AFFiNE Pro Review

Feels right in 2025

I've been following Affine since its early days in 2022. When I first tried it, I loved the vision of a local-first alternative to Notion with infinite canvas capabilities, but back then it was quite rough around the edges with frequent bugs and crashes. I lost all my early test data due to those stability issues - pretty frustrating. A recent YouTube video brought me back to Affine - much like Penpot, another open-source tool that started rough but has improved dramatically, Affine has really come a long way. The UI has been refined, and as someone who regularly uses Notion and tldraw, I found the transition to Affine's interface quite natural. The database blocks have seen major improvements, and the self-hosting experience is much more streamlined now. I've even got it running on my ubuntu NAS, really cool - thinking about trying it on a Raspberry Pi too! While most aspects have improved, the CPU usage can still get high sometimes, especially with larger workspaces. It would be great to see some optimization work on this front. Overall, it's great to see how the project has matured. The Discord community is quite active too, which is always a good sign. Looking forward to seeing what's next!