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Open-source alternatives · curated shortlist

Open-source alternatives
to Notion.

The closest open-source alternatives to Notion are AppFlowy, AFFiNE, and Outline. AppFlowy and AFFiNE add whiteboards and AI alongside docs; Outline is the fastest pure team wiki. All three are self-hostable, so your company knowledge stays on your infrastructure.

Teams leave Notion over per-seat costs at scale, offline access, and data residency — company knowledge is sensitive, and self-hosting keeps it in-house. The tradeoff is giving up Notion's polish and integrations; AppFlowy and AFFiNE close most of the gap.

#ProjectStarsLicenseStack
1AppFlowyDocs, wikis, and projects with AI; most-starred option.78.8KAGPL-3.0Dart
2AFFiNEDocs plus whiteboard on one page; local-first.74.5Kundeclared — verifyTypeScript
3outlineFastest team wiki; cleanest Notion-like writing experience.41.2Kundeclared — verifyTypeScript

Ranks and stars from the live chart · updated Nov 12, 2026 · full wiki ranking →

Quick answers

Is there a free alternative to Notion?
Yes. AppFlowy, AFFiNE, outline are all open-source alternatives to Notion with no license fees — you pay only for hosting. Differences are in maturity, features, and implementation effort, compared below.
Can I self-host a Notion alternative?
Yes — every option on this page is self-hostable. Deployment ranges from one-command Docker to managed setup; check each project's docs for requirements.
How were these Notion alternatives chosen?
From the live Open-Source Knowledge Bases & Wikis, Ranked by GitHub Stars ranking, shortlisted by human curation. Rankings on maal.top are never sold. See the full chart for the complete list.