Notion vs SiYuan

Thinking of swapping Notion for the open-source SiYuan? Here’s the honest trade-off.

44k TypeScript AGPL-3.0 2 days ago

What you give up vs Notion

  • Primarily single-user; no real-time team collaboration.
  • Official cloud sync and some features require a paid subscription.
  • Documentation and UI are translated from Chinese and can be uneven.
  • Smaller English-language community and plugin ecosystem.

What you gain

  • • Full data ownership — self-host SiYuan on your own infrastructure.
  • • No per-seat SaaS bill (Notion: per-seat pricing that climbs fast for teams).
  • • Open-source code you can audit and extend (AGPL-3.0).