AppFlowy vs Notion
AppFlowy and Notion are both note-taking software. AppFlowy is open source under AGPL-3.0, with 78k GitHub stars. Notion is a commercial product from Notion Labs.
Which to pick
- Pick AppFlowy when
- You want a Notion alternative that keeps data local or on your own server.
- Pick Notion when
- A small or mid-size team wants one flexible tool for docs, wiki and light project tracking.
Side by side
A Notion-style workspace for documents, wikis, databases, kanban boards and AI features, with desktop and mobile apps and optional self-hosted sync.
A workspace of pages and databases for notes, wikis, project tracking and docs, with AI search and agents built in.
Still pre-1.0, AGPL licensed, and self-hosted cloud sync is more involved than the app.
Cloud only, slow on large workspaces, offline support is limited, and its flexibility leads to messy structures.
Usable
Production-ready
Desktop app, mobile app, self-hosted server and cloud service
Cloud service, desktop app and mobile app
Dart, Flutter and Rust
Not published
Open source, AGPL-3.0 (network copyleft)
Closed source, sold by Notion Labs
Use inside your business is unrestricted. If you change it and let customers use it over the internet, you must publish your changes.
Closed source: you use it under the maker's terms and cannot change or resell the code.
78k GitHub stars
4.1k Wikipedia readers a month on phones
Established: started 5 years ago, latest release 0.15.0.
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.