--- title: "SumizAI vs AFFiNE" url: "https://sumizai.com/alternative-to/sumizai-alternative-to-affine.html" date: "2026-08-14T00:00:00+02:00" modified: "2026-08-14T00:00:00+02:00" description: "Looking for a AFFiNE alternative? SumizAI and AFFiNE side by side: price, licence, platforms and what each one actually does." tags: ["ai notes", "sumizai", "affine", "alternative to AFFiNE"] --- # SumizAI vs AFFiNE Looking for a AFFiNE alternative? SumizAI and AFFiNE side by side: price, licence, platforms and what each one actually does. ## What AFFiNE is AFFiNE is an open-source, privacy-focused workspace that combines note-taking, project and task management, a Kanban board, an interactive whiteboard, and a Pomodoro timer into a single app. Built in Singapore, it quickly earned recognition in the open-source community for an ambitious premise: instead of forcing users to switch between separate apps for notes, tasks, and visual planning, AFFiNE merges all those work modes into one coherent document that can be freely toggled between a text view and a visual canvas. Key features: AFFiNE's foundation is a block-based editor concept, where every element — a paragraph, a list, a table, an embedded file — is an independent block that can be moved, nested, and formatted independently of the rest of the document. The same document can be viewed as linear text in a Markdown-style editor or as nodes on an infinite whiteboard, with no need to copy content between two separate tools. A Kanban board and goal tracking let you manage project tasks right alongside notes about the same topic, eliminating information fragmentation across different apps. Real-time team collaboration with @mentions lets multiple people work on the same document simultaneously. Offline access and a self-hosting option give full control over where data is physically stored — on your own server or locally on device, with no dependence on the vendor's cloud. Who it's for: AFFiNE appeals to teams and individuals looking for one tool instead of a stack of separate apps — a notebook, a task manager, a Kanban board, and a visual planning tool. People who value open source code and the ability to self-host their data, skeptical of closed SaaS platforms, find in AFFiNE a rare combination of rich functionality with full infrastructure control. Project teams that combine visual planning with text documentation — product or creative teams, for instance — can benefit from switching the view of the same document between text mode and a board. Use cases: In practice, AFFiNE works well for sprint planning, where a team starts from a Kanban board of tasks, but any task can expand into a full text note with context and decisions. A UX designer can use the whiteboard to map a user journey, then switch to text view to write up research findings in the same document. A freelancer managing several client projects at once uses the Pomodoro timer to track work time right alongside notes for a specific engagement. A geographically distributed team coordinates work through @mentions in comments, avoiding scattered communication across separate chat channels. Pricing and business model: AFFiNE runs on a freemium model — the core app is free and open source, with self-hosting available at no cost. Paid plans mainly cover the cloud service hosted by the creators, offering convenient sync without managing your own server, extra storage, and priority support. That model lets technical users tap the full functionality for free while offering a convenient paid alternative for people who don't want to handle their own hosting. Limitations and what to watch for: The wealth of work modes — text, whiteboard, Kanban, goals — can feel overwhelming for new users looking for a simple notebook rather than an elaborate productivity platform. Self-hosting requires basic technical knowledge, so people unwilling to deal with servers will depend on the paid cloud service. As a relatively young open-source project, AFFiNE is still actively evolving its features, which means possible changes to the interface and data structure between releases. AI notes in AFFiNE: AFFiNE has no built-in native AI model integration for automatically generating content from conversations — if a user wants to keep a ai notes entry from a session with an external AI assistant, they have to paste it in manually as a new block in the document, using the flexible block structure to place it alongside related Kanban tasks or text notes. The block structure makes it easy to later connect that pasted ai notes entry with the rest of a project's context, but the pasting process itself remains manual. Migrating from other tools: Teams moving to AFFiNE from a scattered toolset (a separate notebook, a separate Trello, a separate Miro board) often report that the biggest benefit isn't the functionality itself but the reduction in context-switching — fewer browser tabs, fewer notifications from different apps, one place to search when you need to find a specific project decision. Importing existing notes from other Markdown formats usually goes smoothly, though more complex structures (like nested Notion databases) may need manual cleanup after import. People revisiting old ai notes pasted in manually from AI conversations can freely move them between text blocks and the visual board, depending on how they're currently organizing a given project. What's worth checking before choosing: Before fully switching to AFFiNE, it's worth testing both work modes — text and board — on the same document, to judge whether the flexibility of switching views actually fits your working style or introduces unnecessary complexity. It's also worth checking whether self-hosting is realistic given your available technical resources, or whether it's better to budget for the paid cloud service from the start. Bottom line: AFFiNE is an ambitious, open-source attempt to combine a notebook, task manager, and visual board into one tool, with full control over data thanks to self-hosting. Anyone who wants ai notes from AI model conversations to land automatically in such an integrated system without manual pasting should consider a tool built specifically around that workflow. Comparison with SumizAI: AFFiNE and SumizAI share a philosophy of openness and user control over data, but differ in scope. AFFiNE is a broad productivity platform combining multiple work modes — notes, tasks, a visual board — built up by hand by the user. SumizAI focuses narrowly on one thing: turning a conversation with an AI model into a ai notes entry saved as a Markdown file in a vault the user owns, with no manual pasting. Anyone who needs a full project management platform will pick AFFiNE; anyone who wants ai notes from AI conversations to land automatically in a simple, portable file archive will find SumizAI a better-fitting, narrower tool. **Key facts** - Price: Freemium - License: Proprietary - Origin: Singapore - Category: Note-taking, Todo List Manager ## What SumizAI is A note-taking application built around a conversation with an AI model. You ask a question, the answer streams back, and the answers worth keeping become Markdown notes — filed into a vault that is a folder on your own disk. A vault is a directory holding `base.md`, a generated table of contents up to six levels deep, and a `notes/` folder with one `.md` file per note. Before a note is written it is checked against the ones already there, so the fourth note about the same idea gets merged instead of added. Links between notes are ordinary Markdown links to files that exist. The model is never ours: you bring your own API key to one of seven providers — Anthropic, OpenAI, Gemini, Groq, OpenRouter, a local Ollama or your own server — and pay that provider directly. A question sends the table of contents plus at most five relevant notes within a 24,000-character budget, and the app shows you which five it used. ## Where they differ - AlternativeTo's description of AFFiNE does not mention an AI model. That is the whole starting point in SumizAI: you have a conversation with a model on your own API key, and the answers worth keeping become notes without you filing them. - AFFiNE is freemium: there is a free tier and a paid one, and the line between them is the thing to read before committing. SumizAI has one plan at a dollar a month, so there is no feature held back for a higher tier — and an unpaid account still opens and exports every vault it already has. - Both keep Markdown, which makes moving between them mostly a matter of copying files. In SumizAI a vault is a directory holding `base.md` — a generated table of contents — and a `notes/` folder with one `.md` file per note. - AFFiNE is described as something more than one person uses at once. SumizAI is not: there are no shared vaults, no comments, no permissions and no sync between devices. If the work is a team's, that is a reason to pick AFFiNE over SumizAI. - AFFiNE can be self-hosted. SumizAI has nothing to host on the desktop — the vault is a folder on your machine — and if you want the model on your own hardware too, a local Ollama is one of the seven providers it speaks to. - AFFiNE also does tasks. SumizAI does not — no boards, no due dates, no projects. It files knowledge, not work. - AFFiNE offers a visual surface — a canvas, whiteboard or map. SumizAI has no canvas: the structure it maintains is a written table of contents in `base.md`, up to six levels deep, rebuilt as notes arrive. Full side-by-side comparison table and pricing: [https://sumizai.com/alternative-to/sumizai-alternative-to-affine.html](https://sumizai.com/alternative-to/sumizai-alternative-to-affine.html)