AFFiNE's free plan runs out of devices long before it runs out of storage

73 puts AFFiNE in our Strong band and holds rank 5 on our note-taking list, level with AppFlowy on the total and reaching it from a different direction.

Feature depth at 84 is the high pillar, and it is the whole product rather than a cut-down build: editor, databases, collaboration and edgeless mode are all on the free tier. AppFlowy scores 80 there and gates more of its team features. Where the two swap is generosity, both at 74: AppFlowy limits people (2 members), AFFiNE limits devices (3 logins) and file sizes (10 MB).

Freedom at 80 carries a licence nuance we are not going to round off. The AFFiNE client is MIT licensed and self-hosting is free, and the server directory carries its own separate licence defined in the repository. That is open source enough to use and self-host, and it is a document you should read before building a commercial product on top of it.

Sentiment sits at 50 because we hold no G2, Trustpilot or Capterra score for AFFiNE at all. The stability complaints below come from our own editorial notes, not from rated reviews.

The free tier's caps are unusual, so read them as a set (as of July 2026):

• 3 logged-in devices. The binding limit for almost everyone. Most people in this category own four things that could open a note app.
• 3 workspace members. One more than AppFlowy, and still small.
• 10 MB maximum file size. This rules out most video and large PDF attachments, so AFFiNE cannot be your document archive.
• 7 days of version history. Short, and it is the free-tier limit most likely to cost you an afternoon.
• 10 GB of cloud storage, which almost nobody reaches before hitting the caps above.
• Unlimited local workspaces, which stay off the quota entirely. This is the pressure valve, and it is a good one.

Beyond the plan, two product-level things to weigh. Databases are usable and shallower than Notion's relations and rollups. And stability has been the recurring complaint in our notes: AFFiNE ships fast, and occasional sync and rendering bugs come with that. We would treat it as a tool you back up rather than a system of record, at least until the sync rough edges settle. Unlimited local workspaces make that easy to do.

The dual-mode concept also takes a while to click, and some blocks behave differently between page mode and edgeless mode, which is worth an hour of experimenting before you build anything structural on it.

Pro is $6.75 per month billed annually and it fixes the caps that actually pinch: 100 GB of storage, 100 MB maximum file size, 10 members and 30 days of version history. Our reading is that most upgrades here are bought for the device and history limits rather than for space, which makes this a fairly priced first step against a free tier that gives away the whole feature set.

Team is $10 per seat per month with a ten-seat minimum, so the smallest realistic Team purchase is $100 a month. It brings unlimited members, 100 GB plus 20 GB per seat, a 500 MB file cap and priority support. That ten-seat floor is the number to check before assuming Team is the natural next step for a group of five.

Then there is the Believer plan: $499.99 once, for lifetime personal AFFiNE Pro with 1 TB of storage. Lifetime deals are a bet on the company outliving the payback period, and at roughly six years of Pro that is a long bet on a product founded in 2022 whose stability is still settling. We would not tell you not to take it. We would tell you it is a bet.

Self-hosting is free and lifts the hosted caps, with the usual condition that you are running it.

Yes, within limits, and the limits are strange rather than stingy. The entire product, including the whiteboard half nothing else here gives away, is on the free tier. What is rationed is how many machines can be signed in and how big a file can be.

Who can live on it: someone who plans visually and writes linearly and is tired of keeping two apps in sync, a team of three or fewer wanting a shared modern workspace for nothing, anyone happy to keep the bulk of their notes in unlimited local workspaces with only the shared work in the cloud, and self-hosters who want docs plus whiteboard in a single deployment. Who cannot: anyone with a laptop, a desktop, a phone and a tablet, and anyone attaching video or large PDFs, because 10 MB per file is the end of that.

Keep your own backups regardless of plan. For the same open source ambition without the device cap, AppFlowy's free plan trades the whiteboard for a 2-member workspace. Free Notion alternatives ranks the swaps, and best free note-taking and docs tools covers the category.