Notion is two products wearing one interface. It is a document editor, and it is a database with table, board and calendar views over the same records. People who love it usually love the second half, and lists of self-hosted alternatives almost always replace the first.
That is the thing worth checking before you migrate a workspace. This post sorts the options by whether they do documents, databases, or both, with the licence each one actually ships today.
Why people leave
Notion charges per seat. Plus is €9.50 per member per month billed annually, Business is €19.50, and Enterprise is quoted per organisation, with AI agents priced separately on credits.
The pressure is the familiar one: the number of people who need to open a page grows faster than the number of people producing anything, and each of them is a full seat. Add a few contractors and a couple of read-only stakeholders and the monthly line stops matching the value anyone is getting.
The half nobody mentions
Search "self-hosted Notion alternative" and you will be handed wikis. Wikis are genuinely good software, and they are not what makes Notion sticky. If your workspace is nested pages of text, almost anything here works. If your workspace is a table of clients with a status column, a board view, a filter and three rollups, most of this list cannot hold it.
Here is where each option actually lands, read from the projects themselves:
| Tool | Stars | Licence today | Documents | Notion-style databases |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AppFlowy | 75.6k | AGPL-3.0 | Yes | Yes - grid, board, calendar |
| AFFiNE | 71.6k | MIT, except the backend directories | Yes | Yes - database blocks, kanban |
| Outline | 40.2k | Business Source License 1.1 | Yes | No |
| Wiki.js | 28.8k | AGPL-3.0 | Yes | No |
| Docmost | 21.4k | AGPL-3.0 | Yes | No |
| BookStack | 19k | MIT | Yes | No |
Two things in that table are worth pausing on.
Outline is not open source. It ships under the Business Source License 1.1, which is source-available: you can read and run it, but the licence carves out competing commercial use until each version's change date. Fine for running your own instance, a problem if you assumed OSI-approved and your policy requires it.
AFFiNE is split. Everything outside packages/backend and packages/common/native is MIT; those directories carry their own separate licence. "AFFiNE is MIT" is true of most of it and not of the server you would actually deploy.
The ones worth knowing
AppFlowy is the closest thing to Notion in this list, and the only one that starts from the database rather than adding it later. Grid, board and calendar views over the same records, AGPL-3.0 throughout, and a Rust core. If the databases are why you use Notion, start here.
AFFiNE merges the document, the whiteboard and the database into one canvas, which is either the best idea here or too much depending on how your team works. Worth a look precisely because it is not a Notion clone.
Docmost is the cleanest pure wiki of the group, AGPL-3.0, actively developed, and it is in our catalogue. It does not pretend to do databases, which is a point in its favour.
Outline is the most polished knowledge base and the one your non-technical colleagues will complain about least. Read the BSL before you commit.
BookStack is the boring, reliable choice: MIT, PHP, a clear shelf-book-chapter-page structure, and years of stability behind it.
What it costs to run
Every option here is one application container and a Postgres, sometimes with Redis alongside. The bill becomes the machine rather than the headcount, which is the entire point.
Our catalogue ships Docmost, Outline, BookStack, plus NocoDB and Directus on the database side, each pinned to a specific release. On a flat plan starting at $5 a month they run beside whatever else you already host.
That combination points at the honest answer for a lot of teams: if you need both halves, you may end up running a wiki and a database tool rather than one thing that does both. Two containers instead of one is not a tragedy. Discovering it after the migration is.
The part self-hosting does not replace
Notion's real product is the thing where anyone in the company can build a useful page without asking anyone. That comes from polish, from a mobile app that works, from templates, and from a decade of small refinements.
Self-hosted alternatives are closing that gap and have not closed it. The people who will feel it are not you, they are the colleagues who never asked what the software was called. Budget some patience for that conversation.
When to stay
Stay on Notion if the databases carry real process, if the people using it are non-technical and the interface is the reason it works, or if you are small enough that the seat count is not yet the problem. Five members on Plus is €570 a year, which buys a lot of not thinking about it.
Move if the viewer count is what is growing, if the content needs to sit on your own infrastructure for compliance, or if your workspace is mostly documents - because documents are the half that self-hosts cleanly today.
Frequently asked questions
Which self-hosted Notion alternative has real databases? AppFlowy, most completely, with AFFiNE second. The wikis in this list - Outline, Docmost, BookStack, Wiki.js - do documents only.
Is Outline open source? Not in the OSI sense. It ships under the Business Source License 1.1, which permits self-hosting but restricts competing commercial use. If you need an OSI licence, Docmost and Wiki.js are AGPL and BookStack is MIT.
Can I import my Notion workspace? Most of these read Notion's Markdown or HTML export for pages. Databases are the part that travels badly - expect to rebuild views, and check the export before you plan a cutover date.
What do I need to run one? The application, a Postgres, and a volume. Any small instance handles a team-sized workspace; the ongoing work is backups, not CPU.
Do I lose the mobile app? Usually you lose polish rather than the app itself. Check the mobile experience with the people who actually live in the tool before you decide.