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Trilium Notes Review: Free Hierarchical Notes With Optional AI

·6 min readBy Hans Kuepper · Founder of PromptQuorum · Discovery engine for open-weight & open-source AI

Trilium Notes (version 0.106.1, released on 23 October 2026) is a free, AGPL-3.0 note-taking app and personal knowledge base for Mac, Windows, Linux and a self-hosted server, with an optional AI assistant that is off until you switch it on. The decisive caveat is that the AI can read and edit your notes with no permission layer, so the provider you pick decides where your notes go.

Key Takeaways

  • Maintenance: version 0.106.1 was released on 23 October 2026 and the repository was updated on 3 November 2026, so no stale-project warning applies.
  • Cost: free, with no paid tiers, accounts or feature paywalls according to the maker.
  • AI: optional and off by default, with local providers (Ollama, LM Studio), cloud providers and a built-in MCP server.
  • Mobile: no official phone app; the server offers a browser and installable web app, and an unofficial Android app exists.
  • Safety: the AI note tools have no permission management, so an assistant could delete or reshuffle notes.

📍 In One Sentence

Trilium Notes is a free, open-source hierarchical notes app and personal knowledge base for desktop or a self-hosted server, with optional AI chat.

💬 In Plain Terms

You keep your notes in a tree on your own computer or your own server, and you can let an AI assistant search and edit them using either a model on your machine or a cloud model you choose.

📌Note: This review is based on triliumnotes.org, the documentation, the GitHub releases and repository data, checked on 3 November 2026. PromptQuorum has not installed, run or benchmarked the app, so speed, stability and answer quality are not assessed.

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Trilium Notes is a free, open-source note-taking app and personal knowledge base that runs as a desktop app on Mac, Windows and Linux or as a self-hosted server you open in a browser. Notes sit in a hierarchical tree, a note can live in several places, and an optional AI assistant can chat with your notes through a local model such as Ollama or LM Studio, or through a cloud provider you choose. This review covers what you download, what the AI can do, where your data goes and what the sources leave unconfirmed.

Trilium Notes Review: Free Hierarchical Notes With Optional AI

What Is Trilium Notes?

Trilium Notes is a note-taking app built around a tree of notes, where one note can be placed in several branches of the tree. The maintainers are Elian Doran and the community, building on the earlier work of zadam, whom the site credits for 2017 to 2024; the current repository is TriliumNext/Trilium.

The site lists note types for text, Markdown, code, spreadsheets, canvas, Mermaid diagrams, mind maps and files, plus calendar, table, Kanban, geomap, presentation and dashboard views, labels and relations, note revisions, a web clipper and a REST API. Scripting uses frontend and backend JavaScript.

Get It

Trilium Notes is free to download for Mac, Windows and Linux, and the same project also runs as a server you host yourself; the installers are hosted on GitHub Releases.

Option
How to get it
MacTrilium Notes on GitHub Releases, Apple-silicon or Intel .dmg or .zip
WindowsTrilium Notes on GitHub Releases, x64 or ARM64 .exe or .zip
LinuxTrilium Notes on GitHub Releases, x64 or ARM64 AppImage, .deb, .rpm or Flatpak
Server (Docker)Image triliumnext/trilium; docker compose up -d, port 8080
Server (managed)Third-party PikaPods hosting; no official cloud version yet
PhoneNo official app; use the server in a browser or as a PWA. Unofficial: TriliumDroid (Android)
PriceFree; no paid tiers, accounts or feature paywalls
Websitetriliumnotes.org
Privacy policyPrivacy policy; AI privacy page
Source codeGitHub, AGPL-3.0

Version reviewed: 0.106.1 (23 October 2026). That release is a security update for the server and Docker images, so anyone running the server should be on it. The Docker documentation warns against the latest tag because it can move you to a new minor version and disturb sync; pin a version tag instead.

Requirements

The sources give no minimum operating-system, RAM or disk figures for the desktop app.

Desktop

What the sources say:
Mac (Apple silicon and Intel), Windows (x64 and ARM64), Linux (x64 and ARM64) builds on GitHub Releases

Server

What the sources say:
Docker images for AMD64, ARMv7 and ARM64; a packaged Linux server archive; Kubernetes, Cloudron, NixOS and other setups are listed in the docs

Local AI

What the sources say:
A separate Ollama or LM Studio installation; no model size or hardware figures are given

Account

What the sources say:
None; the maker states there are no accounts

The standard Docker container needs root privileges per the docs; a rootless image exists. Putting the server on the open internet needs the HTTPS and authentication settings the docs describe.

How to Get Started

The steps follow the maker's documentation; PromptQuorum has not run them.

  1. 1
    Choose desktop or server
    Why it matters: Download the installer for your system from GitHub Releases, or run the Docker image if you want browser access and sync across devices.
  2. 2
    Pin a version
    Why it matters: For Docker, use a specific version tag instead of latest so an automatic upgrade cannot break sync.
  3. 3
    Sync if you run a server
    Why it matters: Connect the desktop app to your own server to keep several devices in step; the docs cover sync in their Synchronization pages.
  4. 4
    Enable AI only if you want it
    Why it matters: The AI integration does nothing until you enable it and configure a provider; pick Ollama or LM Studio to keep notes on your machine.

Features Confirmed by the Sources

Every item below comes from the maker's site or documentation; none has been independently tested.

  • Tree with cloning. Notes are organised hierarchically and one note can appear in several places, with labels, relations and workspaces (hoisting).
  • Search. Fuzzy title search and full-text search, including OCR text from images and PDFs.
  • Protected notes. Selected notes can be encrypted; everything else is stored unencrypted by default.
  • Publishing and access. A note subtree can be published as a read-only website (server only), with TOTP multi-factor sign-in and OpenID Connect.
  • AI chat and tools. Chat with your notes, an assistant that can search and edit through built-in note tools, and an MCP server for outside agents.

Data Flow and Privacy

Your notes are stored in a local SQLite database, unencrypted unless you mark a note as protected; protected notes use AES-128-CBC. With the AI off, nothing is sent anywhere by the AI feature. The docs say the provider you choose determines where your notes go. The privacy policy says Trilium Notes collects and sends no data from your installation and has no analytics or telemetry; the app periodically queries the GitHub releases page to check for a newer stable version, and downloads spelling dictionaries as needed.

With a cloud provider (Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, DeepSeek or a custom OpenAI-compatible endpoint) note content you expose goes to that provider; with Ollama or LM Studio the AI privacy page says every message stays on the machine running the model. Web search, when enabled, sends the model's search terms to the provider's own search infrastructure. Attachments are sent to the provider without pre-processing such as OCR. The note tools have no permission management, so a model could delete notes or clutter your tree; deleted notes can be restored and edits create revisions, but attribute changes have no history. The built-in MCP server is off by default; when enabled, an ETAPI token gives the same full read and write access to your notes as the REST API.

📌Note: These are the maker's statements, not audit results, and PromptQuorum has not inspected network traffic. The privacy policy names no operator, contact address or last-updated date.

Who Should Use It

  • Self-hosters who want a free knowledge base on their own server with sync across devices.
  • Ollama and LM Studio users who want an assistant that searches and edits their notes with a model on their own machine.
  • Power users who like trees, relations and JavaScript scripting more than a plain folder of files.

What We Could Not Verify

  • Performance. Speed with large databases, memory use and local-model answer quality are untested.
  • Privacy statements. The policy and the AI privacy page are the maker's declarations; network traffic, link previews and the web clipper were not examined.
  • Mobile. There is no official phone app, and the unofficial Android app was not examined.
  • Requirements. No minimum OS, RAM or disk figures are published for the desktop app.
  • AI safety limits. The docs state there is no permission management for note tools, and how reliably a model stays within a request is untested.

Competitors and Alternatives

Logseq

Platforms:
Mac, Windows, Linux, iPhone, Android, web
Price / license:
Free / AGPL-3.0
Key difference:
Open-source outliner; AI only through an optional MCP server
Articles about Logseq (7)

Also mentioned in:

+1 more not shown

SiYuan

Platforms:
Mac, Windows, Linux, iPhone, Android
Price / license:
Free + paid sync / AGPL-3.0
Key difference:
Self-hosted, block-level references, built-in AI agent
Articles about SiYuan (1)

Also mentioned in:

Tolaria

Platforms:
Mac, Windows, Linux
Price / license:
Free / AGPL-3.0-or-later
Key difference:
Markdown files in a Git-backed vault
Articles about Tolaria (1)

Confirm each app's current price, license and platforms on its own page before choosing.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Is there an official Trilium Notes app for iPhone or Android?

No. The server includes a mobile web frontend that you can install as a web app (PWA), and the community maintains an unofficial Android app called TriliumDroid, which the site says works offline.

Is Trilium Notes the same as the original Trilium by zadam?

It builds on that project: the site credits zadam for 2017 to 2024 and Elian Doran and the community from 2024. The repository to use is TriliumNext/Trilium.

Which AI providers does Trilium Notes support?

Anthropic, OpenAI, Google (Gemini) and DeepSeek with API keys, Claude Code as the only subscription-based option the docs list at present, Ollama and LM Studio locally, and any OpenAI-compatible endpoint such as OpenRouter, Groq or Mistral.

How often is Trilium Notes released?

The GitHub releases show 0.104.1 on 25 July, 0.105.0 on 19 August, 0.106.0 on 25 September and 0.106.1 on 23 October 2026, so roughly one release a month.

Verdict

Trilium Notes offers a free, AGPL-3.0 tree-based knowledge base for Mac, Windows, Linux and your own server, with optional AI through Ollama, LM Studio or cloud providers, and it ships about one release a month. Against that, the privacy policy names no operator or contact, there is no official phone app, the AI note tools have no permission management, and speed and answer quality are untested. It suits self-hosters and tree-and-relations note-takers who keep the AI off or pointed at a local model; anyone who needs audited privacy claims should treat the documentation as a declaration, not proof.

Sources

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