--- title: "SumizAI vs Jylos" url: "https://sumizai.com/alternative-to/sumizai-alternative-to-jylos.html" date: "2026-08-14T00:00:00+02:00" modified: "2026-08-14T00:00:00+02:00" description: "Looking for a Jylos alternative? SumizAI and Jylos side by side: price, licence, platforms and what each one actually does." tags: ["ai notes", "sumizai", "jylos", "alternative to Jylos"] --- # SumizAI vs Jylos Looking for a Jylos alternative? SumizAI and Jylos side by side: price, licence, platforms and what each one actually does. ## What Jylos is Jylos is a local knowledge-management system (Spain, EU), written in Java 21 and JavaFX 23, released under the MIT license — Markdown notes, wiki-links, backlinks, an interactive connection graph, plugins, themes, and data storage in SQLite or plain Markdown instead of the cloud. It's a direct competitor to Obsidian and Logseq in the "local-first PKM" niche, with a similar feature set but an entirely different technology base. The creators' key claim — zero usage tracking, no analytics, no data collection of any kind — sets Jylos apart from many competing notepads that, even in a "local" version, still send telemetry to the maker's servers. There's no registration, no login, no user database — you open the app and start writing, and your ai notes stays exclusively on disk. The interactive knowledge graph lets you navigate thousands of connected notes through a visual connection map, with configurable visualization settings — a feature especially valued by users building a large, years-long ai notes archive with a dense web of cross-references between concepts, projects, and people. Built-in Kanban boards and a canvas editor compatible with Obsidian's format mean part of an existing Obsidian user's work can be moved to Jylos without fully rewriting the structure — a meaningful migration convenience for anyone considering switching tools without losing years of accumulated notes. Choosing Java and JavaFX instead of the Electron framework dominant in this category (used by Obsidian, among others) is an unusual technical decision — it can mean lower RAM usage at app startup, a real problem with Electron-based competitors that in practice launch a separate Chromium browser instance for each app. Availability on Windows, macOS, and Linux with no mobile version limits usefulness for people wanting to add notes on the go from a phone — Jylos clearly targets a desk-based user building an elaborate knowledge base over longer sessions, not quick, casual jottings made during the day away from a computer. The plugin and theme system, though younger and less elaborate than Obsidian's ecosystem of thousands of community plugins, gives room for customization to users dissatisfied with the rigid interface of more closed alternatives — a trade-off between ecosystem maturity and the freshness of a still-actively-developed project. For academic institutions and researchers who value full control over their data without depending on a cloud vendor, Jylos offers a real alternative — the whole knowledge graph, every piece of ai notes, and every link between them stays in an open format (SQLite or Markdown), readable even without the Jylos app itself, should the project ever stop being developed. It's also worth adding that choosing the MIT license (more permissive than the AGPL some competitors use) means fewer restrictions for companies wanting to build their own commercial product on top of Jylos's code — which could speed up plugin-ecosystem growth if other developers decide to build extensions or integrations on the open codebase. For users migrating from paid, cloud-based notepads, where a monthly subscription adds up to a significant sum over time, Jylos offers a "pay once for install time, then nothing" model — the only cost is your own hardware to store the SQLite or Markdown files holding the whole history of accumulated ai notes. In short, Jylos is a solid, open-source Obsidian competitor with an emphasis on privacy and zero telemetry, built on an unusual Java/JavaFX technology stack — a good option for people building a local, years-long these notes archive with no compromises on data privacy. **Key facts** - Price: Free - License: Open Source - Origin: Spain, EU - Category: Note-taking ## What SumizAI is A note-taking application built around a conversation with an AI model. You ask a question, the answer streams back, and the answers worth keeping become Markdown notes — filed into a vault that is a folder on your own disk. A vault is a directory holding `base.md`, a generated table of contents up to six levels deep, and a `notes/` folder with one `.md` file per note. Before a note is written it is checked against the ones already there, so the fourth note about the same idea gets merged instead of added. Links between notes are ordinary Markdown links to files that exist. The model is never ours: you bring your own API key to one of seven providers — Anthropic, OpenAI, Gemini, Groq, OpenRouter, a local Ollama or your own server — and pay that provider directly. A question sends the table of contents plus at most five relevant notes within a 24,000-character budget, and the app shows you which five it used. ## Where they differ - AlternativeTo's description of Jylos does not mention an AI model. That is the whole starting point in SumizAI: you have a conversation with a model on your own API key, and the answers worth keeping become notes without you filing them. - Jylos is open source, and SumizAI is not. If reading the source is what decides it for you, that is a real argument for Jylos. The guarantee SumizAI offers instead is structural rather than legal: the notes are Markdown files in a folder you chose, so they open in any editor whether or not the application is running. - Both keep Markdown, which makes moving between them mostly a matter of copying files. In SumizAI a vault is a directory holding `base.md` — a generated table of contents — and a `notes/` folder with one `.md` file per note. - Jylos is described in terms of linking notes together. SumizAI links them too, but deliberately without a syntax of its own: a link is an ordinary Markdown link, `[Title](file-name.md)`, and the model may only point at a file that actually exists. There are no wiki-style `[[…]]` links to lose on export. - Jylos is extensible through plugins. SumizAI is not, and that is a genuine trade: you cannot bend it into something else, but there is also no plugin to keep working after the next release. What it does instead is fixed and small — a chat, a filing rule and a folder of Markdown. - AlternativeTo lists no mobile version of Jylos. SumizAI runs on macOS, Windows, iOS and Android. - Both are run from the EU: SumizAI's operator is registered in Poland and the servers are in Germany. Full side-by-side comparison table and pricing: [https://sumizai.com/alternative-to/sumizai-alternative-to-jylos.html](https://sumizai.com/alternative-to/sumizai-alternative-to-jylos.html)