TiddlyWiki is a free, open-source single-file personal wiki for non-linear note-taking. See features, pricing, pros, cons, and use cases.
TiddlyWiki is a free, open-source personal wiki created by developer Jeremy Ruston and first released on September 20, 2004. It was built as a non-linear personal notebook, inspired by Ward Cunningham's original WikiWikiWeb, with the goal of letting people capture, organize, and interlink complex information without relying on a server, database, or cloud account.
The defining trait of TiddlyWiki is that its entire application, including content, interface, and logic, can live inside a single, self-contained HTML file. Users can open that file directly in a web browser, edit it in place, and save it back to disk, making the tool fully portable, offline-capable, and free of external dependencies.
TiddlyWiki 5, released in 2013, remains actively maintained by Ruston and a long-running open-source community. It extended the original concept with a plugin architecture, customizable theming, and an optional Node.js server mode for filesystem-based storage and more advanced, multi-user configurations.
Content in TiddlyWiki is broken into small, atomic units called tiddlers, which can be freely tagged, cross-linked, and transcluded into other tiddlers, enabling a genuinely non-linear way of structuring notes rather than a rigid folder or notebook hierarchy.
The platform supports a powerful filtering and querying system for surfacing and organizing tiddlers dynamically, along with macros and templating tools that let advanced users build custom layouts, dashboards, and interactive views entirely within the wiki itself.
TiddlyWiki's plugin ecosystem extends its core functionality with new rendering engines, themes, syncing adapters, and automation tools, while the optional Node.js server mode allows filesystem-based storage and multi-user or server-hosted deployments beyond the single-file model.
TiddlyWiki is completely free and open source, with no subscription, license fee, or account requirement of any kind. Anyone can download the single HTML file or run the Node.js version at no cost.
Because it is a community-maintained open-source project rather than a commercial company, there are no paid tiers, enterprise plans, or vendor support contracts; support instead comes from community documentation, forums, and the plugin ecosystem.
TiddlyWiki is a free, open-source personal wiki that runs as a single self-contained HTML file for organizing non-linear notes called tiddlers.
TiddlyWiki was created by British software developer Jeremy Ruston and first released on September 20, 2004.
Yes, TiddlyWiki is completely free and open source with no subscription or paid tiers.
No, TiddlyWiki works fully offline since the entire application can run from a local HTML file.
A tiddler is the atomic unit of content in TiddlyWiki, a small, taggable, linkable piece of information that can be combined with other tiddlers.
TiddlyWiki does not include built-in cloud sync by default, but users can set up syncing manually or through third-party plugins and services.
TiddlyWiki is free, open source, and file-based with no company behind it, while Notion and Obsidian are commercial products with cloud accounts and different pricing models.
Yes, TiddlyWiki 5, released in 2013, is actively maintained by its creator and a long-running open-source community.