Next-gen knowledge base that brings planning, sorting and creating all together. Privacy first, customizable and ready to use (alternative to Notion and Miro).
AFFiNE Community Edition is an open-source knowledge management tools project positioned as an alternative to Team knowledge base, Knowledge Bases, with 72k GitHub stars and a health score of 94/100. It committed 756 times in the last twelve months across 12 of those months, and its status is actively maintained. Licence: MIT, AGPL-3.0. It has real momentum, so treat it as a live competitor rather than a stale repository.
| Status | Actively maintained — Committed within the last 45 days. |
|---|---|
| Last commit | 2026-08-15 |
| Days since last commit | 2 |
| Commits, last 3 months | 161 |
| Commits, last 12 months | 756 |
| Months with activity | 12 of 12 |
| Last release | 2026-08-14 |
| Archived | No |
| Licence | MIT, AGPL-3.0 |
| Category | Knowledge Management Tools |
| Positioned against | Team knowledge base, Knowledge Bases |
Health score combines commit recency, twelve-month commit volume, months with activity, release recency and archive state. Metadata refreshed August 2026.
Copyleft (GPL, AGPL, MPL): derivative work must stay open. AGPL also covers software offered over a network, which blocks most closed SaaS wrappers.
This matters most when you plan to sell a hosted version. A permissive licence means anyone — including a competitor with more capital — can do the same, so your defensibility has to come from distribution, support or data, not from the code.
AFFiNE Community Edition is shipping code consistently, so a buyer comparing your product will find a maintained free option. Price and position against the total cost of self-hosting it, not against the paid incumbent's list price.
Winnable, but differentiation is not optional. Pick one underserved segment and be visibly better for it rather than competing feature-for-feature with a free tool.
Actively maintained. AFFiNE Community Edition recorded 756 commits over the last twelve months, with activity in 12 of those months and 161 commits in the last quarter. Last commit: 2026-08-15. Last release: 2026-08-14. Committed within the last 45 days.
AFFiNE Community Edition is published under MIT, AGPL-3.0. Copyleft (GPL, AGPL, MPL): derivative work must stay open. AGPL also covers software offered over a network, which blocks most closed SaaS wrappers.
AFFiNE Community Edition targets the same job as Team knowledge base, Knowledge Bases and is actively shipping. Adoption sits at 72k stars. Whether it is a good replacement depends on your deployment constraints: self-hosting adds infrastructure, upgrade and security work that a commercial subscription absorbs for you.
8 open-source implementations, 3 of them actively maintained, led by AFFiNE Community Edition at 72k stars. Saturation score 41/100 — Contested. Several maintained alternatives exist, but no one owns the category.
Alternative to Note-taking/ Knowledge management, Note-taking / Personal Knowledge Management
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