Who AFFiNE is for#
Product manager running planning rooms
Maintains one source of truth for strategy notes, roadmap tables, and visual brainstorm sessions in one workspace while keeping planning artifacts stored on team infrastructure.
Skip if:
Skip if you need deep portfolio-level reporting and enterprise PM tooling at day one.
Small design studio for client kickoffs
Keeps client briefs, rough sketches, and meeting notes in a single structured space, then shares a workspace that still allows internal control over client files.
Skip if:
Skip if your process is already standardized in a heavily customized legacy PM suite.
Distributed support team capturing procedures
Stores runbooks, FAQ drafts, and team playbooks with quick edits in one interface, plus canvas-based visual notes for incident workflows.
Skip if:
Skip if immediate integration with ticketing and incident systems is your top requirement.
Team evaluating open-source replacements
Benchmarks against proprietary stacks to reduce lock-in risk and to move critical knowledge workflows behind existing access and identity controls.
Skip if:
Skip if cost and migration speed are your only criteria and self-hosting overhead is not acceptable.
The problem it solves#
Teams often run notes, planning, and whiteboard thinking in separate tools, which creates duplicated content and makes the right context hard to find. SaaS workspace suites usually tie that knowledge to a hosted service, while pricing and integrations can become expensive as teams grow. AFFiNE gives teams a single workspace where docs, databases, and canvases live together, with local-first storage so operational history, attachments, and workspace configuration stay on their own infrastructure. This design helps teams that want speed for everyday execution without giving up long-term control.
How it solves it#
Single workspace for mixed formats
You can move between page-style writing, tables, and an edgeless canvas in one environment, which reduces handoff friction during planning and execution.
Self-host-ready architecture
The official compose setup uses PostgreSQL and Redis services alongside AFFiNE, so teams can run their own instance behind their own network boundaries.
Multi-client collaboration
The project describes real-time sync and collaboration on web and cross platform clients, which supports distributed team updates on the same workspace.
AI partner workflows
The product provides AI-assisted writing, diagramming, and planning actions, useful for turning outlines into reports, slides, diagrams, or mind maps without leaving the workspace.
Open-source and extensible roadmap
AFFiNE is MIT licensed and public on GitHub, with editor and block system design aimed at community extension.
Strengths and trade-offs#
Strengths
- MIT license with self-hostingYou can operate on your own servers and avoid per-seat dependency for the core platform, with freedom to inspect and adapt as needs change.
- Unified operational modelReplacing separate note, wiki, and whiteboard tools in one interface lowers context switching and gives teams one way to store project context.
- Stronger ownership controls than SaaS note stacksLocal-first design keeps workspace data and files under team control, which is a practical advantage for sensitive planning content.
- Edgeless canvas plus structured docsAFFiNE supports rich text, sticky notes, embedded web pages, multi-view databases, linked pages, shapes, and slides on the same canvas, giving it more visual planning range than a doc-only workspace.
Trade-offs
- -Operational overheadRunning AFFiNE requires a server stack with Docker and supporting services, which is a larger setup path than signing into a hosted SaaS workspace.
- -Capability parity evolves over timeTeams used to mature template galleries, enterprise governance, or broad third-party integrations may find the open-source pace different from bigger incumbents.
- -Config depth for advanced setupAI providers, storage settings, and performance tuning are configurable, so teams with strict compliance or scale needs need more planning than light SaaS onboarding.
AFFiNE vs alternatives#
AFFiNE vs Notion
Notion and AFFiNE overlap on knowledge-base use, collaboration, and workspace organization. The deciding factor is control of deployment. AFFiNE is self-hostable and MIT licensed, which lets teams avoid Notion subscription pressure as user counts scale and avoid relying on a single hosted service for core workspace data.
Notion is still better when a team needs a very broad enterprise ecosystem, mature template depth, and one-click provisioning with predictable managed support. AFFiNE is better when teams want local-first storage, fewer lock-in concerns, and a single workspace that also supports canvas-style thinking.
AFFiNE vs Miro
Miro remains strong for specialized visual collaboration and session-based workshops at scale. If your team only needs whiteboarding with fast visual facilitation, Miro often wins on workflow velocity.
AFFiNE is stronger when you also need structured notes, project tables, and a local-first data model in the same instance. It gives teams a migration path away from tool sprawl at the cost of more self-hosting operation.
Install and self-host#
mkdir -p affine-selfhost
cd affine-selfhost
wget -O .env.example https://raw.githubusercontent.com/toeverything/AFFiNE/canary/.docker/selfhost/.env.example
wget -O compose.yml https://raw.githubusercontent.com/toeverything/AFFiNE/canary/.docker/selfhost/compose.yml
cp .env.example .env
DB_PASS=$(openssl rand -hex 24)
sed -i "s/^DB_PASSWORD=.*/DB_PASSWORD=$DB_PASS/" .env
docker compose --env-file .env -f compose.yml up -dWhat it's built on#
- Languages
- KotlinRustSwiftTypeScript
- Frameworks
- Vue
FAQ#
Is AFFiNE actually MIT licensed and open source?
Yes. The repository lists MIT licensing and a public GitHub source, including deployment files for self-hosting via Docker.
Can I run AFFiNE as a private self-hosted workspace?
Yes. The official compose approach provisions PostgreSQL and Redis alongside the server, so you can run your own instance and keep data on infrastructure you control.
Can I replace Notion with AFFiNE for team docs and planning?
AFFiNE can replace Notion for teams that mainly need docs, tables, and visual planning in one workspace. It is designed as an open alternative that combines docs, databases, and canvas-style visuals, but migration effort depends on the amount of embedded templates and automation in the source tool.
Does AFFiNE include AI features by default?
The platform presents AI partner workflows in its positioning, and capabilities continue to expand, so exact availability and model behavior should be validated in the current release before production rollout.
Similar open-source tools#
Anytype
Local-first self-hosted alternative to Notion and Linear
AppFlowy
Open source Notion alternative with AI, self-hosted
Logseq
Privacy-first knowledge base with outliner and graph view
Focalboard
Open source project management: Kanban, Scrum, and lists
Orgnise
Centralize wikis, docs, and project tasks in a self-hosted workspace.
Tolaria
Organize your notes with Markdown and Git integration