Open-source Bit.ai alternatives

AppFlowy is an open-source workspace that brings documents, wikis, project and task management and team collaboration into one app. It is presented as an alternative to Notion, and its topics also tag it as a Confluence alternative, with the emphasis on keeping control of your own data.

The client is built with Flutter and a Rust core, giving apps for macOS, Windows and Linux plus iOS and Android versions. Desktop builds can be downloaded directly or from channels such as Flathub and Snapcraft. AI features are part of the workspace, and a public roadmap and active forum let users propose features. Translations are contributed through JSON files and tools such as inlang.

The project is AGPL-3.0 licensed and has documentation for self-hosting the server side, so organizations can keep content on their own infrastructure. A hosted version is available through appflowy.com for people who do not want to run servers. It suits teams looking for a Notion-style workspace with a privacy-first stance.

Outline is a knowledge base for teams, built with React and Node.js. It focuses on fast, collaborative writing: documents are edited together in realtime, stay compatible with Markdown, and are organized into collections so a growing team can find what it has written down.

The maintainers offer a hosted version at getoutline.com, and the repository contains the source that runs Outline and its associated services. If you only want to use Outline you do not need to run the code yourself, while teams that want their own copy can follow the documentation for a production configuration and use the published container images. Topics also mention a Slack integration.

The repository license is listed as 'Other', so review it before commercial redistribution. Outline suits teams looking for a wiki or internal documentation tool with a clean editor, as an alternative to products such as Confluence or Notion for company knowledge. The project does not accept AI-generated pull requests.

Docmost is a collaborative wiki and documentation tool, open source and presented as an alternative to Confluence and Notion with a focus on secure, on-premise use. Teams write and organize knowledge together in real time, and the project emphasizes that its self-hosted deployment fits organizations with strict compliance requirements.

Its feature list covers real-time collaboration, diagrams through Draw.io, Excalidraw and Mermaid, spaces for organizing content, permission management with groups, comments, page history, search, file attachments and embeds for tools such as Airtable, Loom and Miro. The interface is translated into more than ten languages. Topics mention an AI feature, real-time collaboration and drop-in migration from other wikis.

The Docmost core is licensed under AGPL-3.0, while enterprise features sit in specific directories under a separate enterprise license. You can follow the documentation to self-host it or try the cloud version. It suits teams looking for an internal knowledge base or documentation hub with a lighter footprint than Confluence.

BookStack is a platform for storing and organizing information and documentation, built with PHP and the Laravel framework. It is deliberately opinionated: the aim is a pleasant, intuitive experience out of the box where only basic word-processing skills are needed to create content, so non-technical colleagues can contribute.

Content is organized in a book metaphor, with shelves, books, chapters and pages. Advanced capabilities are available for those who want them, but the project says they should never get in the way of the simple core experience, and it is not intended as a general extensible platform for unrelated purposes. Development is relaxed and positive, evolving slowly while keeping upgrades stable and easy. There is a demo instance, installation instructions, documentation and a blog.

BookStack is licensed under MIT and is now managed on Codeberg, which is where the primary repository and issue list live. You host it on your own server with PHP and a database. It suits teams, schools and small organizations that want an approachable internal wiki rather than a highly configurable knowledge system.

Docs, from the La Suite initiative, is an open-source collaborative text editor presented as an alternative to Notion and Google Docs. It is built for real-time collaboration, cleanly structured documents with sub-documents, knowledge organization and full ownership of your data, and it targets public organizations, companies and open communities.

Writing features include rich-text and Markdown editing, slash commands and a block system, offline editing, and optional AI helpers to rewrite, summarize, translate or fix typos. Collaboration covers live cursors and presence, comments and sharing with granular access control. Knowledge management relies on subpages, hierarchy and search. Documents can also be turned into presentations using simple delimiters, with a full-screen mode, PDF export and keyboard navigation. Import and export options are provided.

The back end is built with Django and the front end with React, using collaborative-editing tooling such as Yjs and BlockNote according to its topics. Docs is MIT licensed, can be self-hosted, and has a hosted instance you can try. It suits teams in government and enterprises that need sovereign, self-controlled documentation tools.

With HedgeDoc you write markdown notes together in real time. Several people can edit a document together in the browser, which makes it useful for meeting notes, drafts, documentation and brainstorming, and its tagline is that ideas grow better together.

Repository topics mention markdown, diagrams, collaboration and real-time editing, and the project grew out of the CodiMD and HackMD lineage. The README explains where the project stands: HedgeDoc 1.x is stable and widely used but in maintenance mode, while HedgeDoc 2 is a complete rewrite, split into backend and frontend, that is still in alpha and does not yet implement every feature. A demo instance and features page let you try it first.

HedgeDoc is written in TypeScript and licensed under AGPL-3.0. You install it yourself by following the install guide, and support is available through a Matrix chat and community forums. Translations are handled through POEditor.

GROWI is a team collaboration wiki built around Markdown. Teams create hierarchical pages, write them in a Markdown editor, and edit the same page at once with several people, which makes it useful as an internal knowledge base, documentation site or shared notebook.

It offers authentication through LDAP, Active Directory and OAuth, single sign-on via SAML, and integrations with Slack, Mattermost and IFTTT. Plugins can be installed from npm or GitHub, and full-text search is available through Elasticsearch. The topics also tag AI features. The project began as a continuation of Crowi, and a migration guide for Crowi users is provided.

GROWI is written in TypeScript with Node.js and React, uses MongoDB as its database, and is licensed under MIT. You run it yourself, with Docker Compose recommended for production, a Helm chart marked experimental, and on-premise installation guides for Ubuntu and CentOS. A demo site and documentation are available. It suits organizations that want a self-hosted, Markdown-first wiki with enterprise login options.

Colanode is an all-in-one collaboration platform built around data privacy and control. It combines real-time chat, rich-text pages for documents, wikis and notes, customizable databases and file management in one workspace, positioned as an open-source alternative to Slack and Notion.

It has a client app, available on the web and as an Electron desktop app, and a self-hosted server. One app can connect to several servers, each holding one or more workspaces for different teams or projects. Databases support custom fields and table, kanban and calendar views. The local-first design writes every change to a local SQLite database first and syncs it in the background, so reads are immediate and people can keep working when offline.

The topics reference CRDTs and Yjs for real-time collaboration. Colanode is written in TypeScript and licensed under Apache-2.0, and because you run the server yourself you decide where the data is stored. It suits individuals, small projects and larger teams that want to avoid depending on a hosted vendor.