replacing Notion

Open Source Notion Alternatives

All-in-one workspace for notes, docs, wikis, and databases — Notion pricing: $10-$18/user/month. Below: 8 free, self-hostable open source projects that cover the same ground, ranked by real GitHub adoption.

There are 8 open source Notion alternatives tracked on this registry, against Notion pricing of $10-$18/user/month. The most-adopted is AppFlowy with 78,112 GitHub stars under AGPL-3.0, written in Dart. Together the set has 365,848 stars across 4 languages and 2 licences. All 8 are free to self-host with no licence fee, and 8 of 8 received a commit in the last 90 days. 8 head-to-head Notion comparisons are available.

Notion raised its prices again in 2024. The free plan limits workspaces to 1,000 blocks per member. Vendor lock-in is the deeper problem — your data lives in a proprietary format inside Notion's servers, and export is lossy. Teams that budgeted for Notion three years ago now pay significantly more for the same features.

Other hosted options

The open source projects below are free to self-host. If you would rather pay for a managed service, these are the hosted products in the same space — listed with the vendor's own pricing.

Our top 3 Notion alternatives

AppFlowy ★ 78K

AppFlowy is an open-source collaborative workspace platform that combines note-taking, project management, wikis, and AI features into a single interface. It runs as a desktop and mobile application and supports self-hosting, built with Flutter for the frontend and Rust for the backend. AppFlowy lives in the productivity and knowledge management ecosystem, positioned explicitly as a Notion alternative.

AGPL-3.0 · Dart · Notion vs AppFlowy →

Affine ★ 74K

AFFiNE is an open-source, privacy-first workspace that merges documentation, whiteboarding, and databases into one hyper-fused platform. It lives in the productivity and knowledge-management ecosystem, positioned as a direct alternative to Notion and Miro. Built with local-first principles, it ensures users retain full control of their data while supporting real-time collaboration across web and desktop clients.

NOASSERTION · TypeScript · Notion vs Affine →

Memos ★ 64K

Memos is an open-source, self-hosted note-taking tool designed for rapid capture of short-form content like daily logs, links, code snippets, and microblog-style entries. It lives in the Go ecosystem and uses a Markdown-native, timeline-based interface. Unlike traditional note apps that enforce folders or rigid templates, Memos prioritizes speed and simplicity: users write in Markdown, attach media, and save without selecting titles or locations.

MIT · Go · Notion vs Memos →

last updated nightly · ranking method: github stars, live-tracked

Frequently asked questions

What is the best open source alternative to Notion?

AppFlowy is the most-starred open source alternative to Notion in this registry, with 78,112 GitHub stars. 8 alternatives are compared here in total.

Are there free alternatives to Notion?

Yes. Every project listed on this page is open source and free to self-host — there is no licence fee. Some projects also sell a managed hosted version, but the self-hosted path costs nothing.

What should I look at when replacing Notion?

Compare licence terms, community size (stars), primary language and release activity. A fast-moving project with a compatible licence and an active maintainer base matters more than raw star count when you are committing to a migration.