AFFiNE vs Obsidian
AFFiNE and Obsidian are both note-taking software. AFFiNE is open source under a license set out in its repository, with 74k GitHub stars. Obsidian is a commercial product from Dynalist Inc.
Which to pick
- Pick AFFiNE when
- You want an open alternative to Notion that also does visual whiteboarding and can run offline.
- Pick Obsidian when
- You want notes as plain files you own, work offline, and are happy to tune your setup with plugins.
Side by side
A workspace combining Notion-style documents and Miro-style whiteboards on the same content, local-first with sync and self-hosting.
A note-taking app that stores notes as Markdown files in a local folder, with linking, a graph view and a large plugin ecosystem.
Still pre-1.0, the license is not a standard open-source one, and self-hosted sync lags the cloud version.
Closed source, sync and publishing are paid add-ons, and team collaboration is weak.
Usable
Production-ready
Desktop app, self-hosted server, cloud service and mobile app
Desktop app and mobile app
TypeScript, Rust, Electron and Swift
Electron and Markdown
Open source, license unclear on GitHub
Closed source, sold by Dynalist Inc.
GitHub could not read the license. Check it in the repository before reusing any code.
Closed source: you use it under the maker's terms and cannot change or resell the code.
74k GitHub stars
6.2k Wikipedia readers a month on phones
Established: started 4 years ago, latest release v0.27.4.
Not known
Other comparisons
More note-taking apps
Both sides were judged on 2026-11-03 from makers' descriptions, Wikipedia, READMEs and GitHub data. License, age and popularity lines are worked out directly.