A free Notion alternative that works offline, on your own computer

If you want a Notion alternative that works without an internet connection, keeps your pages on your own computer and costs nothing, Barside is built for that. Barside is a free desktop app for Windows, Linux and Mac. It has rich notes, checklists that become a task board, templates, linked notes and a search bar that works from any app. There is no account for personal notes, and every change is saved on your computer as you type.

It is not a copy of Notion. Notion is a connected workspace in the cloud, with databases, team pages and apps on every device. Barside is a notes app on your desktop, with capture tools, AI you connect yourself, and online Spaces only when you choose to share. This page compares the two honestly and shows how to bring your Notion pages across.

The short answer

Notion is excellent at shared, structured work: databases with many views, wikis a whole team edits at once, published sites and forms, and apps for the web, the desktop and the phone. For a company that lives in Notion, those strengths are hard to replace.

People look for a Notion alternative for a handful of reasons: offline access that covers only some pages, a price per member, full AI only from the Business plan up, no app for Linux, and the feeling that a notes app should not need building first. Barside answers them in its own way:

• Your library lives on your computer. Every note, image, video and checklist sits in Barside's data folder. It opens with no connection and no sign-in.
• It is free. No note limit, no block limit and no price per member. Barside Plus is optional, for cloud backup and sync.
• It is ready when installed. Notes, tasks, templates, links and reminders work the moment you open the app, and your calendar is one private iCal link away.
• AI is yours to choose. Connect Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini or OpenRouter, or use no AI at all.

If your team edits pages together every day, or your work runs on databases, stay with Notion. If you want a fast, private notes app for yourself, on Windows, Linux or Mac, read on.

Why people look for a Notion alternative

These are the reasons that come up most, stated fairly. The facts about Notion come from its own pricing and help pages, as of September 2026.

• Offline is partial. Notion works offline in its desktop and mobile apps, not in a browser. You switch on "Available offline" page by page, and on paid plans your recent and favorite pages download by themselves. Subpages do not download automatically, a database brings only the first 50 rows of its first view, and AI blocks, forms, buttons and embeds wait until you are back online.
• A price per member. Plus costs US$10 per member a month billed yearly, or US$12 billed monthly. Business costs US$20, or US$24 monthly. A five-person team on Plus pays US$600 a year.
• AI costs more. Free and Plus include a trial of Notion AI. Notion Agent, AI Meeting Notes and Enterprise Search come with Business. Custom Agents, which work on their own, are free to try and then use Notion credits, which cost US$10 per 1,000 a month.
• Your pages live on Notion's servers. That is what makes sharing easy. It also means your notes are only as reachable and as private as a cloud service you do not control.
• No Linux app. Notion's desktop app is for Mac and Windows. On Linux you use the browser, where offline pages are not available.
• Free plan limits. Files upload up to 5 MB each and page history covers 7 days. Once two or more members share a Free workspace, it also has a limited number of blocks.
• Too much to build. A blank Notion workspace can become anything, which also means someone has to design it. Some people just want to open an app and write.

Barside at a glance

Open Barside and choose Create, then New note, or press Ctrl+N. A note is a full page: headings, fonts and sizes, text and highlight colors, bold, italic, underline and strikethrough, bullet and numbered lists, checklists, quotes, code blocks, links and tables. The media button adds images, video and audio, and you can paste a screenshot straight into the note. There is no save button: each change is saved as you type, and there is no limit on notes or workspaces.

Here is what takes the place of the Notion features you use most:

• Workspaces instead of teamspaces. Each workspace has its own color, and its notes, cards and pinned tabs share it. Workspace bookmarks sit above its notes, so links live next to the project. See workspaces for projects.
• Note links instead of page mentions. Type [[ to link another note, or to create one. Under each note, Linked from lists every note that points to it, with the sentence around the link, and the Note map draws the whole web. See linked notes and backlinks.
• A task board instead of a task database. Every checklist item in every note appears on the Tasks board, grouped as Overdue, Today, Tomorrow, Next 7 days, Later and No due date. Hover a checklist item and choose + date to give it a due date right in the note. See the task board built from your checklists.
• Templates and repeating notes. Start from Meeting notes, Daily journal, Weekly review, Project brief, One-on-one or Research notes, or save any note with Note options → Save as template. Templates & repeating notes in Settings makes a note on a schedule, like a daily journal every weekday at 8:00. See note templates and repeating notes.
• A search bar over everything. Press Alt+Shift+Space in any app, or Ctrl+K in Barside, to find notes, tasks, bookmarks, meetings, drawings and commands. Press Tab to ask Quick AI, which uses the AI you connected. On a Linux desktop that uses Wayland, you set the hotkey once in the desktop's keyboard settings. See the search bar and hotkeys.
• A calendar beside your notes. Connect Google Calendar or Outlook with its private iCal address, see today and the next 7 days, and make one meeting note per event. See the calendar next to your notes.

Barside is also a desktop app in a way a web page cannot be. Pin a note to the desktop in its own window, or dock it to the edge of any monitor, where it folds into a slim tab until you double-click it. The desktop bar holds your workspaces, search and modes. See the native desktop app at the edge of your screen.

And it holds tools you would otherwise add as separate apps: Excalidraw drawings inside notes, screen recording into a note, call transcription on your computer, a read-it-later inbox with highlights, reminders on notes, clipboard history and a built-in password manager.

Notion vs Barside: feature comparison

Every Notion cell comes from Notion's own pricing and help pages. Notion has links and backlinks too: type [[ or @ and a page name, and each page shows the pages that mention it. The difference is where those links live and what else sits around them.

Pricing compared

Prices are as each company's own page shows them, as of September 2026.

For one person, Notion Free and Barside both cost nothing, so the real differences are where your pages live and what works offline. For a team, Notion's price grows with every member, while Barside's Spaces and meetings cost nothing. Barside does not offer shared editing, though, so compare what your team actually does together, not just the price.

A word on AI costs. Barside itself never charges for AI. When you connect Claude, ChatGPT or Gemini, you use that company's API and it bills you for what you use. With OpenRouter, one account gives you models from several companies, and OpenRouter bills you. If you already pay for a Claude or ChatGPT plan, My plan uses it instead, through Claude Code or Codex on your computer.

Where Notion is better

Notion does a lot that Barside does not try to do. If any of these matter to you, stay with Notion.

• Databases. Notion databases hold custom properties, subtasks and dependencies, shown as tables, boards, timelines, calendars, lists, galleries and charts. Barside has tables inside notes and a task board, not a database.
• Teams editing together. Teamspaces, permissions, guests and comments let many people work on one page at the same time, and each person's edits appear for the others as they type. In Barside, sharing a note to a Space posts a copy that members can read and save. A Space is for talking it over: chat, polls, files, a Pinned bar above the chat for the messages that matter, and a description that members and invited people see.
• Every device. Notion runs in a browser and on iOS and Android as well as Mac and Windows. Barside runs on computers only: Windows, Linux and Mac.
• Publishing. Notion Sites and Forms put pages and forms on the web. Barside does not publish pages.
• Connections. Plus connects Notion to tools such as Slack and Google Drive, and Business adds GitHub and Asana. Barside connects to calendars through iCal and to AI apps, but not to work tools like these.
• History and AI with no setup. Notion keeps page history for 7 days on Free, 30 on Plus, 90 on Business and without a limit on Enterprise, and Business includes its AI with no key to manage. Barside has no per-note history, and its AI features need an account with an AI company.

How to move from Notion to Barside

Barside reads Notion's own export on your computer, shows you a preview, and adds nothing until you say so.

1. In Notion, open Settings and, under Workspace, choose General, then "Export all workspace content". Pick "Markdown & CSV". Notion emails you a download link, which expires after 7 days. A big workspace can take a while (Notion allows up to 30 hours), and pages you cannot open, such as other members' private pages, are left out.
2. Download the ZIP. You do not need to unzip it.
3. In Barside, open Settings & backups, find Notes from other apps and choose Import next to Import notes. You can also type import in the search bar.
4. Choose Notion, then Choose ZIP, and pick the file.
5. Read the preview under Ready to import: how many notes and attachments Barside found, the first titles, and a list of things to know about anything it skipped.
6. Under Import into, keep A new workspace, which Barside names From Notion, and choose Import. When Your notes are here. appears, choose Open workspace.

What comes across, and what changes:

• Pages become notes. The long ID Notion adds to every file name is removed from the titles.
• Links stay links. Links between pages, including notion.so links to pages in the export, become Barside note links, so Linked from works at once. Links from a page to its subpages still work, even though every page lands in one workspace.
• Databases become tables. Each database arrives as a note with a table, using the first row as headers, and database rows that were pages come in as notes of their own.
• To-dos become tasks. Checkboxes turn into checklists, which appear on the Tasks board.
• Media comes along. Images, audio and video are copied into your library. PDFs and other files are not imported: each one leaves a line that says Attachment not imported with its name, and the preview lists them.

Barside reads up to 5,000 notes and 1 GB of files in one import, and ZIP files of up to 200 MB each. If Notion's download is larger and holds several ZIP files, unzip it once and pick those. If anything fails partway, Barside removes what it added. The full walkthrough, with every format, is in the guide to import notes from Notion, Evernote and Obsidian.

After the import, spend ten minutes on structure. Move notes into a few workspaces with the selector above each note, add dates to the checklist items you mean to do, and save your favorite page layouts as templates. Before a big import, Export backup in Settings & backups saves your current library as one ZIP.

Who should switch, and who should stay

Barside is a good fit if you:

• write mostly for yourself, on a Windows, Linux computer or Mac;
• want everything to work offline, with no account;
• use Notion as a notebook, journal or task list more than as a database;
• want recording, transcription, reading, reminders and your own AI in the same app.

Stay with Notion if you:

• build your work on databases, views and properties;
• edit pages with a team every day, or share pages with guests;
• need your notes on a phone, in any browser, or on a Mac;
• publish sites or forms, or rely on Notion's connections to other tools.

Some people use both: Notion for the team wiki, and Barside for their own notes, tasks and meetings.

Privacy: where your notes live

Barside keeps notes, media and settings in its data folder on your computer. It counts which features are used, by name only, and you can turn that off. None of your content is uploaded unless you use an online feature on purpose, such as sharing to a Space, a share link, or cloud backup and cloud sync with Barside Plus. Cloud backup is encrypted on your computer before it leaves, with a recovery key only you hold. Spaces travel over HTTPS and cloud sync is encrypted in transit and at rest, but neither is end-to-end encrypted. AI features send only what a request needs to the AI company you connected. The privacy guide has the details, and local-first storage with private backups explains the backups.

Other Notion alternatives worth a look

• Obsidian. Plain Markdown files in a folder on your device, thousands of community plugins, and apps for every major system. Read the Obsidian alternative guide to see how it compares.
• AppFlowy. An open-core workspace that helps teams move over from Notion and can run on your own servers, with apps for macOS, Windows, Linux, iOS, Android and the web.
• Anytype. An offline-first app whose vault lives on your device, encrypted with keys only you hold, with table, kanban and gallery views.
• Evernote and Microsoft OneNote, if you mostly jot things down and collect what you find. See the Evernote alternative and the OneNote alternative.

For the wider field, see the best Notion alternatives and the best local-first apps.

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