AFFiNE vs Gollum
| Tagline | Privacy-first, local-first workspace combining docs, whiteboards, and databases | Simple Git-backed wiki with Markdown support and a local web frontend |
| Category | Notes & Knowledge Base | Notes & Knowledge Base |
| Replaces | Notion, Confluence, Obsidian | Notion, Confluence |
| GitHub stars | 70k | 14k |
| Language | TypeScript | Ruby |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Self-host difficulty | 3/5 Moderate | 2/5 Easy |
| Deploy options | Docker Docker Compose | Docker Manual |
| Managed hosting | ||
| Last updated | today | 6 months ago |
| View repo | View repo |
Where each falls short
The honest trade-offs — what you give up with each, versus the proprietary tools they replace.
AFFiNE
- Self-hosted real-time sync (AFFiNE Cloud) has historically lagged the desktop/local experience and can be fiddly to configure.
- Smaller third-party integration and plugin ecosystem than Notion.
- Mobile apps are less mature than the desktop client.
- Some advanced AI and collaboration features are gated to the paid cloud tier.
Gollum
- No real-time collaboration; concurrent edits require Git merge conflict resolution.
- Access control is all-or-nothing unless fronted by a reverse proxy with auth.
- No rich media embeds, databases, or kanban views that modern note tools offer.
- Search is basic file-content grep; no full-text index for large wikis.
Bottom line
Choose Gollum if you want the lower-effort setup; choose AFFiNE for the larger community and ecosystem. AFFiNE has seen more recent development. Open each guide below for deploy steps and the full feature gap.
AFFiNE
Privacy-first, local-first workspace combining docs, whiteboards, and databases