I have used Notion, Obsidian, and Evernote over the years, sometimes paid, sometimes not, and the one thing I kept wanting was a single tool that did not punish me for switching. Notion wants you inside its database. Obsidian wants you inside its local vault (a folder of plain Markdown files on your own disk). Evernote wants you inside its walled garden and a subscription. AppFlowy, which is what I want to talk about, is the first open-source piece of kit I have used that tries to copy Notion’s full surface area without locking anything down.
AppFlowy is a Notion-style workspace (a single app that holds documents, databases, calendars, and Kanban boards) written in Rust and Flutter (a cross-platform UI framework that compiles the same code to desktop and mobile). I installed the 0.9.x build on a fresh Ubuntu 24.04 box and a Mac mini, then used it for two weeks as the place where I keep my daily notes, my client project tracker, and a small reading list database. Here is what I found.
Why I gave it a real shot this time
I tried AppFlowy in 2023 and bounced off. The mobile app crashed when I added a database row, the sync was slow, and the whole thing felt like a tech demo. By 2026 the situation is different. The desktop build is stable on both Linux and macOS, the local-first architecture (your data lives on your device first, and only syncs when you tell it to) is real, and the self-host option has matured enough that I am running AppFlowy on a small container in my own network.
What pulled me back in was the data model. Notion treats every page as a tree of blocks (small typed chunks such as a paragraph, a heading, a database row, or a checkbox). AppFlowy does the same thing, but the storage layer is open and you can dump the whole workspace to a folder of JSON files. If AppFlowy the company disappeared tomorrow, my data would still be a directory of files I could open in a text editor. That alone is a reason to care.
The feature set has also closed the gap. Page nesting, slash commands, multi-view databases (the same data shown as a table, a Kanban board, a calendar, or a grid), inline math, code blocks with syntax highlighting, AI hooks that can call a local LLM (large language model, a generative text model you can run on your own machine) instead of an OpenAI key. None of that is unique, but having it in one open-source package is still rare.
What it actually does well
The thing that impressed me first was the database ergonomics. I have used Notion databases for years and the AppFlowy version is roughly 80 percent of the way there. You create a database, pick the property types, and then you can view the same data as a table, a board, a calendar, a grid, or a gallery. Filters and sorts are functional. Linked databases work, including rollups (a database view that pulls a value from a related database, like “sum of hours from all tasks tagged ‘review'”).
Local-first storage is the headline feature and it is not marketing. When I open AppFlowy on my Mac, the entire workspace loads in under a second. There is no spinner waiting for a server in another country. Sync only matters if I switch devices, and even then the conflict resolution is the simple last-write-wins kind that works for solo use.
The community-built plugin set is small but useful. I installed a Markdown importer, a Kanban swimlane view, a CSV exporter, and a local LLM connector in about ten minutes. The plugin store is not Notion’s marketplace, but the open plugin spec means I can read the source of every plugin I install, which matters when you are running this on a work machine.
Self-hosting is the other big differentiator. I run AppFlowy Cloud in a container on a small VPS (virtual private server, a rented Linux box you control end-to-end), pointed my desktop app at it, and that was the whole setup. No DNS dance, no reverse proxy (a web server in front of the app that handles HTTPS and forwards traffic) for the first week. The official Docker compose file works on the first try if you have ever touched Docker before.
Where it falls short
The mobile experience is still the weak point. The iOS and Android apps work, but they feel like a port rather than a designed-for-touch experience. Database editing on a phone is fiddly. If you live in your phone’s notes app the way some of my clients do, this will frustrate you.
Real-time collaboration is functional but not great. Two people editing the same page at the same time works, but cursor positions jump and there is no rich presence indicator (a small avatar or label showing where other editors are currently working). For a solo writer like me this does not matter. For a team of three or more, Notion is still the smoother experience.
Search is the other rough edge. The desktop search misses things it should not, and the global command bar is slow once your workspace passes a few hundred pages. I keep a parallel grep (a command-line search tool that scans files for matching text) workflow in my terminal for the moment when AppFlowy cannot find the page I am looking for.
Trade-offs
AppFlowy is not free in time. The first week is a learning curve if you are coming from Obsidian (a different mental model, different keyboard shortcuts, different slash menu). The mobile app eats battery faster than Apple’s Notes does. The local-first architecture means there is no off-site backup by default; you have to set up sync to a real server if you want disaster recovery, and the self-host docs assume you already know Docker and HTTPS.
For a solo user who wants Notion’s surface area without the cloud lock-in, the math is clean. For a team of five or more that needs polished real-time editing, the math is not there yet. The plugin set is growing, but it is not at the level where a dropped project means you are stuck.
What I would tell past me
If I could send a message back to the version of me that installed AppFlowy in 2023, I would say three things.
- Wait until the 0.9 series. The 0.5 builds were a different product in terms of stability. The current line is the one worth betting on.
- Self-host from day one. The hosted AppFlowy cloud is fine, but self-hosting is the whole point. Spinning up the Docker container takes fifteen minutes and gives you the data-portability promise for real.
- Keep Obsidian as a vault, not a workspace. Obsidian is the right tool for a personal knowledge graph (a network of notes linked together with bidirectional links). AppFlowy is the right tool for project databases and team-facing docs. I tried to make Obsidian do both and it never quite worked.
- Back up the AppFlowy data folder separately. The local-first storage is great, but a bare-metal restore of the host is still on you. I have a weekly rsync of the AppFlowy data directory to the same encrypted cloud bucket that holds the rest of my files.
AppFlowy will not replace Notion for everyone. If you need polished mobile apps, real-time team editing, and a marketplace full of integrations, Notion still earns its money. If you want a Notion-shaped workspace that you own, on hardware you control, with no subscription attached, AppFlowy is the closest open-source answer I have found in 2026.