head to head
Notion vs AppFlowy
AppFlowy is the open source alternative to Notion — all-in-one workspace for notes, docs, wikis, and databases. Here is the honest comparison.
Yes — AppFlowy is a viable free replacement for Notion. AppFlowy is open source under AGPL-3.0, written in Dart, with 76,797 GitHub stars, 6,023 forks and 1,030 open issues; it was last pushed 2 days ago. Notion costs from $10, while self-hosting AppFlowy 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 Affine at 72,715 stars. AppFlowy ranks #1 of 7 tracked open source Notion alternatives by stars. The tracked set, by adoption: Affine (72,715 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 AppFlowy and 3 reasons to stay on Notion.
choose AppFlowy 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
| AppFlowy (open source) | Notion | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free (self-hosted) | $10-$18/user/month |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Proprietary |
| Source code | Public, auditable | Closed |
| Self-hosting | Yes — appflowy-io/appflowy | Cloud only |
| Data ownership | Your server, your format | Vendor's cloud |
| Community | ★ 77K · ⑂ 6.0K | — |
| Built with | Dart | — |
Why people look for a Notion alternative
About AppFlowy
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.
read the full AppFlowy overview →
Other open source alternatives to Notion
last updated nightly · ranking method: github stars, live-tracked
Frequently asked questions
Is AppFlowy a good replacement for Notion?
AppFlowy is an open source alternative to Notion (All-in-one workspace for notes, docs, wikis, and databases). It is written in Dart and licensed under AGPL-3.0, with 76,797 GitHub stars.
Is AppFlowy free compared to Notion?
Yes. AppFlowy 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 AppFlowy?
Migration effort depends on the data formats involved. Check AppFlowy's documentation for import options, and compare the feature table above to confirm the capabilities you depend on are covered before switching.