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Dev tools · alternatives · 2026

OS

24 alternatives to Open-Source Public Second Brain Built with Obsidian and Quartz

My Public Second Brain (https://brain.sspaeti.com) is built with the help of a wonderful tool called Quartz (https://brain.sspaeti.com/quartz-publish-obsidian-vault/). Obsidian (https://brain.sspaeti.com/obsidian/) has become my favorite for note-takers, given its flexible and linked structure that closely mirrors our natural way of thinking. With Quartz, I was able to seamlessly publish my Obsidian notes to a public vault, providing the groundwork for my Public Second Brain. The journey of making this possible involved some scripting as…

This open-source project uses Obsidian and Quartz to create a publicly accessible personal knowledge base. It is designed for note-takers and knowledge workers who want to publish their private notes as an… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. Prices are shown for the 1 we have checked on their own sites, 1 of them free or with a free tier. Open-Source Public Second Brain Built with Obsidian and Quartz launched in 2023; newer entries below may have overtaken it.

  1. 1OS

    https://github.com/acheong08/obsidian-sync Hello HN, I'm a recent high school graduate and can't afford $8 per month for the official sync service, so I tried my hand at replicating the server. It's still missing a few features, such as file recovery and history, but the basic sync is working. To the creators of Obsidian.md: I'm probably violating the TOS, and I'm sorry. I'll take down the repository if asked. It's not ready for production and is highly inefficient; Not competition, so I hope you'll be lenient.

    2023 · its alternatives →

  2. 2

    Obsidian Canvas gives you infinite space to research, brainstorm, diagram, and lay out your ideas.

    2022 · obsidian.md · its alternatives →

  3. 3

    Obsidian Mobile brings the power of our desktop app to your mobile devices.

    2021 · obsidian.md · its alternatives →

  4. 4

    A Starter Kit to Manage Your Whole Life

    2023 · start.linkingyourthinking.com · its alternatives →

  5. 5

    Manage your whole life in Obsidian

    2023 · linkingyourthinking.com · its alternatives →

  6. 6

    I'm sharing my public Second Brain - a digital Zettelkasten that connects my knowledge across Data Engineering, Personal Knowledge Management, Programming, Productivity, and philosophical topics like Digital Minimalism. Built with Obsidian and published using Quartz/GoHugo, this knowledge vault contains interconnected notes that I've crafted, curated, and connected over years. I've developed a streamlined publishing workflow where I simply add #publish to any note I want to make public, then run make deploy through a custom Rust script that's 30x faster than my original Python…

    2025 · ssp.sh · its alternatives →

  7. 7

    A few months ago I noticed that I was quickly approaching my 10GB sync limit for my daily driver vault. I considered deprecating some of the heavier files and images, but I was worried how it would affect the integrity of my vault. Instead, I took the opportunity to think to myself -- what would the perfect vault look like? I began to write down some of the key philosophies and strategies I use in my driver vault which led to indispensable plugins, which led to more indispensable philosophies and on and on it went. I've chronicled these results into a fully working vault template that…

    2022 · github.com · its alternatives →

  8. 8

    Hi HN, I'm Dom, a solo founder. I built Second Brain to solve a common issue I had with AI chats: the knowledge disappears. There’s no structure, no memory, and no way to reuse or build on them. So I built a tool that combines AI chat with a visual, interconnected knowledge system. Key features: - Save AI responses into editable docs (Notion-style Pages). - AI Visual board with multiple content & chat nodes (like Miro meets ChatGPT). - Add and chat with YouTubes, TikToks, Audio, PDFs, GitHub repos, Looms, websites, etc. - Organize using Projects and Smart Tags — then chat with full contexts.…

    2025 · second-brain-lac-ten.vercel.app · its alternatives →

  9. 9

    Hi HN, Nick here. We’re launching OpenKnowledge (https://openknowledge.ai/), a “what you see is what you get” markdown editor that has direct integrations with Claude, Codex, and other agents. Available as MacOS app or Web UI+CLI. Fully free/local and OSS. We built this because we wanted a Notion-like experience for writing and sharing markdown files across our team. Obsidian is the best alternative we tried, but found it doesn’t have a true WYSWIG UI and it didn’t integrate well with Claude/Codex outside of community plugins. So we built OpenKnowledge. It takes…

    Jun 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

  10. 10
    Calderafree▲197

    Your Obsidian vault as a living profile and linked garden

    11d ago · caldera.social · its alternatives →

  11. 11IB

    Field notes on shipping fast, privacy-first, evergreen web products.

    2021 · joeldare.com · its alternatives →

  12. 12OS
  13. 13

    With this plugin you can create literature notes from BibTeX entries, display formatted reference lists, and instantly generate citations.

    2024 · github.com · its alternatives →

  14. 14

    Give your team one AI memory. Keep your own private.

    Jul 2026 · thesecondbrain.dev · its alternatives →

  15. 15

    In the last few years I've been doing a lot of technical writing, both for my own programming blog and others, and I've noticed there is a lack of good tools for this kind of writing. Whether that was a programming blog post or documentation, I always had to move back an forth between different editors, and sometimes even other apps for content management and the actual content publication. A lot of copy-pasting, and wasted time. Based on this experience I decided to try and build a tool that could provide a good experience for this kind of content from writing to publishing. This (I call it…

    2023 · vrite.io · its alternatives →

  16. 16

    A note-keeping web app based on Fossil SCM. Contribute to rguiscard/fossil-notebook-demo development by creating an account on GitHub.

    2023 · github.com · its alternatives →

  17. 17

    Contribute to memgraph/odin development by creating an account on GitHub.

    2023 · github.com · its alternatives →

  18. 18
    Obsibrain▲158

    All-in-one productivity template made for Obsidian

    2024 · obsibrain.com · its alternatives →

  19. 19

    Get organized, get productive with Second Brain 2.0

    2023 · oussamaltrx21.gumroad.com · its alternatives →

  20. 20

    Second Brain is a free for creating and sharing content

    2024 · 2ndbrain.vercel.app · its alternatives →

  21. 21

    Interactive HTML knowledge map from a folder of Markdown notes (Obsidian/gbrain) — themed force graph + growth timeline. Ships a prebuilt demo. - vladignatyev/brain-map-skill

    Jun 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

  22. 22

    A personal Palantir that’s as easy to use as Obsidian

    Jul 2026 · consilience.md · its alternatives →

  23. 23

    Manage your whole life in Obsidian

    2025 · linkingyourthinking.com · its alternatives →

  24. 24

    App summary: Local-first productivity tool that combines note-taking, task tracking and journaling into one simple app. Advantages over Notion: Way simpler UI, all user data is only stored locally on their device - providing significantly faster load time, fully functional offline mode and complete privacy of their data Advantages over Obsidian: Dedicated features for task tracking and journaling - not just note-taking, with cheaper end-to-end encrypted device syncing compared to Obsidian Sync

    2024 · impactdiary.com · its alternatives →

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Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →