Notion → AppFlowy
What it saves, what actually moves, what you rebuild — and the thing that catches people.
What it costs, and what it saves
Same Notion baseline. AppFlowy is AGPL and free, self-hostable or local.
Moves cleanly
Pages via markdown. Database import is improving but still partial.
You rebuild
Databases and views.
What Notion costs you today
Free tier; paid plans from about $10/user/month, with AI features billed on top
What actually holds you in
Proprietary block format and cloud hosting; leaving means an export that never round-trips perfectly.
What you are moving to
AppFlowy mirrors Notion's docs-plus-databases model as an open-source app you can run locally or self-host, keeping your data on infrastructure you control.
Free / open-source; optional paid cloud
AppFlowy strengths
- Closest feel to Notion
- Self-hostable backend
- Active development
What you give up
- Younger than Notion, some gaps
- Self-hosting takes setup
The migration, step by step
- 1Export Notion to Markdown and CSV
- 2Install AppFlowy — local-first by default, with optional self-hosted sync
- 3Import markdown pages and check formatting
- 4Rebuild grid, board and calendar views
- 5Set up AppFlowy Cloud self-hosted if you need multi-device sync
The gotcha
AppFlowy's collaborative editing is behind Notion's. Two people editing the same document simultaneously is not the smooth experience Notion has trained everyone to expect, and for a team that matters more than the feature list suggests.
When to stay on Notion
Real-time collaboration is central to how your team works.
Other ways off Notion
More Layer 5 migrations
Figures verified 2026-07-04 against vendor pricing pages. Prices change and migrations differ by estate — treat the cost delta as a starting model, not a quote. Rankings and recommendations here are merit-only; affiliate income never changes a verdict. See our methodology.