Looking for an open-source alternative to Notion?
Welcome to your guide through the most capable, privacy-respecting, and flexible options in the productivity world. Whether you're building a team wiki, managing projects, organizing notes, or powering up your second brain, these open tools offer a better way, without the vendor lock-in. Here's a closer look at the most promising open-source Notion replacements you can explore today.
Appflowy
AppFlowy puts control back in your hands.
This platform offers a modern workspace that combines documents, databases, and tasks, but with a deep respect for your privacy. With local-first AI options, seamless mobile experiences, and full offline functionality, AppFlowy adapts to you instead of the other way around. Whether you're running personal planning or managing teams, it's a powerful digital companion built around flexibility, collaboration, and data ownership.
AFFINE
AFFiNE is where creativity meets structure.
Edgeless by design, this tool blends documents, whiteboards, and project boards into a unified, infinitely flexible canvas. Imagine a workspace where text, drawings, slides, and mind maps coexist without artificial boundaries. With built-in AI support and full self-hosting capabilities, AFFiNE isn’t just a Notion replacement, it’s a new OS for your ideas, grounded in open source values and extensibility.
Joplin
Joplin focuses on one thing: your notes, your way.
Offline-first, Markdown-powered, and totally private. Joplin provides a simple yet powerful environment for capturing, organizing, and syncing your ideas. No fluff, just real functionality. With encryption, web clipping, and plugin support, it’s a perfect home for those who want a note-taking app that doesn't spy on them.
Logseq
Logseq turns daily thoughts into lifelong knowledge.
Built on outliners and backlinks, Logseq helps you connect information like never before. It supports flashcards, PDFs, and even whiteboards, making it ideal for thinkers, students, researchers, and note-takers who prefer flexibility and structure. With everything stored locally in plain text, Logseq respects your data and grows with your knowledge graph.
Focalboard
Focalboard brings order to your tasks.
Think of it as Trello-meets-Notion, but on your own terms. Boards, filters, views, it’s all there. And because it’s self-hosted and open source, you’re in full control. Ideal for teams who want a unified place to manage goals, milestones, and tasks without being tied to a subscription model.
Huly
Huly is the Swiss army knife of team platforms.
Project planning, chat, CRM, even HR and ATS, Huly is an ambitious all-in-one suite for businesses that want one tool to rule them all. Real-time updates, time blocking, and virtual office spaces make collaboration feel natural and efficient. It’s everything from Jira to Slack in one open-source system, with full support for self-hosting and privacy.
Docmost
Docmost makes documentation a team sport.
Built for collaboration, Docmost brings a Notion-style editor to wikis and knowledge bases, with live co-editing, integrated diagrams, permissions, and structured Spaces. Whether you're writing technical docs or internal handbooks, it's a powerful alternative that doesn’t nickel-and-dime you on seats or restrict your access.
Notesnook
Notesnook offers true private journaling.
This is the zero-tracker, zero-compromise notebook. End-to-end encrypted, fully cross-platform, and loaded with features like bidirectional links and web clipping, Notesnook makes privacy the default. It's a note-taking space where your thoughts stay entirely yours, no ads, no clouds, no nonsense.
Reor
Reor turns your notes into a thinking partner.
With local AI, semantic search, and automatic idea linking, Reor doesn’t just store your notes, it helps you make sense of them. You write, it connects. And with everything running locally, your digital brain stays truly personal. Reor redefines what it means to “manage knowledge.”
Leantime
Leantime is not your typical project management tool, and that’s by design. While most platforms are built with trained project managers in mind, Leantime takes a different route. It’s open source, and it’s crafted specifically for people who manage projects without wearing the official title—startup founders, product people, team leads juggling multiple roles.
These tools may differ in focus, some lean toward project management, others toward ideation or documentation, but they all share one powerful philosophy: you should own your data, your workflow, and your ideas.