AFFiNE vs AppFlowy

Last reviewed Aug 26, 2026 · 589 words

Peel the "Notion alternative" sticker off both and two different products emerge. AFFiNE (71,881 stars, MIT) is a canvas that also does documents: its edgeless mode lets you scatter pages, drawings, and database blocks across an infinite whiteboard, which is why its catalogue entry lists Miro alongside Notion as what it replaces. AppFlowy (75,954 stars, AGPL-3.0) is a faithful Notion rebuild: blocks, databases, and wikis in native apps written in Dart with Flutter, shipping on desktop and mobile. Both are local-first, both landed in 2021–2022, both want about 1 GB of RAM self-hosted, and both are rated Medium — with the same honest asterisk that self-hosted sync is the youngest part of each.

The whiteboard is AFFiNE's whole argument

In AFFiNE the document and the whiteboard are one surface. A page can flip into edgeless mode, a diagram can hold live database blocks, and planning sessions that would otherwise sprawl across Notion plus Miro plus a drawing tool happen in one workspace with real-time collaboration. If your work is visual — architecture sketches, mood boards, mapping a project before it becomes tasks — this is the feature nothing else in the notes category matches. The costs are stated plainly in its own catalogue entry: it is resource intensive for what looks like a notes app, self-hosting is still maturing, and Docker is the only supported deployment route.

AppFlowy travels better

AppFlowy's bet is that people leave Notion for privacy and offline reliability, not for lack of a whiteboard — so it concentrates on doing Notion's core well everywhere. The desktop and mobile apps run fully local with no server at all, which means you can adopt it today and defer self-hosting entirely. When you want sync and collaboration, the self-hostable backend (AppFlowy Cloud) provides it, with the caveat that it is the newer, rougher half of the project. For a phone-first note-taker, working mobile apps are not a detail; they are the difference between a system you use and one you admire from your desk.

Neither is a finished Notion yet

Shared honesty helps here: both projects describe themselves as still maturing, and it shows in different places — AFFiNE in the operational weight of its server, AppFlowy in gaps between its local experience and its synced one. Migrating means exporting from Notion and accepting imperfect fidelity on complex databases in either tool. If your actual need is a small, dependable place for notes rather than a workspace platform, something simpler may serve better — the AppFlowy vs Memos comparison draws that line, and notes apps you own surveys the field.

Decision table

What I'd do

Start with AppFlowy, and start local-only: install the desktop and mobile apps, import your Notion export, and live with it for two weeks before deciding whether to stand up the sync backend. It covers what most Notion refugees actually use, and the deferred-server path is the gentlest on-ramp in this category. Choose AFFiNE instead only if the whiteboard is a genuine daily tool for you — for visual thinkers it is the better product, and for everyone else it is extra weight.