Best Free Alternatives to Notion in 2025

Notion is a great product — but at $8–16/month per user, it adds up fast for small teams. The good news: several free tools cover everything most people actually use Notion for.

Obsidian (Free)

Obsidian stores everything locally as plain Markdown files. It works offline, has no subscription, and has a powerful plugin ecosystem. If you use Notion mainly for personal notes and knowledge management, Obsidian is the best replacement.

The tradeoff: no real-time collaboration. But for solo use, it's unbeatable.

Anytype (Free)

Anytype looks and feels like Notion — databases, linked pages, kanban boards. It's end-to-end encrypted and syncs across devices for free. The project is open source and the team is committed to keeping the core free.

AppFlowy (Free)

AppFlowy is the most Notion-like of the alternatives. It's open source, self-hostable, and has a desktop app. If you want to own your data completely, this is the one.

Which should you pick?

- Personal notes only → Obsidian - Need sync and privacy → Anytype - Team use, self-hosted → AppFlowy