Self-hosted alternatives to Notion
Notion is a lovely tool with two problems that grow with you: your notes, docs and databases live on someone else's servers, and the price climbs as your team and history do. If your second brain — or your company's wiki — matters enough to keep, it matters enough to own. Here are the self-hosted Notion alternatives actually worth running in 2026.
We run these for customers, so this isn't a spec-sheet round-up copied off marketing pages. It's the honest version: what each one is genuinely good at, and where it isn't Notion.
AFFiNE — the all-in-one canvas
AFFiNE is the closest in spirit to Notion's "one app for everything" pitch, and then it goes further. Docs, whiteboards and databases live in the same space — and crucially, it lets you flip the same content between a document (edgeless) view and a freeform canvas. If the whiteboard-plus-docs combination is what you liked about Notion (and missed in plainer wikis), AFFiNE is the one to try first.
- Docs, canvas and databases in one place, with a genuinely modern editor.
- Local-first leanings — it's built to keep working with your data close, not stranded behind a spinner.
- Actively developed and moving quickly.
Pick AFFiNE if: you want the full Notion-style canvas experience, self-hosted.
Docmost — the team wiki that just works
Docmost is what you reach for when the job is a real wiki and documentation base for a team, not a personal everything-app. Spaces, nested pages, permissions, real-time collaboration, comments — the boring-in-a-good-way features that make a shared knowledge base actually usable at work.
- Clean, focused documentation and wiki experience.
- Real collaboration — multiple people, permissions, comments.
- Organized by spaces, which maps neatly onto teams and projects.
Pick Docmost if: you want a shared team wiki and documentation home, minus the sprawl.
Trilium — the power user's knowledge base
Trilium (the community-maintained TriliumNext) is a different animal, aimed squarely at the person building a serious personal knowledge base. Deeply nested notes, powerful linking, scripting and relations — it will do things Notion simply can't, at the cost of a steeper learning curve and a less "designed" feel.
- Hierarchical notes with strong linking and relations.
- Scriptable and extensible for people who want to bend it to their workflow.
- Built for large personal knowledge bases that would make Notion crawl.
Pick Trilium if: you're a power user building a lifelong second brain and you value capability over polish.
An honorable mention: Memos
If Notion was always overkill and what you actually want is a fast, private place to jot quick notes and snippets, Memos is a lightweight, no-friction option. Not a Notion replacement — a Notion reality check, for when the answer was "a plain notes app all along."
Which one should you pick?
| If you want… | Run |
|---|---|
| The full Notion-style docs + canvas experience | AFFiNE |
| A shared team wiki and documentation base | Docmost |
| A powerful personal knowledge base | Trilium |
| Just fast, private quick notes | Memos |
The honest caveat
None of these is Notion, and that's mostly the point — you're trading a little polish and a lot of hosted convenience for owning your knowledge base outright. The convenience you give up is real, though: someone has to run the server, keep it updated, terminate TLS and back it up. That's the standing cost of self-hosting anything.
You can carry that yourself on a VPS, or you can deploy any of these in one click on our hosts in Detroit or Los Angeles and let the plumbing be our problem. Either way, your notes stop being a subscription and start being yours.
Deploy AFFiNE in a couple of minutes → — or browse the full app catalog.