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What it costs to self-host AFFiNE
There can be more than Notion and Miro. AFFiNE(pronounced [ə‘fain]) is a next-gen knowledge base that brings planning, sorting and creating all together. Privacy first, open-source, customizable and ready to use. Below is the server it needs at each team size, what that costs, and how long the 1 commercial product it replaces would take to cost more.
| Team size | Memory | Disk | Cheapest plan that fits | Server | With backups and your time |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| solo | 2.5 GB | 15.4 GB | Basic 4 GiB · DigitalOcean | $24.00 | $141 |
| 5 people | 2.6 GB | 17 GB | Basic 4 GiB · DigitalOcean | $24.00 | $141 |
| 10 people | 2.7 GB | 19 GB | Basic 4 GiB · DigitalOcean | $24.00 | $141 |
| 25 people | 3.0 GB | 25 GB | Basic 4 GiB · DigitalOcean | $24.00 | $141 |
| 50 people | 3.4 GB | 35 GB | Basic 4 GiB · DigitalOcean | $24.00 | $141 |
| 100 people | 4.3 GB | 55 GB | Basic 8 GiB · DigitalOcean | $48.00 | $170 |
| 250 people | 7.1 GB | 115 GB | Basic 8 GiB · DigitalOcean | $48.00 | $170 |
The sizing model for AFFiNE
The closest match to Notion's block editor and whiteboard combination. Self-hosting is supported but moves faster than the other options here, so pin your image tag.
- 2 GB of memory for the whole stack at rest, every container the project ships included.
- 15 MB more per active user, then 25% on top so the box is not running at its ceiling.
- 15 GB of disk to begin with, growing 0.4 GB per user.
- 2 vCPU. Carried through from the project's baseline and not scaled with team size, because for this workload memory is what runs out first.
The base figures are our estimate, derived from the services in the project's reference Docker Compose file, because it does not publish a minimum specification we could cite. The per-user increments are ours in every case. They are deliberately generous rather than optimistic: a comparison that undersizes the server flatters self-hosting.
Time, not just money
AFFiNE is rated medium to operate, which in this model means about 6 hours to get it running properly the first time and 1.5 hours a month after that. At $75 an hour that is $450 once and $112 a month, which is usually the largest line in the whole calculation.
What it replaces
| Commercial product | Its cost at 10 people | AFFiNE at 10 people | Break-even | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Notion Business | $226 | $141 | 5 months | full breakdown |
Where to put AFFiNE
2.7 GB of memory and 19 GB of disk is what this needs at 10 people. The cheapest plan that fits, among the providers whose prices we have read ourselves, is the Basic 4 GiB at DigitalOcean for $24.00 a month.
Go to DigitalOcean Compare hosts
We are not claiming this is the cheapest server on the internet. It is the cheapest one we can honestly quote. Hetzner Cloud, Vultr and PikaPods publish prices we could not read programmatically, and Hetzner in particular is usually cheaper per gigabyte of memory than anything quoted above. Price them yourself before you commit.
The DigitalOcean link above is a referral link: if you sign up through it and pay your first $25, we receive $25 of DigitalOcean account credit. That never changes the computed costs, which server is chosen, or the conclusion of this page. The sizing model and every price source are published in full.
Project facts
| Licence | Other not a standard open-source licence |
|---|---|
| Written in | TypeScript |
| GitHub stars | 72,476 |
| Open issues | 736 |
| Latest release | v0.27.4 |
| Last commit | 2026-09-10 |
| Repository checked | 2026-09-12 |
| Project | affine.pro · toeverything/AFFiNE |