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Comparison · Collab

Hive vs Trilium Notes

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

Hive vs Trilium Notes: at a glance

FeatureHiveTrilium Notes
SectorCollab, PMCollab
Velocity score5.06.3
Sparks · 30d00
Top themesprofessional services, proofing, client collaboration, approvalsself-hosted, note-taking, knowledge-base, mcp
Last editorial update2d ago2mo ago
WebsiteVisit →Visit →

What is Hive?

Hive gives clients a passwordless portal for every proof waiting on them, across companies.

Hive keeps shipping weekly batches for professional-services and creative teams. The Oct 21 batch adds an External Review Portal where clients and vendors see every pending proof from every Hive company they work with, a Map widget that plots project and action locations next to people, personal per-assignee reminders in a unified Dates field, and collapsible media in chat. It follows Buzz as an AI approver and Forms launched from workflow buttons.

Read the full Hive 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 →

Hive vs Trilium Notes: editorial side-by-side

Hive logo
Hive
COLLABPM
5.0

Hive gives clients a passwordless portal for every proof waiting on them, across companies.

◆ Current state

Hive keeps shipping weekly batches for professional-services and creative teams. The Oct 21 batch adds an External Review Portal where clients and vendors see every pending proof from every Hive company they work with, a Map widget that plots project and action locations next to people, personal per-assignee reminders in a unified Dates field, and collapsible media in chat. It follows Buzz as an AI approver and Forms launched from workflow buttons.

◆ Where it's heading

Proofing is turning into Hive's outward-facing surface: approvals already took an AI stage, and now external reviewers get their own login-light home, upload rights and a request-approval flow of their own. Inside the workspace, the work is about cutting per-person friction (own reminders, focused chat, location-aware dashboards) rather than adding new modules.

◆ Prediction

Expect the portal to pick up more reviewer-side actions, possibly Buzz review for externally uploaded files, since reviewers can now upload and request approval from their own teams; the entries don't show pricing or seat rules for external reviewers.

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 Hive 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 Hive or Trilium Notes.

See all Hive alternatives → · See all Trilium Notes alternatives →

Recent activity from Hive and Trilium Notes

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

  1. 2d agoHiveReview proofs in the External Review Portal
  2. 2d agoHiveMap project and action locations alongside your team
  3. 2d agoHiveCollapse images, GIFs and link previews in chat
  4. 2d agoHiveSet your own reminder in the new Dates field
  5. 7d agoHiveNew Open prefilled Forms from action workflow buttons
  6. 7d agoHiveBuzz approver note reposted
  7. 2mo agoTrilium NotesBackups become restorable and the database becomes manageable ⚡
  8. 3mo agoTrilium NotesLLM providers become dynamic and self-hostable; OneNote import hardened
  9. 3mo agoTrilium NotesRelease-preparation tag for v0.104.0
  10. 5mo agoTrilium NotesSpreadsheet notes and OCR-backed search arrive ⚡
  11. 6mo agoTrilium NotesCoordinated security release across content handling and the desktop app
  12. 7mo agoTrilium NotesHotfix for mind map rendering and PDF viewer regressions

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between Hive and Trilium Notes?

They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. Trilium Notes is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 6.3 vs 5.0), with 0 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. See the at-a-glance table above for a side-by-side breakdown of velocity, recent sparks, and editorial themes.

Is Hive better than Trilium Notes?

Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. Trilium Notes is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 6.3 vs 5.0), with 0 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. For your specific use case, the alternatives sections above list other Collab products to evaluate alongside.

What are the best alternatives to Hive?

Top Hive alternatives in Collab are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "Hive alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/hive 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.