MindForger vs Zim
We give MindForger a 3.6 GPA and Zim a 3.4, out of 4.0. MindForger grades higher on features. They get the same grade on value for money, the free plan, ease of use and platforms.
Price, platforms and features side by side. The table says where each price was read and when.
MindForger
Open-source Markdown notebook that links related notes for you
Free
How we grade them
| 3.6GPAMindForgerExcellent | 3.4GPAZimVery good | |
|---|---|---|
| Value for money | AFree and open source under the GNU GPL. The site says it costs nothing to download and use, with no account and no subscription, against a typical $5.99 a month in this category. | AIt's free. Zim is open source under the GPL 2.0, and its download page lists no paid edition. Paid note apps typically start at about $5.99 a month. |
| Free plan and trial | AThe full desktop app is free, Wingman assistant included, and Wingman can run a model on your own machine through Ollama. There's no paid tier to bump into. | AThe whole desktop wiki is free on Linux, Windows and macOS, plugins included. There's no paid tier, so nothing is held back. |
| Features | ARelated notes listed as you read or write, links made automatically from note names, a knowledge graph, Kanban and Eisenhower views, math, Mermaid diagrams, and keyboard commands to clone, promote, move and extract notes. That's deep. Sync is the one thing it leaves to Git or a cloud drive. | BPages nest like an outline, links are tracked in both directions, and plugins add a task list, an equation editor and calendar pages for a journal. Solid. But notebooks have no encryption or password, and the FAQ sends you to an outside tool for that. |
| Ease of use | BNo store rating to go on, so a B is our ceiling. On Linux and Windows it's a normal install. On a Mac the app isn't signed, so Gatekeeper blocks it after each install until you allow it by hand, and Wingman needs a language model set up first. | BNo App Store rating on record, so B is as high as we go. There's an installer for Windows and an app for macOS, and most Linux distributions package it. Link to a page that doesn't exist and Zim makes it for you. |
| Platforms and integrations | BLinux, macOS and Windows, with packages for Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch and more. It hooks up to Ollama, OpenRouter and OpenAI. No phone or web app, and the Mac build is Intel only, running on Apple Silicon through Rosetta 2. | BWindows, macOS and Linux, and the version control plugin talks to Git, Mercurial or Bazaar. No phone or web version. Syncing means copying the notebook folder with something like Dropbox. |
| Best for | Markdown notes that link themselves, on a desktop | a personal wiki kept as text files on your computer |
The GPA is the average of the five grades: an A is 4 points, an F is none. The full reasons are on each tool's page: MindForger and Zim. How we grade
Where they differ
- MindForger is free. Zim is free.
- MindForger also covers Markdown.
- Zim also covers wiki, daily notes and tasks.
In commonFree planLinuxmacOSWindowsOpen sourceLocal-firstNotesLinked notes
At a glance
| MindForger | Zim | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Free | Free |
| Starts at | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Free, open-source software under the GNU GPL (version 2 on GitHub). The site says it costs nothing to download and use, with no account and no subscription. | Open-source software under the GPL 2.0 license. The download page offers the source, a Windows installer, a macOS app and Linux packages, and lists no paid edition. |
| Free trial | None listed | None listed |
| macOS | ||
| Windows | ||
| Linux | ||
| Made by | Martin Dvorak | Jaap Karssenberg |
| Price read from | mindforger.com | zim-wiki.org |
| Checked | Oct 9, 2026 | Oct 9, 2026 |
Who each one suits
MindForger
- People who keep private notes as Markdown files on their own disk
- Keyboard-driven users who want IDE-style restructuring of notes
- Running an AI assistant over notes with a local Ollama model
- Linux users: packages cover Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch and more
Zim
- A personal wiki or scratch book kept as files on your own disk
- Daily or weekly journals and meeting or lecture notes
- People who want their notes under Git or another version control system
Worth knowing
MindForger
- Desktop only: the site lists Linux, macOS and Windows with no mobile or web app, and leaves syncing to Git or a cloud drive of your choice.
- The macOS app is not signed or notarized by Apple: after each .dmg install Gatekeeper blocks it until it is allowed by hand, and it has left the official Homebrew cask repository.
- The macOS .dmg is built for Intel and runs on Apple Silicon through Rosetta 2; the Windows installer is for 64-bit x64 only.
- Wingman needs a language model set up first: Ollama installed locally, or a remote provider, which the docs warn sends your text to a third party.
Zim
- Notebooks have no built-in encryption or password protection; the FAQ points to an outside tool such as encfs.
- Zim is written as a single-user program, so shared notebooks rely on a version control system to merge changes.
- The download page covers Linux, BSD, Windows and macOS only, and syncing means copying the notebook folder with a service such as Dropbox.
- The Windows installer supports 64-bit systems only, and the macOS app supports macOS Big Sur through Sequoia.
Key features
MindForger
- Associations
- While a note is being read or written, MindForger lists related notes from the whole workspace. Associations are computed locally, with no cloud service or language model needed.
- Autolinking
- Names of notebooks and notes mentioned in the text become links in the preview automatically. Generated links are shown in green and hand-written ones in blue.
- Wingman assistant
- An optional assistant that summarizes, explains, translates, rewrites and fixes grammar. It runs open-weight models locally through Ollama, or sends text to OpenRouter or OpenAI.
- Organizers and knowledge graph
- Kanban boards and Eisenhower matrix views sort notebooks and notes by their tags, and a force-directed graph shows notebooks, notes and tags with their relationships.
- Markdown editor with refactoring
- The editor has live preview, syntax highlighting, offline KaTeX math, Mermaid diagrams and spell check. Notes can be cloned, promoted, demoted, moved and extracted from the keyboard.
- Plain Markdown workspaces
- Notes are GitHub Flavored Markdown files on disk. MindForger opens its own workspace, any Markdown directory or a single file, and exports notebooks to HTML or Markdown.
Zim
- Plain-text wiki pages
- Every page is a text file with wiki markup and images are ordinary linked files, so the content stays readable in other editors and file managers.
- Links in both directions
- Linking to a page that does not exist creates it. Zim tracks all links and shows, for each page, which other pages link to it.
- Hierarchical notebooks
- Pages nest as sub-pages in a folder structure, much like an outliner, and each page can carry attachments.
- Plugins
- Plugins add a task list dialog, an equation editor, calendar pages for daily or weekly journals, spell checking and a tray icon.
- Version control
- A Version Control plugin works with Git, Mercurial or Bazaar, which also lets several people merge changes to one notebook.
- HTML export
- Notes can be exported to HTML for publishing; the project's own website is written in Zim.
Plans
MindForger
MindForger$0
The full desktop app for Linux, macOS and Windows, including the Wingman assistant, which uses a local Ollama model or a remote OpenRouter or OpenAI model.
Zim
Zim$0
The full desktop wiki for Linux, Windows and macOS, with its plugins.
