org-roam
Hacker ApprovedShares rank 20 of 33 note-taking apps by recommenders
Emacs package that links plain-text Org notes into a knowledge base; people call it stable and finished. Critics mention slow indexing on large note collections.
Emacs package that links plain-text Org notes into a knowledge base; people call it stable and finished. Critics mention slow indexing on large note collections.
13 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 10
- criticize it
- 3
- approval share
- 77%
Recommended in 7 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 10 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 3.3 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 7 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
Stable, complete, trouble-free
“very small and stable codebase, worth reading on its own simply for education”
Comment from 11 Jan 2026 in “Org Mode Syntax Is One of the Most Reasonable Markup Languages to Use for Text” “Its a beautiful piece of software, its feature complete and finished.”
Comment from 21 Dec 2025 in “Show HN: Open-source Markdown research tool written in Rust – Ekphos” “I've been using org-roam for a while without too much trouble”
Comment from 5 May 2026 in “Grove.el – An Obsidian-like note-taking mode for Emacs” - Comment from 11 Dec 2025 in “My productivity app is a never-ending .txt file (2020)”
Organizes and links notes well
“now I have an agent that set it up and it’s also recording, organizing, and referencing everything.”
Comment from 18 Jun 2026 in “Emacs 31 Is Around the Corner: The Changes I'm Daily Driving” “Org roam is unbeatable even with the preponderance of wiki style knowledge base apps.”
Comment from 26 Nov 2025 in “Surprisingly, Emacs on Android is pretty good” “Org-roam helps this problem for me in two levels.”
Comment from 10 Oct 2026 in “I tried to move my notes out of Emacs. I failed. Again”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Slow indexing on large vaults
“if it's taking too long, whatever you're doing is too complicated”
Comment from 4 Jan 2026 in “The Suck Is Why We're Here” “vanilla Org-Roam indexing became a bottleneck”
Comment from 2 May 2026 in “I have officially retired from Emacs” Notes sprawl into unused clutter
“built-up complex nested trees of tasks and org-roam notes that I haven't looked at in years”
Comment from 19 Jan 2026 in “Launch HN: Indy (YC S21) – A support app designed for ADHD brains” “it had become just, a locally indexed wikipedia”
Comment from 4 Jan 2026 in “The Suck Is Why We're Here”
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
14 of the 16 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“Org-roam helps this problem for me in two levels.”
“now I have an agent that set it up and it’s also recording, organizing, and referencing everything.”
“I've been using org-roam for a while without too much trouble”
“vanilla Org-Roam indexing became a bottleneck”
“built-up complex nested trees of tasks and org-roam notes that I haven't looked at in years”
“there are entire packages built on top (and they drastically can change the behavior of entire system)”
“very small and stable codebase, worth reading on its own simply for education”
“there’s not enough big picture explaining what is going on behind the curtains”
“it had become just, a locally indexed wikipedia”
“if it's taking too long, whatever you're doing is too complicated”
“Its a beautiful piece of software, its feature complete and finished.”
“Haven't needed anything else.”
“Org roam is unbeatable even with the preponderance of wiki style knowledge base apps.”
“it's pretty good, but not good enough”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.