open-source alternative to Obsidian” “But all the Joplin data is not in Markdown files sadly.”
Comment from 19 Apr 2026 in “Notion leaks email addresses of all editors of any public page” “the primary data store is SQLite, not files”
Comment from 13 Apr 2026 in “An Introduction to Obsidian” Lacks nested folders, hard to organize
“they are too complicated, bloated, not easy to organize notes”
Comment from 3 Aug 2026 in “Note-Taking and Personal Knowledge Management” “no nested folders was a huge disappointment for me”
Comment from 13 Apr 2026 in “An Introduction to Obsidian” Hard to leave, messy files
“it spams up the md files, so that if you ever switch away from it you'd spend months cleaning them up”
Comment from 9 Nov 2025 in “Opencloud – An alternative to Nextcloud written in Go” “It was mildly difficult to escape from even with the export features.”
Comment from 9 Nov 2025 in “Opencloud – An alternative to Nextcloud written in Go”
Other note-taking apps people recommend
The four most recommended other note-taking apps, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
See all 33 note-taking apps, rankedWhat people said
35 of the 39 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“I finally switched from Evernote to Joplin”
“they are too complicated, bloated, not easy to organize notes”
“I really like it as I run a webdav service and can read/write and sync notes between multiple Mac desktops and Android.”
“Today it's quite easy to keep your private notes on your infrastructure”
“every Evernote customer would be better off if they were using Joplin”
“Was easy to self host on my WebDAV.”
“stopped paying for my obscenely expensive plan ($$$ per year) and haven't looked back”
“it works well but I'm not much of a programmer and probably ended up with a crazy over engineered architecture”
“I like the Joplin UI and features.”
“Obsidian may not be open source, but its file format is definitely more open than Joplin's.”
“Joplin is open source, syncing setup between devices is one login to Dropbox, works for free”
“I've been a huge fan of the fact that my backend sync infrastructure is my own self-hosted S3 bucket”
“Have tried obsidian and joplin as notion replacement but couldn't make it work.”
“But all the Joplin data is not in Markdown files sadly.”
“Its completely FOSS and can sync with your private Nextcloud instance.”
“the primary data store is SQLite, not files”
“no nested folders was a huge disappointment for me”
“which I use on a daily basis”
“good setup & documentation”
“cross-platform FOSS notes app featuring E2EE”
“everything is now markdown and I hate it”
“it's slow and grouchy, a fairly poor Electron app”
“Joplin has great sync support for a number of providers, Dropbox, Onedrive, Nextcloud, S3 etc”
“Joplin is quite good; I still keep it around for longer form writing”
“Markdown, cross platform and good supports for todo lists.”
“it ended up being too heavy for me”
“share lists, notes, todos with family members via Joplin (stores data on my own WebDAV server)”
“I actually use Joplin, which I switched to after deciding I needed to dump Evernote.”
“saving a minimal version to Joplin works if I want it offline”
“I could use it on macOS, iOS, and Fedora with synchronization via Dropbox.”
“I'm very pleased with that note taking app.”
“I feel like that is an over-engineered solution”
“It's barely adequate but gets the job done.”
“It was mildly difficult to escape from even with the export features.”
“it spams up the md files, so that if you ever switch away from it you'd spend months cleaning them up”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.