the catalog · 🧠 Notes & knowledge
SiYuan
★ 46kPrivacy-first block-based personal knowledge management with bidirectional links
SiYuan does the job of Notion and Obsidian Sync, self-hosted. It is AGPL-licensed, so a hosted fork has to publish its changes, and it installs in about one command. Notion bills $8-12 for it. 46k stars on GitHub.
Open-source replacement for Notion, Obsidian Sync.
- Licence
- AGPL-3.0
- Self-hosting
- Easy
- The paid one costs
- $8-12
- GitHub stars
- 46k
Is it actually a replacement?
We have written a verdict on what it replaces — what you lose, and why people still pay:
How SiYuan runs
Where it runs
SiYuan runs on your machine or their cloud.
Installing it
Desktop/mobile package, or Docker image for browser-based self-hosting.
Where your data lives
A workspace stores block documents as structured .sy JSON files plus assets on disk; SQLite files hold indexes and auxiliary state; documents can export to Markdown, HTML, PDF, and Word.
What setup takes
The desktop app installs cleanly, but free cross-device sync is not a turnkey feature: official cloud sync is a paid membership feature and Docker hosting does not transparently become desktop/mobile sync.
The catch compared with Anytype
SiYuan is a powerful local block database but lacks Anytype's encrypted peer-to-peer spaces, object-type UX, and relationship-centric collections.
SiYuan questions
Is SiYuan open source?
Yes — it is released under AGPL-3.0.
Can SiYuan replace Notion?
Our verdict on Notion is YES. AppFlowy (75k stars), Joplin (56k stars), SiYuan (46k stars) are mature open-source replacements for Notion — self-host in one command and stop paying $12/mo.
Can I self-host SiYuan?
Yes — we rate it easy to self-host, and it runs on your machine or their cloud. Desktop/mobile package, or Docker image for browser-based self-hosting.