Notion is a proprietary all-in-one workspace combining notes, wikis, databases, and project tracking behind closed-source, cloud-hosted infrastructure. Full details →

Switching from Notion to an open source alternative means your notes stop living exclusively inside a company’s proprietary cloud database. Logseq stores everything as plain Markdown files on your own device, favoring an outliner and knowledge-graph style over Notion’s structured databases. Anytype keeps Notion’s familiar block-and-database editing model but moves storage local-first, syncing peer-to-peer or through self-hosted infrastructure instead of a mandatory central server. Both trade some of Notion’s polished templates and collaboration features for data ownership and offline access.

Open Source Alternatives

Logseq is a free, open source outliner that stores notes as local plain-text Markdown or Org files, offering bi-directional linking and a knowledge graph as a privacy-respecting alternative to Notion and Obsidian.

AGPL-3.0

Anytype is a local-first, source-available workspace that mirrors Notion's block-and-database model while storing data on-device and syncing peer-to-peer, without requiring a central server.

Any Source Available License (clients/middleware); MIT (any-sync protocol)