Switcher 2026: The Quest for a Notion Replacement ⭐

I use Notion every day, but I've also been trying to replace this "everything app" with something else for years. This has proven unworkable, at least for me. But I keep trying. Here's where I'm at circa early 2026.
Figuring out what you need
When it comes to Notion alternatives, there are two obvious points. The same alternatives--Obsidian, Joplin, and Anytype typically--seem to always emerge at or near the top of recommendation lists. And there are a ton of Notion alternatives out there, which makes this kind of thing difficult. It's almost as diverse a set of choices as are Linux distribution choices.

But you can fine-tune the choices by knowing what you want. In my case, I like and now require that I can use Markdown syntax while writing notes. And while the sidebar-based organization of notes doesn't scale well in my opinion, which can make finding or just navigating to specific notes tedious, it is what it is, and I'm not really aware of a better approach. And though the issues I have with Notion are small and today aren't getting in my way, I do have some concerns. And they can be clearly stated.

Notion is a black box that you sign into to access your workspaces and notes. I would prefer for each note to be stored as an individual Markdown file that could be opened immediately in the app of my choosing when desired.
Notion doesn't offer a real offline mode. I would prefer to save the files underlying this thing locally so that they could be synced to the cloud storage of my choice, whether it's Synology Drive, OneDrive, Google Drive, or whatever else.

Put even more simply, while Notion is Little Tech and not Big Tech, it's opaque. It's a cloud-based service in which your notes are stored in a cloud storage system I do not control and cannot access directly. I would like a version of Notion that is file-based and can be synced through any service of my choice (i.e. "self hosted").

More generally, free is always preferable. And open source, while not a personal requirement, is good too. So the ideal Notion replacement--for me, your needs may vary--would be a free, open source, and Markdown file-based solution that I can sync to the service of my choosing.

This seems simple enough.

Using the above as criteria, I can examine any alternative and see how well it meets my needs. Obsidian, for example, is free, open-ish but not open source, and it's based on individual Markdown files I can sync to the service of my choosing. So it's at least in the running. Likewise, Joplin is free and open source, and it's based on individual Markdown files I can sync to the Joplin Cloud (which I would pay for) or the service of my choosing. So ... also good, at least on paper.

There's just one problem: It's not that simple. As it turns out, I have other requirements for a Notion alternative that weren't immediately obvious when I started trying to figure this out. These are the things that occurred to me only after certain...