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Comparison · Collab

Document360 vs Trilium Notes

A side-by-side editorial comparison of Document360 and Trilium Notes — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.

Shared themes:knowledge-base

Document360 vs Trilium Notes: at a glance

FeatureDocument360Trilium Notes
SectorCollabCollab
Velocity score6.36.3
Sparks · 30d11
Top themesknowledge-base, api-platform, ai-assistance, authoring-workflowself-hosted, note-taking, knowledge-base, mcp
Last editorial update7d ago18d ago
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What is Document360?

After opening the knowledge base to machines, Document360 turns on its own furniture

Document360 ships monthly and hit 12.8.5 with a portal-interface release rather than a platform one. The top and left navigation bars were redesigned around a single dropdown that moves between projects, workspaces and languages instead of three separate menus, rolling out in phases. Alongside it, a Manage labels page finally makes labels deletable, groupable and countable by usage, and article status icons became dual-tone so a published article carrying an active draft reads at a glance.

Read the full Document360 trajectory →

What is Trilium Notes?

Trilium spent a year adding what notes can hold; now it is fixing what happens to them.

Trilium Notes is a self-hosted hierarchical note application with an unusually broad content model — text, code, canvases, mind maps, and since 0.103.0 spreadsheets with formulas and OCR-extracted text from images, PDFs and Office files. Releases are large, quarterly, and explicit about breakage. The current release turns that attention inward: the database itself becomes something you can measure, clean, repair, and restore.

Read the full Trilium Notes trajectory →

Document360 vs Trilium Notes: editorial side-by-side

D6.3

After opening the knowledge base to machines, Document360 turns on its own furniture

◆ Current state

Document360 ships monthly and hit 12.8.5 with a portal-interface release rather than a platform one. The top and left navigation bars were redesigned around a single dropdown that moves between projects, workspaces and languages instead of three separate menus, rolling out in phases. Alongside it, a Manage labels page finally makes labels deletable, groupable and countable by usage, and article status icons became dual-tone so a published article carrying an active draft reads at a glance.

◆ Where it's heading

The arc has run outward, then inward, and has now arrived at the portal's own information architecture. First the knowledge base was made safe for programmatic and agent access through the API v3 rebuild; then the gaps that serialise human teams were closed with co-editing and pre-publish checks; now the surfaces people navigate all day are being rebuilt for legibility. The quietest line in this release points somewhere else: an AI chatbot's content source dropdown now offers None, so a chatbot can be configured without the knowledge base behind it at all.

◆ Prediction

Expect the taxonomy work to continue past labels, since the one-time prompt to organise flat labels into groups implies a project-wide cleanup Document360 wants finished. The phased navigation rollout should complete before the next feature layer lands on top of it.

T6.3

Trilium spent a year adding what notes can hold; now it is fixing what happens to them.

◆ Current state

Trilium Notes is a self-hosted hierarchical note application with an unusually broad content model — text, code, canvases, mind maps, and since 0.103.0 spreadsheets with formulas and OCR-extracted text from images, PDFs and Office files. Releases are large, quarterly, and explicit about breakage. The current release turns that attention inward: the database itself becomes something you can measure, clean, repair, and restore.

◆ Where it's heading

Two arcs run in parallel. One expands what a note can be, peaking with the spreadsheet note type and OCR that feeds extracted text into search. The other is about trust in the thing holding your knowledge base — a coordinated security release in April, then 0.105.0 shipping backup restore, a cleanup tool that honours versioning limits, compaction, integrity repair, and a space-usage treemap. The AI layer is being made self-hostable in the same spirit, moving from a fixed vendor model list to dynamic retrieval plus Ollama, LM Studio and any OpenAI-compatible provider. Breaking changes are frequent and documented up front rather than smuggled in.

◆ Prediction

The two features the maintainer explicitly links to funding — an official mobile application and multi-user support — are the stated backlog; nearer term, expect the spreadsheet note type to leave beta and the newly networked MCP interface to gain more surface.

Alternatives to Document360 and Trilium Notes

Other Collab products tracked by Sparkpulse, ranked by recent ship velocity. Each card links to a full editorial trajectory and lets you pivot into a head-to-head comparison with either Document360 or Trilium Notes.

See all Document360 alternatives → · See all Trilium Notes alternatives →

Recent activity from Document360 and Trilium Notes

Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.

  1. 8d agoDocument360Unified project switcher and a label manager that can delete
  2. 15d agoDocument360Collaborative editing lands in the WYSIWYG editor
  3. 19d agoTrilium NotesBackups become restorable and the database becomes manageable
  4. 22d agoDocument360Publish dialog folds in AI suggestions and pre-publish checks
  5. 29d agoDocument360API v3 rebuild adds OAuth 2.0 and scoped API keys
  6. 1mo agoDocument360Interactive API reference with a rebuilt Try It! console
  7. 1mo agoTrilium NotesLLM providers become dynamic and self-hostable; OneNote import hardened
  8. 1mo agoTrilium NotesRelease-preparation tag for v0.104.0
  9. 1mo agoDocument360Find and replace spans variables, snippets, and links
  10. 3mo agoTrilium NotesSpreadsheet notes and OCR-backed search arrive
  11. 5mo agoTrilium NotesCoordinated security release across content handling and the desktop app
  12. 6mo agoTrilium NotesHotfix for mind map rendering and PDF viewer regressions

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between Document360 and Trilium Notes?

Both compete on the same themes — knowledge-base — within Collab. Document360 and Trilium Notes are shipping at a similar cadence (velocity 6.3 vs 6.3, both within Sparkpulse's "active" band). See the at-a-glance table above for a side-by-side breakdown of velocity, recent sparks, and editorial themes.

Is Document360 better than Trilium Notes?

Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. Document360 and Trilium Notes are shipping at a similar cadence (velocity 6.3 vs 6.3, both within Sparkpulse's "active" band). For your specific use case, the alternatives sections above list other Collab products to evaluate alongside.

What are the best alternatives to Document360?

Top Document360 alternatives in Collab are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "Document360 alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/document360 for the full list with editorial commentary on each.

What are the best alternatives to Trilium Notes?

Top Trilium Notes alternatives in Collab are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "Trilium Notes alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/trilium for the full list with editorial commentary on each.