Dev tools · alternatives · 2026
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.
- 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

Obsidian Canvas gives you infinite space to research, brainstorm, diagram, and lay out your ideas.
2022 · obsidian.md · its alternatives →
- 3

Obsidian Mobile brings the power of our desktop app to your mobile devices.
2021 · obsidian.md · its alternatives →
- 4

A Starter Kit to Manage Your Whole Life
2023 · start.linkingyourthinking.com · its alternatives →
- 5
Ideaverse Pro▲325Manage your whole life in Obsidian
2023 · linkingyourthinking.com · its alternatives →
- 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 →
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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 →
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Second Brain▲281Hi 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 →
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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 →
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Calderafree▲197Your Obsidian vault as a living profile and linked garden
11d ago · caldera.social · its alternatives →
- 11IB
Field notes on shipping fast, privacy-first, evergreen web products.
2021 · joeldare.com · its alternatives →
- 12OS
2020 · steveliu.co · its alternatives →
- 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

Give your team one AI memory. Keep your own private.
Jul 2026 · thesecondbrain.dev · its alternatives →
- 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

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

Contribute to memgraph/odin development by creating an account on GitHub.
2023 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 18
Obsibrain▲158All-in-one productivity template made for Obsidian
2024 · obsibrain.com · its alternatives →
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SECOND BRAIN 2.0▲111Get organized, get productive with Second Brain 2.0
2023 · oussamaltrx21.gumroad.com · its alternatives →
- 20
Second Brain▲11Second Brain is a free for creating and sharing content
2024 · 2ndbrain.vercel.app · its alternatives →
- 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
Consilience▲15A personal Palantir that’s as easy to use as Obsidian
Jul 2026 · consilience.md · its alternatives →
- 23

Manage your whole life in Obsidian
2025 · linkingyourthinking.com · its alternatives →
- 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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- Obsidian for Mobile – Plain-text knowledge base on the go alternatives
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- My Digital Zettelkasten That Connects Data Engineering and Much More alternatives
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 →