Open source alternatives to Notion

What Notion does

Notion is a hosted workspace built from blocks. Pages hold text, media and embedded content, and databases can be shown as tables, boards, calendars and other views, with custom properties, subtasks and dependencies. Individuals use it for notes and planning, and teams use it as a wiki, project tracker and document hub with teamspaces, permission groups and guests. Pages can be published to the web, forms collect responses into databases, and Notion AI, AI meeting notes and agents sit on the higher plans. Plans run from Free through Plus and Business to Enterprise.

Why people look for an alternative

• Where the data lives. Notion is hosted only. Workspace data is stored in the United States on AWS by default, and choosing another region is offered only on the Enterprise plan; even then, account and usage data may be stored outside that region.
• History and limits by plan. Page history covers 7 days on Free, 30 on Plus and 90 on Business, with unlimited history only on Enterprise. SSO, SCIM provisioning and audit logs are on Business or Enterprise plans.
• Offline use. Offline access works on the desktop and mobile apps, but on lower plans pages must be marked for offline use one by one on each device, and only the first 50 rows of a downloaded database are available offline unless you download more rows individually.
• Export details. Notion exports Markdown and CSV, HTML or PDF, which is useful for backups, but some blocks such as callouts export as HTML rather than Markdown, and bulk PDF export of nested pages needs a Business or Enterprise plan.

What to compare in an alternative

1. Databases. AppFlowy offers grid, board and calendar views with relations and rollups. AFFiNE’s databases have table and kanban views, with more views planned.
2. Beyond documents. AFFiNE adds an infinite whiteboard to every document, which also makes it an alternative to Miro.
3. Importing from Notion. AppFlowy imports Notion content. Docmost, a team wiki, imports Notion exports in its free edition, though it has no databases there.
4. How open the server is. AFFiNE’s Community Edition server can be self-hosted with Docker, but self-hosted workspaces are capped at 10 seats without a paid license. AppFlowy’s current server is closed source, and its free self-hosted tier allows one user.
5. Apps and offline use. Both have native desktop and mobile apps and work locally without a server.

Which one to choose

AFFiNE is the most complete open source replacement for a small team: documents, whiteboards and databases in one place, apps on every platform and a self-hostable server, within its 10-seat limit. AppFlowy has the richer database views and fast native apps with support for local AI models, and suits individuals using it locally or with AppFlowy’s cloud; its server is no longer open source. If your team mainly uses Notion as a wiki, a documentation tool such as Docmost may fit better. The notes and knowledge base guide compares the wider category.