Design and diagrams
MindMeister alternatives
2 open-source projects that already do this job. Free to use - not free to run, which is what the numbers on the right are for.
The projects
freeplane/freeplane★4,275 GitHub starsGPL-2.0 licenceA fully featured desktop application for creating, editing, and organizing mind maps and knowledge structures.Open on GitHub ↗wanglin2/mind-map★12,568 GitHub starsMIT licenceA browser-based interactive mind mapping application supporting node creation, editing, and visual layout.Open on GitHub ↗
What you give up either way
- Real-time multi-user collaboration and presence
- Enterprise features: SAML SSO, ISO 27001 compliance, compliance exports/backups
- Hosted-in-Germany data residency and managed hosting guarantees
- Mobile first-class apps and polished integrations (MS Teams, Google Drive, MeisterTask)
- Meister AI map generation from prompts and file uploads
An open-source project doing the core job proves a replacement is possible. It does not prove it matches MindMeister, and it does not prove anyone has run it for a month. How we decide.