AFFiNE vs FigJam
Both are alternatives to Miro. Here's how they stack up — verified facts, no spin.
Also searched as FigJam vs AFFiNE — same comparison, one verdict.
AFFiNE
Docs and canvas in one — write a page, flip it to a whiteboard.
AFFiNE merges the document and the canvas: the same content can be read as a written page or arranged as a whiteboard, switching between the two. That removes a real annoyance — the diagram in Miro and the decision record in Confluence drifting apart until nobody knows which is current. MPL-2.0, self-hostable, local-first, around 50k stars. It is ambitious and still maturing, and the honest caveat is that doing two things well is harder than doing one, which shows in places.
FigJam
If your designers already pay for Figma, this is included.
FigJam is Figma's whiteboard, and for organisations already paying for Figma it is often included or nearly so — which makes buying Miro alongside it a duplicated cost worth noticing. It handles sticky notes, voting, timers and workshops competently, and the ability to pull real design components onto the canvas is something Miro cannot do. Proprietary and hosted. Listed because the most common way to stop paying for Miro is to discover you already own something that does the job.
Side by side
| AFFiNE | FigJam | |
|---|---|---|
| Sovereignty Score | 91 | 30 |
| Open source | Yes | No |
| Self-hostable | Yes | No |
| Local-first | Yes | No |
| License | MPL-2.0 | Proprietary (hosted service) |
| Pricing | Free and open source to self-host. AFFiNE Cloud is a paid hosted option. | Free tier available; included or heavily discounted with existing Figma seats. Checked 2026-08-04. |
AFFiNE edges it on the Sovereignty Score, but the right pick depends on the trade-offs below.
AFFiNE
Strengths
- +Document and whiteboard modes over the same content
- +Local-first — works offline and syncs after
- +MPL-2.0, self-hostable, with no enterprise carve-out
- +Removes the drift between a diagram and its written decision
Trade-offs
- −Still maturing; rough edges in both modes
- −Neither mode is quite best-in-class alone
- −Smaller community than the focused tools
- −Self-hosting is more involved than Excalidraw's
FigJam
Strengths
- +Frequently already paid for if your team uses Figma
- +Real workshop tools — voting, timers, templates
- +Design components drop straight onto the canvas
- +Familiar to anyone who already uses Figma
Trade-offs
- −Proprietary and hosted with no self-host path
- −Only compelling if you are already a Figma customer
- −Fewer templates than Miro
- −Another Adobe-owned dependency
Related alternative guides
Facts verified 2026-08-04. Licenses and pricing change — spotted something out of date? That's a correction we want.