Curated list of knowledge management tools

Knowledge management tools serve as centralized platform to efficiently share information in a collaborative way. In a corporate environment, the two big contenders are Notion and Confluence. However, there are many very active open-source knowledge management tools which easily rival the big players.

This project aims to compare available knowledge management tools with regards to

• Overview
• Accessibility
• Features
• 3rd party services
• Administration
• Authentication
• User management
• Table support
• Installation
• Business model
• Personal comments

Personal knowledge management tools (PKM) which do not support collaborative work (such as Saner.AI or Reor) are out of scope of this overview

✅ = Feature exists in at least a limited fashion
🚧 = Feature may exist but may not be practical or officially released
🔌 = Feature provided as service hosted externally (might be non-free)
❌ = Feature does not yet exist (hover over icon for possible Github issues)
💰 = Feature with costs

Overview

Feature	AppFlowy	AFFiNE	Outline	Docmost	SiYuan	Logseq	BookStack	Trilium	Obsidian	Confluence	Notion
Logo
Github Stars
Contributors
Last Commit
Source Language
License				Enterprise features have a non-opensource license					proprietary / open source plugins
First release	2021	2022	2018	2024	2020	2020	2015	2017
Freeness		up to 10 users		no restrictions		✅	✅	✅
Framework	Flutter/Rust	Blocksuite	ProseMirror	Tiptap			PHP & Laravel	CKEditor 5

Accessibility

Feature	AppFlowy	AFFiNE	Outline	Docmost	SiYuan	Logseq	BookStack	Trilium	Obsidian	Confluence	Notion
Demo		✅	✅	❌(Free cloud trial)		✅	✅	🚧(readonly)
Web App	✅	✅	✅	✅		✅	✅	✅
Android App	✅	❌	❌	❌	✅4.4	✅	❌	🚧	✅ 4.2
iOS App	✅ 4.7	❌	❌	❌		✅	❌	❌	✅ 4.5
Desktop App	✅	✅		❌	✅4.5	✅	❌	✅

Features

Feature	AppFlowy	AFFiNE	Outline	Docmost	SiYuan	Logseq	BookStack	Trilium	Obsidian	Confluence	Notion
Command key		/	/	/			❌	❌
Drag-n-Drop pages	❌ (move pages with menu)	✅	✅	✅	✅	❌	✅	✅
Per-line comment	❌	❌	✅	✅	✅ very basic	❌	✅	❌
Automatic bullet list	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅
Diagrams	❌	❌ (planned via plug-in system)	✅ (can use exprted URL from drawio)	✅ (Draw.io, Excalidraw  Mermaid)	🚧Mermaid (text only)		✅ (Draw.io)	✅Mermaid (text only), Excalidraw
Tags	❌	✅	❌	❌			✅	✅ (per page)
Kanban	✅	✅	❌(🔌Airtable)	❌(🔌(Airtable)				❌
AI	very good integration	very good integration		❌		❌	❌	❌
Tables	🚧 only apps, no web	✅	✅	✅			✅	✅
Database	🚧 only apps, no web	✅	❌(🔌 Airtable)	❌ (🔌Airtable)	✅		❌	❌
Context Menu (right mouse button)	❌		❌	❌	✅	🚧	❌	🚧
Instant save	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	❌	✅	❌
Column layout				❌				❌			✅
View assigned tasks		❌		❌				❌
Add attachments	✅	✅	✅	✅			✅	✅(not obvious)

Embed 3rd party services

Feature	AppFlowy	AFFiNE	Outline	Docmost	SiYuan	Logseq	BookStack	Trilium	Obsidian	Confluence	Notion
Airtable			✅	✅			❌
Alfred			✅				❌
Canva			✅
Codepen			✅
ClickUp			✅
DBDiagram			✅
Descript			✅
Diagrams.net			✅	✅			✅
Excalidraw				✅			❌
Figma		✅	✅	✅			❌
Framer			✅	✅			❌
Github Gist			✅
Github Issue		✅
Gitlab Snippet			✅
Gliffy			✅
Google Calendar			✅
Google Docs			✅				❌
Google Drawings			✅
Google Drive			✅	✅			❌
Google Forms			✅
Google Looker Studio			✅
Google Maps			✅
Google Sheets			✅	✅			❌
Google Slides			✅
Grist			✅
Loom		✅	✅	✅			❌
Lucidchart			✅
Marvel			✅
Mindmeister			✅
Miro			✅	✅			❌
Mermaid			✅	✅			❌
Pinterest			✅
Prezi			✅
Scribe			✅
Spotify			✅
Slack							❌
Tldraw			✅
Typeform			✅	✅			❌
Valtown			✅
Vimeo			✅	✅			❌
Whimsical			✅
YouTube		✅	✅	✅			✅
Zapier			✅				❌

Administration

Feature	AppFlowy	AFFiNE	Outline	Docmost	SiYuan	Logseq	BookStack	Trilium	Obsidian	Confluence	Notion
History	❌	✅	✅	✅	✅ (file history, not working as expected)	❌	✅	✅
Export	❌		pdf, single pages only	html, markdown	pdf single page, odt full tree as zip		html, markdown, pdf, zip	html, markdown
Hierarchy	files	folders/files	files	files	files	❌		files
Spaces	✅	✅	✅ (Collections)	✅	?			❌
Backup		✅ (manual, official)	🚧 discussion1(inofficial) discussion2 discussion3	🚧			✅ (CLI)	✅

Authentication

Feature	AppFlowy	AFFiNE	Outline	Docmost	SiYuan	Logseq	BookStack	Obsidian	Confluence	Notion
Password	✅	✅	❌	✅			✅
Google OAuth			✅				✅
Slack			✅				✅
Azure			✅				✅
Generic OIDC			✅	💰			✅
SAML				💰

User Management

Feature	AppFlowy	AFFiNE	Outline	Docmost	SiYuan	Logseq	BookStack	Trilium	Obsidian	Confluence	Notion
public access (read)	🚧 no hierarchy	🚧 no hierarchy	✅	✅ (Page with hierarchy, but not entire space)			✅
Public access (write)	❌	❌	❌	❌			✅
Groups		✅		✅	?		✅
Passwordless sharing	✅ (identification via email)	✅ (identification via email)	✅ (identification via email)	❌			❌
Multi-user	✅	✅	✅	✅	🚧(sharing?)	❌	✅	❌

Table Support

Feature	AppFlowy	AFFiNE	Outline	Docmost	SiYuan	Logseq	BookStack	Trilium	Obsidian	Confluence	Notion
Resize	via plugin?	✅	✅	✅	✅	❌	✅	✅
Multi-line		✅	✅	✅	✅	❌	✅	✅
Images		❌	✅	❌	✅	❌	✅	✅
Reorder rows/colums				✅

Installation

Feature	AppFlowy	AFFiNE	Outline	Docmost	SiYuan	Logseq	BookStack	Trilium	Obsidian	Confluence	Notion
Code	Github	Github	Github	Github	Github	Github	Github	Github	Github	N/A	N/A
Self-hosting	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅ docker (but no sharing?)	✅	✅	✅		on-premise EOL
Docker compose	✅	✅	✅	✅		✅	✅ (Community)	✅
Containers	nginx, minio, postgres, redis, gotrue, appflowy_cloud, admin_frontend, ai, appflowy_worker, appflowy_web	postgres, redis, server, migration_job	outline, redis, postgres	postgres, redis, docmost		bookstack, mysql		trilium
Custom domain	✅	✅	✅	✅						✅
Caddy	difficult	easy	easy	easy				easy
Nginx	easy (integrated in docker compose or standalone)
Installation	docker is complex setup	very easy	slightly more complex, need dedicated authentication provider (no simple passwd)	very easy				very easy

Business model

Feature	AppFlowy	AFFiNE	Outline	Docmost	SiYuan	Logseq	BookStack	Trilium	Obsidian	Confluence	Notion
Cloud hosting	✅	✅	✅	✅			Third-party	❌
Non-free enterprise features	✅ (most included in free version)	✅ (most included in free version)	✅	✅			❌	❌
Self-host restrictions		10 members, 100gb storage (configured in db)	AI, gues users, SAML, branding	SSO, branding			completely FOSS	completely FOSS

Personal comments

This section is based on a subjective rating and personal taste. Take it with a grain of salt.

Topic	AppFlowy	AFFiNE	Outline	Docmost	SiYuan	Logseq	BookStack	Trilium	Obsidian	Confluence	Notion
Sophistication (1-10)	3	9	7	5	9	2	3	3
Comments		Mature	Mature, huge amount of 3rd-party integrations	Mature, focus on simplicity, relies on 3rd-party integrations	for the Chinese market	Structured way to organize markdown files. As such, much less powerful	Slightly old-fashioned. Tries to apply the analogy of shelf / book / chapter / pages (3-4 hierarchy levels) to knowledge management, which needs getting used to.	Everything is a note. Fully FLOSS

Note: This list is by no means comprehensive and is provided on a best efforts basis. No guarantees are made to it's accuracy, completeness or actuality due to the fast pace of these projects. If you see an error or inaccuracy, please report it and contribute a fix via pull request if you can!

The structure of this page was copied from the great overview of free photo management tools: https://github.com/meichthys/foss_photo_libraries

🤝 Contributing

Please contribute additions and corrections! When contributing, please add links to the source of the information. (i.e. link to an issue that indicates that a feature does not exist) Tip: Using a Markdown Editor helps with formatting.