Open-source Saga 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.

AFFiNE is an open-source workspace that combines writing, drawing and planning in a single app. Documents, an edgeless whiteboard and table views share the same blocks, so you can place rich text, sticky notes, embedded web pages, database views, linked pages, shapes and even slides anywhere on one canvas. It is presented as an alternative to Notion and Miro.

The project stresses local-first storage, meaning your data lives on your own device first, together with real-time collaboration. A multimodal AI assistant helps write reports, turn outlines into slides, summarize articles into mind maps and organize tasks. Under the hood it uses CRDTs for syncing and is built mostly in TypeScript and Rust, with Electron for the desktop app. It also supports Markdown, wiki and knowledge-base use, and presentations.

AFFiNE's license is listed as 'Other' on GitHub, so review it before commercial use. There is a live demo and documentation on the project site, a hosted version is available, and the app can also be self-hosted.

SiYuan is an open-source, privacy-first personal knowledge management system. Its distinctive feature is fine-grained, block-level referencing: any block can be linked to or embedded elsewhere, with two-way links, custom attributes and SQL query embeds. Editing is Markdown WYSIWYG, and the project describes itself as a workspace where humans and AI agents work together. It is local-first and self-hostable.

The editor supports block-style writing, list outlines, block zoom-in, very large documents, math formulas, charts, flowcharts and Gantt charts. Web clipping, PDF annotation links, flashcards with spaced repetition, a database table view, Tesseract OCR and multi-tab split-screen layouts are included. You can export blocks and embeds, standard Markdown with assets, or PDF, Word and HTML. AI writing and Q and A chat can use the OpenAI API, and template and JavaScript or CSS snippets allow customization.

SiYuan is AGPL-3.0 licensed and available as desktop apps, mobile apps for Android, iOS and HarmonyOS, an installation package, a package manager, and Docker, Kubernetes, Unraid and TrueNAS hosting. A command line interface and an app market for extensions exist. Most features are free, even for commercial use.

Anytype Desktop is the official desktop client for Anytype, a personal knowledge base for macOS, Windows and Linux. It lets you collect pages, tasks, wikis and journals and link them together, while keeping data stored locally and encrypted across your devices.

The client is built around composable blocks such as text, databases, kanban boards and calendars, and you can define your own Types to shape the data model. Storage is offline-first with optional peer-to-peer sync, and encryption relies on the any-sync protocol. It is an Electron application written in TypeScript, and it can be extended through a gRPC API and AI agents described in the repository.

Sign-in uses an Any-ID, and installers are published on the releases page and the download site. The code is published under the Any Source Available License 1.0 rather than a standard open-source licence, and the README includes instructions for building from source and updating the middleware.

EdgeEver is an open-source notes and knowledge base workspace that revives the three-pane layout familiar from Evernote while adding an open data architecture and integration with AI agents. It is presented as a portable Evernote alternative, is written in TypeScript, and is released under the AGPL-3.0 license.

It can run serverlessly within Cloudflare's free quotas using Workers, D1, and R2, so no server purchase is needed, or you can deploy the same application with Docker on a VPS, NAS, or home server. Native MCP support lets AI agents work with your notes. Other topics include a web clipper, offline-first behavior, PWA and Electron clients, SQLite storage, and the Tiptap editor.

A live demo and client downloads are provided, with the interface available in several languages. EdgeEver was created in 2026, so it is young. It suits people migrating from Evernote and developers who want a knowledge base that agents can read and write.

Nowen Note is an open-source, self-hosted knowledge base, daily log and task workspace. It aims to be personal and team knowledge infrastructure that you control, running on a NAS or server and reachable through the web, desktop and mobile clients. Its documentation is mainly in Chinese, with an English version available.

A single knowledge tree organizes folders, rich-text documents and Markdown documents, with unlimited levels, drag and drop, import, permission inheritance, password protection and sharing. Editors are built on Tiptap and CodeMirror with Mermaid, KaTeX, tables, outlines, comments and version history, and an offline workspace can cache content and sync when back online. The product also includes AI-assisted writing and RAG question answering, mind maps, tasks, daily records, full-text search, tags, bidirectional links and an MCP integration. Attachments can use S3, Cloudflare R2 or MinIO, and backups can go to email or WebDAV.

It deploys with Docker and supports NAS platforms such as UGREEN UGOS and fnOS. Nowen Note is written in TypeScript and licensed under GPL-3.0, with an online trial, downloads and tutorials.

Liubai is a combined notes, schedule, to-do and task app with AI features, documented mainly in Chinese. Each item is an atomic card that can hold text, images, multi-level tags, status and files, and cards can be synced to the cloud. It is aimed at individuals and small groups who want personal note-taking and light collaboration in one place, and it works in layouts from phone to desktop widths.

The README lists integration with large language models such as DeepSeek, Kimi, MiniMax, Stepfun and Zhipu, which are made available inside WeChat through the official customer-service message API. For privacy, each card can be set to stay local only or to refuse AI reading. The app is local first, using a PWA service worker so it works offline on the web, and it supports light and dark modes, Chinese and English, a rich text editor with light Markdown, and a VS Code extension for quick notes. WeChat integration covers schedule reminders and picking collaborators from contacts.

The repository is split into a Laf-based back end with cloud functions, VitePress documentation, a Vue 3 front end using Vite, Dexie.js and TipTap, a WeChat mini program and the VS Code extension. A hosted instance is available at my.liubai.cc, and the project is licensed under AGPL-3.0.