A free AppFlowy workspace holds two people, or everyone if you own the server

73 puts AppFlowy in our Strong band, fourth in this category, matching its rank 4 on our note-taking list.

The number is an average of two things, and it is worth unpacking rather than trusting flat. Generosity at 74 is the self-hosted build (no member or storage cap, the most generous option in this category if you can run it) averaged against the hosted tier (2 members, 5 GB). Read either half alone and you get a different number: uncapped self-hosting would score near the top, and a 2-member hosted workspace on its own would not.

Feature depth at 80 is high for this category because AppFlowy attempts more than most: block editor, slash commands, grid, board and calendar database views, real-time collaboration, mobile apps, and local-first offline use, which very few tools here try at all. Against Notion's shape it is thinner on relations, rollups and formulas.

Sentiment sits at 50 because we hold no G2, Trustpilot or Capterra score for AppFlowy. Our 24 July 2026 reputation pass left it out, so there is nothing to read, and the middle is the honest place for it.

Take the two routes separately, because their limits have nothing in common (as of July 2026).

Hosted free plan:

• 1 collaborative workspace with up to 2 members. This is the cap that binds. A team of four is a paid plan or a self-host project on day one.
• 5 GB of storage. We have not recorded what AppFlowy does when you cross it, so treat the behaviour at that ceiling as unverified rather than assuming it is soft.
• 10 AI responses and 2 AI images. That is a demonstration, not a working feature, and it is worth setting your expectations there before you plan around AI.
• Unlimited pages and blocks, real-time collaboration and the mobile apps are all included, which is the genuinely good half.

Self-hosted:

• No member cap, no storage cap, nothing held back.
• A Docker Compose stack including Postgres and object storage, which you deploy, update and back up yourself. If you are comfortable running Docker on a small VPS this is an evening. If you are not, it is not a free option, it is an unavailable one, and we would rather say that than call it free and leave you to discover the difference.

Both routes share the product-level gaps: database relations, rollups and formulas are noticeably thinner than Notion's, and the template and integration ecosystem barely exists by comparison. If you are migrating a complex Notion setup, test it before committing rather than after.

Pro is $10 per user per month when purchased yearly, listed as $12.50 per user per month billed annually on the plan page itself. It lifts you to 50 workspace members, unlimited storage and unlimited AI responses, up to 100 free guest editors, a custom namespace, and 50 AI images per month.

The guest editors line deserves attention, because it changes the arithmetic more than the member count does. A hundred people who can edit without a seat is a very different product from 50 paid members, and it is the detail most comparisons skip.

Two add-ons sit beside the ladder rather than in it. AI MAX is $8 per user per month for frontier models including GPT-5, Gemini 2.5 Pro and Claude. Vault Workspace is $6 per user per month billed annually for local AI processing with no data transfer, which is the option to look at if your objection to AI features is where the data goes rather than what they cost.

What most people upgrade for is the third team member. Two is a genuinely small number, and Pro is the only hosted answer to it. The other answer is a small VPS, and for a technical team that comparison is not close: self-hosting removes the member cap, the storage cap and the AI limits at once.

Yes, within limits, and which limit you meet depends on a question that has nothing to do with money. Self-hosted, AppFlowy is uncapped and genuinely free forever. Hosted, two members is a ceiling a small team crosses in its first month.

Who can live here: a pair of co-founders, a solo user who wants a Notion-shaped workspace with no per-seat bill, an organisation that needs documents on its own infrastructure for compliance and has someone who runs Docker, and anyone who works offline often enough for Notion's connection dependence to hurt, because AppFlowy is local-first and keeps working on a plane. Who cannot: a team of three or more with nobody to run a server, and anyone whose Notion setup leans on relations, rollups and formulas.

For the same open source ambition with a document-and-whiteboard twist, AFFiNE's free plan allows 3 members instead of 2 and caps devices rather than people. Free Notion alternatives ranks the swaps, and best free note-taking and docs tools covers the category.