AppFlowy vs Obsidian
AppFlowy and Obsidian are both note-taking software. AppFlowy is open source under AGPL-3.0, with 78k GitHub stars. Obsidian is a commercial product from Dynalist Inc.
Which to pick
- Pick AppFlowy when
- You want a Notion alternative that keeps data local or on your own server.
- 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 Notion-style workspace for documents, wikis, databases, kanban boards and AI features, with desktop and mobile apps and optional self-hosted sync.
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, AGPL licensed, and self-hosted cloud sync is more involved than the app.
Closed source, sync and publishing are paid add-ons, and team collaboration is weak.
Usable
Production-ready
Desktop app, mobile app, self-hosted server and cloud service
Desktop app and mobile app
Dart, Flutter and Rust
Electron and Markdown
Open source, AGPL-3.0 (network copyleft)
Closed source, sold by Dynalist Inc.
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
6.2k 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.