SiYuan is free for life on one machine and $64 once on two

76 puts SiYuan in our Strong band, third-highest among the open source tools in this category behind Logseq and Joplin at 81. It also sits above its rank 7 on our note-taking list, and that gap is the useful part.

Feature depth at 85 is the second highest here, behind only Obsidian's 92, and it is what the rank does not capture. Block-level references and backlinks, a built-in database (attribute views), PDF annotation and flashcards with spaced repetition are all free in one offline application. Very few tools at any price put that much in one place, and almost none of them do it for nothing.

Generosity at 80 is docked for exactly one thing: sync is the capability behind the paywall, and there is no free configuration route around it in the way there is with Obsidian or Joplin.

Freedom at 84 reflects AGPL-3.0, no account, full offline operation and an official Docker image, minus one real caveat on the storage format that we cover below.

Sentiment sits at 50 because we hold no third-party rating for SiYuan at all. It is one of the tools our 24 July 2026 reputation pass named as left out.

Nothing is metered, nothing expires and no feature is held back, so the limits look different from the rest of this page (as of July 2026).

Sync costs money in every form. $64 once unlocks sync and backup through your own S3 or WebDAV storage; $148 once adds official sync with 8 GB of cloud space. Our data records no free sync route, which is the single biggest practical difference between SiYuan and Obsidian, where a Dropbox folder does the job at no cost.

Data is stored as JSON, not plain Markdown files. Documents live locally as JSON so block-level references can work, with Markdown as an import and export format. That is local and open and it is not the same promise as a folder of .md files, because portability runs through an export step rather than being the default state of your notes.

The English documentation and parts of the interface are translated from Chinese and read awkwardly, which slows down the first week more than any feature gap does.

The community is smaller and mostly Chinese-speaking, so English troubleshooting takes longer than it does for Obsidian or Logseq.

The interface is dense. A lot of panels and features compete for attention on first launch, and it rewards patience.

Self-hosting is supported through an official Docker image that serves the app in a browser, which is how most people run it on a home server or VPS. That is a free multi-device route for anyone who can run Docker, with backups and updates on you.

SiYuan has no subscription. That is the most unusual thing about it commercially and the reason this section is short.

PRO Features is a one-time $64 (listed down from $96) and unlocks sync and backup through storage you already own, S3 or WebDAV. The lifetime Subscription option is a one-time $148 (listed down from $296) and adds official sync and backup, cloud asset hosting, Cloud Inbox, and the S3 and WebDAV integrations, with 8 GB of official cloud space.

SiYuan is upfront that the 8 GB ceiling exists because of bandwidth costs and points larger vaults toward third-party S3, which is a more honest explanation than most vendors offer for a storage cap.

The thing everybody buys is sync, and the arithmetic is straightforward. Obsidian Sync at $4 per user per month billed annually costs $48 a year, so SiYuan's $64 pays for itself inside sixteen months and never asks again. Against a tool whose sync is free, it never pays for itself, which is the honest comparison for anyone weighing this against Joplin.

Both prices are listed as discounted from a higher figure. Treat those as marketing rather than as a deadline.

Yes, and that sits a step above where a score of 76 would normally land. The reason for the departure: nothing in SiYuan is metered, nothing expires, and every feature including block references, a database, PDF annotation and flashcards is free for life on a single machine. The paywall is one capability, and it is a one-time payment rather than a recurring gate on the app you already installed.

Who this covers completely: anyone running a single-machine personal knowledge base, offline-only setups where nothing needs an account or a connection, people who want flashcards and PDF annotation inside their notes rather than beside them, and self-hosters, because the official Docker image serves the app in a browser and gives you multi-device access without buying sync.

Who should look elsewhere: anyone who needs laptop-and-phone sync and does not want to pay for it, because that is exactly what SiYuan sells, and anyone who wants their notes to be plain Markdown files by default rather than JSON with an export step.

If free sync is the requirement, Joplin's free plan syncs to storage you already own at no cost, and Obsidian's free plan works with any file-sync tool. Free Notion alternatives and best free note-taking and docs tools rank the category.