Notion
A weekend of work, and real gaps remain.
Documents and databases in the same tool. A page is a document until you turn it into a table, a board or a calendar, and teams end up running wikis, roadmaps and trackers out of it because everything links to everything else.
Build me a self-hosted wiki and notes app, with files on disk and a real revision history. STACK - Astro with a Node adapter, SQLite via better-sqlite3 - A plain textarea editor, deliberately not a block editor PAGES - Markdown with front matter, stored as rows and mirrored to files on disk so git can version them - A page tree ordered by a sort field, with no drag and drop required LINKS - [[wiki-links]] resolving to other pages - An automatic backlinks section, computed rather than maintained SEARCH - SQLite FTS5 with snippets and ranking, fast enough to feel instant at ten thousand pages A LITTLE STRUCTURE - A page can declare a table of typed rows, with saved views that filter and sort, rendered server-side REVISIONS - Every save appended with a UTC timestamp - A diff view between any two revisions, so nothing is ever lost to an overwrite SHARING - A single page publishable behind an unguessable signed URL GETTING IN - An importer for a Notion Markdown and CSV export, since that is how anyone arrives Include a README on the file mirroring, the FTS index and the import mapping.
What you lose
- The block editor itself, which is years of interaction work and the reason people tolerate everything else
- Real-time collaborative editing with conflict resolution across many people in one document
- Databases with linked relations, rollups and multiple views over the same rows
- Permissions per page and per workspace, including sharing a single page publicly
- Mobile apps, offline editing and the search that makes a large workspace usable
If you would rather not build
- Obsidian plus a git repository, for the single-writer case
The escape hatch
open source · no votes, no paid placement
AppFlowy
$0Documents and databases in a similar shape, storing their data locally.
AppFlowy-IO/AppFlowyfree · open source
Why this verdict
our own opinion · changed only by a person
48/100
Verdict kinda at 48: a searchable Markdown wiki with backlinks and revisions is genuinely a weekend, and for a single writer it is often better. Collaborative block editing, relational databases and mobile apps are the actual product and are well beyond one session.
History
tracked since 6 Aug 2026 · nothing is ever overwritten
Nothing recorded yet. This chart fills in once the page has visitors, votes or prompt copies — it will not draw a flat line to look busy.
Questions about Notion
answered from the record above
Is Notion free?
No price recorded yet. The pricing page shows us euro amounts from where we are, and a converted figure is not the headline price an American reader would be quoted. See the pricing page for the number in your own currency.
Can you replace Notion by building your own?
ALMOST. A weekend of work, and real gaps remain. Replacement score 48 out of 100, build time a weekend. Read what you lose before you decide.
How much does Notion cost?
Notion has no public headline price. The tier we track is Plus.
What do you lose by replacing Notion?
The block editor itself, which is years of interaction work and the reason people tolerate everything else; Real-time collaborative editing with conflict resolution across many people in one document; Databases with linked relations, rollups and multiple views over the same rows; Permissions per page and per workspace, including sharing a single page publicly; Mobile apps, offline editing and the search that makes a large workspace usable. If any of those carry weight for you, keep paying.
Is there an open-source alternative to Notion?
Yes: AppFlowy, Outline. The prompt on this page is for when you want it your way instead.
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