head to head
Notion vs Standard Notes
Standard Notes is the open source alternative to Notion — all-in-one workspace for notes, docs, wikis, and databases. Here is the honest comparison.
Yes — Standard Notes is a viable free replacement for Notion. Standard Notes is open source under AGPL-3.0, written in TypeScript, with 6,633 GitHub stars, 551 forks and 99 open issues; it was last pushed 10 hours ago. Notion costs from $10, while self-hosting Standard Notes 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. Standard Notes ranks #7 of 7 tracked open source Notion alternatives by stars. The tracked set, by adoption: AppFlowy (76,797 stars), Affine (72,715 stars), Memos (63,129 stars), SiYuan (46,409 stars), Logseq (44,955 stars), Outline (40,590 stars). Replacement criteria on this page: 4 reasons to move to Standard Notes and 3 reasons to stay on Notion.
choose Standard Notes 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
| Standard Notes (open source) | Notion | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free (self-hosted) | $10-$18/user/month |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Proprietary |
| Source code | Public, auditable | Closed |
| Self-hosting | Yes — standardnotes/app | Cloud only |
| Data ownership | Your server, your format | Vendor's cloud |
| Community | ★ 6.6K · ⑂ 551 | — |
| Built with | TypeScript | — |
Why people look for a Notion alternative
About Standard Notes
Standard Notes is an end to end encrypted note taking application for individuals and professionals who want to capture notes, files, and long term work in a place only they can read, with clients on Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS, Android, and the web.
read the full Standard Notes overview →
Other open source alternatives to Notion
last updated nightly · ranking method: github stars, live-tracked
Frequently asked questions
Is Standard Notes a good replacement for Notion?
Standard Notes 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 AGPL-3.0, with 6,633 GitHub stars.
Is Standard Notes free compared to Notion?
Yes. Standard Notes 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 Standard Notes?
Migration effort depends on the data formats involved. Check Standard Notes's documentation for import options, and compare the feature table above to confirm the capabilities you depend on are covered before switching.