Trilium Notes
The TriliumNext fork spent its early betas making the app trustworthy to install
Comparison · Collab
Memos vs Hive
A side-by-side editorial comparison of Memos and Hive — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
Memos vs Hive: at a glance
What is Memos?
Memos is turning a personal note store into an agent-addressable, private-by-default service
The release candidates in this window carry unusually heavy changes for a self-hosted note app: an embedded MCP endpoint exposing memo CRUD, comments, attachments and tags to AI clients; live updates over server-sent events; revocable share links; and a browser Web Clipper for saving pages and selections as Markdown. A parallel candidate makes instances without an explicit instance URL run in private mode and rewrites filters onto CEL timestamps.
What is Hive?
Hive is turning Buzz into a delegator while grinding out resourcing depth and UI polish.
Hive ships a real changelog at high cadence, and the grain varies sharply within a single day - a 13-week resource-estimates grid lands alongside a resizable panel and a restyled new-tab button. Two AI threads run through the window: Buzz, the in-app assistant, and AI Proofing, which now feeds its output into the human annotation flow. Everything else is capacity planning in Resourcing plus steady closing of mobile-to-desktop gaps.
Memos vs Hive: editorial side-by-side
Memos
7.5COLLAB
Memos is turning a personal note store into an agent-addressable, private-by-default service
◆ Current state
The release candidates in this window carry unusually heavy changes for a self-hosted note app: an embedded MCP endpoint exposing memo CRUD, comments, attachments and tags to AI clients; live updates over server-sent events; revocable share links; and a browser Web Clipper for saving pages and selections as Markdown. A parallel candidate makes instances without an explicit instance URL run in private mode and rewrites filters onto CEL timestamps.
◆ Where it's heading
Two directions are converging. One is machine access — MCP moved from a stateful server with prompts and resources to a stateless, tools-only endpoint generated from the OpenAPI schema, which is a deliberate narrowing toward something agents can call reliably. The other is defaults that assume the instance is private until an admin says otherwise. Together they reposition Memos from a personal web app to a small API-shaped service with a human UI on top.
◆ Prediction
Expect the MCP surface to stabilise against the OpenAPI schema as the source of truth and the private-by-default posture to carry into a general release, with clients that relied on prompts, resources or unprefixed tool names needing to migrate.
Hive
10.0COLLABPM
Hive is turning Buzz into a delegator while grinding out resourcing depth and UI polish.
◆ Current state
Hive ships a real changelog at high cadence, and the grain varies sharply within a single day - a 13-week resource-estimates grid lands alongside a resizable panel and a restyled new-tab button. Two AI threads run through the window: Buzz, the in-app assistant, and AI Proofing, which now feeds its output into the human annotation flow. Everything else is capacity planning in Resourcing plus steady closing of mobile-to-desktop gaps.
◆ Where it's heading
The AI work is what changes Hive's shape. Buzz now decomposes multi-part requests into sub-tasks on its own while deliberately routing consequential actions back to the main conversation for review, and AI Proofing has moved from generating suggestions to promoting them into persistent annotations and checking whether earlier human feedback was actually addressed, with evidence and a confidence rating. Both are the same move: AI stepping from suggestion toward supervised execution inside surfaces teams already use. The resourcing and polish work is real but sits underneath that arc rather than driving it.
◆ Prediction
The 'consequential actions stay in the main conversation' framing implies the next question is what Buzz may do unattended, so explicit permission or approval controls are the likely follow-up. On the Resourcing side, the estimates grid is described as preceding committed scheduling, which points to a promotion path from estimate to assignment.
Alternatives to Memos and Hive
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 Memos or Hive.
Wiki.js
Wiki.js 2.x is in security-maintenance mode, and the feed has been quiet since May
Pydio Cells
Cells v5 rebuilt content and metadata, and the two releases since have gone straight into sync repair
ownCloud
After years on the 10.x maintenance line, ownCloud Classic is finally cutting 11.0.0 candidates
Avoma
Avoma's own product news hides inside a feed otherwise built for CRM comparison searches
Circle
Circle rebuilt itself around an AI that runs the community, not just answers in it
Recent activity from Memos and Hive
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 14h agoHiveAssign actions to sections on mobile
- 14h agoHivePlan resource estimates in a 13-week grid
- 14h agoHiveUse Buzz to delegate complex work ⚡
- 2d agoHiveView Scratch Pad notes in shared dashboards
- 2d agoHiveResize the name panel in Resourcing
- 2d agoHiveCleaner new-tab control in Hive Desktop
- 3d agoMemosEmbedded MCP endpoint, live SSE updates, and revocable share links ⚡
- 9d agoMemosMemos Web Clipper and a redesigned memo detail rail
- 15d agoMemosPrivate by default, CEL time filters, and a stateless MCP endpoint ⚡
- 3mo agoMemosMentions, voice recording, and Live Photo attachments
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between Memos and Hive?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. Hive is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 10.0 vs 7.5), with 1 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 2. See the at-a-glance table above for a side-by-side breakdown of velocity, recent sparks, and editorial themes.
Is Memos better than Hive?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. Hive is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 10.0 vs 7.5), with 1 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 2. For your specific use case, the alternatives sections above list other Collab products to evaluate alongside.
What are the best alternatives to Memos?
Top Memos alternatives in Collab are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "Memos alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/memos for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
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.