head to head
Notion vs Affine
Affine is the open source alternative to Notion — all-in-one workspace for notes, docs, wikis, and databases. Here is the honest comparison.
Yes — Affine is a viable free replacement for Notion. Affine is open source under its own open-source terms, written in TypeScript, with 72,715 GitHub stars, 5,283 forks and 732 open issues; it was last pushed 3 days ago. Notion costs from $10, while self-hosting Affine carries no licence fee — the trade is your operational time instead of a subscription. 6 other open source Notion alternatives are tracked here, led by AppFlowy at 76,797 stars. Affine ranks #2 of 7 tracked open source Notion alternatives by stars. The tracked set, by adoption: AppFlowy (76,797 stars), Memos (63,129 stars), SiYuan (46,409 stars), Logseq (44,955 stars), Outline (40,590 stars), AnyType (8,828 stars). Replacement criteria on this page: 4 reasons to move to Affine and 3 reasons to stay on Notion.
choose Affine if
- Your Notion bill is growing with seats or usage
- You need your data in a format and server you control
- Your compliance posture requires auditing the code that touches sensitive data
- You have (or can rent) a server and basic Docker comfort
stick with Notion if
- You need the polished onboarding and support SLAs of a commercial vendor
- Your team has zero capacity to operate software, even self-hosted-simple
- You depend on a Notion integration ecosystem that the OSS alternatives have not replicated
Side by side
| Affine (open source) | Notion | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free (self-hosted) | $10-$18/user/month |
| License | Custom / other | Proprietary |
| Source code | Public, auditable | Closed |
| Self-hosting | Yes — toeverything/AFFiNE | Cloud only |
| Data ownership | Your server, your format | Vendor's cloud |
| Community | ★ 73K · ⑂ 5.3K | — |
| Built with | TypeScript | — |
Why people look for a Notion alternative
About Affine
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.
read the full Affine overview →
Other open source alternatives to Notion
last updated nightly · ranking method: github stars, live-tracked
Frequently asked questions
Is Affine a good replacement for Notion?
Affine is an open source alternative to Notion (All-in-one workspace for notes, docs, wikis, and databases). It is written in TypeScript and licensed under its own terms, with 72,715 GitHub stars.
Is Affine free compared to Notion?
Yes. Affine is open source — there is no licence fee, and you can self-host it. Notion is typically a paid subscription, so the trade-off is licence cost against the operational work of running it yourself.
How do I migrate from Notion to Affine?
Migration effort depends on the data formats involved. Check Affine's documentation for import options, and compare the feature table above to confirm the capabilities you depend on are covered before switching.