AppFlowy

What AppFlowy does

AppFlowy is a workspace app in the mold of Notion: pages are written in a block editor, and databases can be shown as a grid, a board or a calendar, with filters, relations and rollups. Unlike most Notion alternatives it is not a web app first. It is written in Flutter and Rust and ships native apps for macOS, Windows and Linux, plus iOS and Android. On desktop you can create a local workspace that works without any account or server.

AI features can run against local or self-hosted models rather than only a cloud provider, which matters for people who do not want their notes sent to a third party. Pages can be published to the web, and an importer brings in content exported from Notion.

How open is AppFlowy

This is the most important thing to understand before choosing AppFlowy, and it has changed over time.

• The client in the public repository is AGPL-3.0, and that is what the GitHub figures on this page describe.
• The server, which handles sync, collaboration, the web app and self-hosting, is now closed source. The earlier open source server, AppFlowy-Cloud, is archived, and its README says both the managed cloud and self-hosted deployments run a commercial fork under a Commercial License Agreement.
• Development has partly moved private. The company says active Flutter development has been consolidated in private repositories and will be merged back into the public one later. Public commits on the main branch were sparse in 2026 while new releases kept coming, so recent app versions include code that is not yet public.

In practice, the open source part is a local, single-device app. Anything that involves sharing or syncing depends on proprietary software.

Self-hosting AppFlowy

Self-hosting uses AppFlowy’s prebuilt commercial Docker images and Compose configuration. The free self-hosted tier allows one user seat per instance plus up to three guest editors, with the web app, publishing and unlimited workspaces; more seats require a paid self-hosted plan. The archived AGPL server can still be used under its license, but it is unmaintained and may not work with newer apps.

Hosted version

AppFlowy’s managed cloud runs on AWS. The pricing page lists a free plan and paid plans per workspace member.

Limitations

Sync, collaboration and self-hosting all rely on closed-source server code, and the free self-hosted tier is limited to one full user. Because recent releases are ahead of the public source, the website describes features that you cannot necessarily build from the repository. If open source sync and team use are the reason you are leaving Notion, this is a significant gap.

Who it suits

AppFlowy suits individuals who want a Notion-like mix of documents and databases in a fast native app, used locally on one machine or with AppFlowy’s cloud, and who like the option of local AI models. Teams that need an open source server should compare AFFiNE, whose Community Edition server is self-hostable, or a wiki such as Docmost.