[opensourcedex]

Affine is a free, open source design & visualization project written in TypeScript and released under a custom open-source licence. It has 72,715 GitHub stars, 5,283 forks and 732 open issues, and was last pushed 3 days ago. On this registry it ranks #2 of 7 tracked projects in Design & Visualization, and is listed as an open source replacement for 2 paid products, with 5 head-to-head comparisons available. It gained 221 stars over the last 6 tracked days.

Affine — Docs, whiteboards, and databases in one privacy-first workspace

What is Affine?

What it is

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.

The project solves the fragmentation problem where teams must juggle separate tools for notes (Notion), visual collaboration (Miro), and structured data (Airtable). AFFiNE unifies these workflows—allowing rich text, databases, sticky notes, shapes, embedded pages, and slides to coexist on a single edgeless canvas—without locking users into proprietary formats or cloud-only operation.

Key capabilities

  • Edgeless canvas that accepts any block type: rich text, databases, sticky notes, shapes, embedded web pages, linked pages, and slides
  • Multimodal AI assistant for generating reports, slides, mind maps, task plans, and even app prototypes from natural-language prompts
  • Local-first architecture with optional real-time sync and offline-first collaboration on web and cross-platform (Electron) clients
  • Full self-hosting support using Docker, with configurable backends for storage, database, and SMTP
  • Extensible block system via Blocksuite, enabling third-party blocks and plugin development

Who uses it and how

  • Knowledge workers and teams building internal wikis, project documentation, or product roadmaps using integrated docs, databases, and visual planning
  • Designers and product managers conducting brainstorming or wireframing sessions on the canvas with real-time co-editing
  • Privacy-conscious organizations self-hosting AFFiNE on-premises or in private clouds to avoid third-party data processing

Getting started

Install via Docker (toeverything/affine:latest), download prebuilt desktop binaries for macOS, Windows, or Linux, or use the official hosted version at affine.pro. Self-hosting requires PostgreSQL, MinIO or S3-compatible storage, and optional SMTP for email notifications.

When to use it — and when not to

AFFiNE replaces Notion and Miro where data sovereignty and open extensibility matter, but it demands more operational overhead than hosted alternatives. It is ideal for teams comfortable managing infrastructure (PostgreSQL, object storage, reverse proxy) and valuing local-first control. Avoid if you need zero-configuration setup, vendor-managed SLAs, or deep integration with proprietary enterprise ecosystems like Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace.

project readme (upstream, from github) — read inline

AFFiNE.Pro
Write, Draw and Plan All at Once

affine logo

A privacy-focused, local-first, open-source, and ready-to-use alternative for Notion & Miro.
One hyper-fused platform for wildly creative minds.



AFFiNE - One app for all - Where Notion meets Miro | Product Hunt

Home Page | Discord | Live Demo | Blog | Documentation


Releases ![All Contributors][all-contributors-badge] ![TypeScript-version-icon]


Docs, canvas and tables are hyper-merged with AFFiNE - just like the word affine (əˈfʌɪn | a-fine).


Getting started & staying tuned with us.

Star us, and you will receive all release notifications from GitHub without any delay!

What is AFFiNE

AFFiNE is an open-source, all-in-one workspace and an operating system for all the building blocks that assemble your knowledge base and much more -- wiki, knowledge management, presentation and digital assets. It's a better alternative to Notion and Miro.

Features

A true canvas for blocks in any form. Docs and whiteboard are now fully merged.

  • Many editor apps claim to be a canvas for productivity, but AFFiNE is one of the very few which allows you to put any building block on an edgeless canvas -- rich text, sticky notes, any embedded web pages, multi-view databases, linked pages, shapes and even slides. We have it all.

Multimodal AI partner ready to kick in any work

  • Write up professional work report? Turn an outline into expressive and presentable slides? Summary an article into a well-structured mindmap? Sorting your job plan and backlog for tasks? Or... draw and code prototype apps and web pages directly all with one prompt? With you, AFFiNE AI pushes your creativity to the edge of your imagination, just like Canvas AI to generate mind map for brainstorming.

Local-first & Real-time collaborative

  • We love the idea of local-first that you always own your data on your disk, in spite of the cloud. Furthermore, AFFiNE supports real-time sync and collaborations on web and cross-platform clients.

Self-host & Shape your own AFFiNE

  • You have the freedom to manage, self-host, fork and build your own AFFiNE. Plugin community and third-party blocks are coming soon. More tractions on Blocksuite. Check there to learn how to self-host AFFiNE.

Acknowledgement

“We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us”. A lot of pioneers have inspired us along the way, e.g.:

  • Quip & Notion with their great concept of “everything is a block”
  • Trello with their Kanban
  • Airtable & Miro with their no-code programmable datasheets
  • Miro & Whimiscal with their edgeless visual whiteboard
  • Remote & Capacities with their object-based tag system

There is a large overlap of their atomic “building blocks” between these apps. They are not open source, nor do they have a plugin system like Vscode for contributors to customize. We want to have something that contains all the features we love and also goes one step even further.

Thanks for checking us out, we appreciate your interest and sincerely hope that AFFiNE resonates with you! 🎵 Checking https://affine.pro/ for more details ions.

Contributing

Bug Reports Feature Requests Questions/Discussions AFFiNE Community
Create a bug report Submit a feature request Check GitHub Discussion Visit the AFFiNE's Discord
Something isn't working as expected An idea for a new feature, or improvements Discuss and ask questions A place to ask, learn and engage with others

Calling all developers, testers, tech writers and more! Contributions of all types are more than welcome, you can read more in docs/types-of-contributions.md. If you are interested in contributing code, read our docs/CONTRIBUTING.md and feel free to check out our GitHub issues to get stuck in to show us what you’re made of.

Before you start contributing, please sign our [Contributor License Agreement] — it takes less than a minute with your GitHub account. Pull requests cannot be merged until every committer has signed (the license/cla check on your PR). Full text: CLA.md.

For bug reports, feature requests and other suggestions you can also create a new issue and choose the most appropriate template for your feedback.

For translation and language support you can visit our Discord.

If you have questions, you are welcome to contact us. One of the best places to get more info and learn more is in the Discord where you can engage with other like-minded individuals.

Templates

AFFiNE now provides pre-built templates from our team. Following are the Top 10 most popular templates among AFFiNE users,if you want to contribute, you can contribute your own template so other people can use it too.

Blog

Welcome to the AFFiNE blog section! Her

readme truncated — read the full docs on github

Frequently asked questions

Is Affine free to use?

Affine is open source. There is no licence fee and no seat count — you can self-host it or, where the project offers one, pay a vendor for a managed version instead.

What does Affine do?

Docs, whiteboards, and databases in one privacy-first workspace

What is Affine written in?

Affine is primarily written in TypeScript. Its source is publicly available at https://github.com/toeverything/AFFiNE, and it has 72,715 GitHub stars.

What is a good open source alternative to Miro?

Affine is one of the open source options listed as an alternative to Miro, Notion. Compare licences, stars and activity side by side on the Affine profile.