AppFlowy vs Craft

AppFlowy is an open-source collaborative workspace that covers notes, wikis, databases and project boards, positioned as a privacy-focused alternative to Notion. It is built with Flutter for the interface and Rust for the core, so it ships as native apps for macOS, Windows, Linux, iOS and Android rather than a web wrapper, and its source code is published on GitHub under the AGPL license.

The core product combines rich documents with databases that can be viewed as a grid, kanban board or calendar, plus templates, offline mode and an AI assistant for writing, summarising and asking questions about your content. You can use AppFlowy Cloud as a hosted service with a free tier and paid per-user plans, or self-host the backend with Docker so that every page and database stays on your own servers.

AppFlowy fits developers, privacy-conscious teams and organisations with data residency rules who want a Notion-style experience without handing their content to a third party. It is less mature than Notion in integrations, templates, permissions and the polish of real-time collaboration, and its plugin ecosystem is small. Anytype is the other well-known open-source, local-first option; AFFiNE combines docs with whiteboards; Notion remains the safer choice when a broad integration ecosystem matters more than data ownership.

Craft is a document and note-taking app from Craft Docs, a company founded by Balint Orosz. It is known for a native, polished design on Mac, iPhone and iPad, won Apple's Mac App of the Year award in 2021, and also runs on the web and Windows. Documents are made of blocks that can be nested into pages, styled as cards and linked to each other with backlinks.

Beyond notes, Craft includes daily notes, tasks with scheduling, templates, an AI assistant for writing and summarizing, and one-click publishing that turns any document into a clean shareable web page. Documents work offline and sync across devices. A free plan covers light personal use, Plus unlocks unlimited blocks, storage and AI, and Family and Team plans add sharing and collaboration.

Craft suits Apple users, consultants and freelancers who want beautiful documents and client-ready pages without design work, and people who journal or plan in daily notes. Its weaknesses are relational databases, automation and integrations. Notion is far stronger for team wikis and databases, Obsidian keeps local Markdown files with a large plugin ecosystem, and Apple Notes or Bear are simpler and cheaper for plain notes. Team collaboration exists but is lighter than in Notion or Confluence, so Craft works best as a personal or small-team writing tool.