Docs and wikis · cost comparison
Notion vs self-hosted Outline: what each actually costs
Notion on the Business tier against Outline running on the smallest server that fits it. Every figure below is computed from the sizing model and the dated prices at the foot of this page, and includes the part most comparisons leave out: your own time.
At 10 people, self-hosting Outline costs $141 a month against $226 for Notion. You are ahead after 5 months and $2,601 better off over 36 months, with your own time already priced in.
- Notion
- $226per month, Business
- Self-hosted
- $141server, backups and your time
- Server and backups
- $28.80Basic 4 GiB, 4 GB RAM
- 36-month difference
- $2,601 saved by self-hosting
- Break-even
- 5 monthsafter $450 of setup time
The same comparison at every team size
Self-hosting has a floor and almost no slope, while per-seat software has no floor and a steep slope. That is the whole story, and it is why the answer flips somewhere in this table rather than being the same for everyone.
| Team size | Notion | Self-hosted | Without valuing your time | Server needed | 36-month difference |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| solo | $22.60 | $141 | $28.80 | Basic 4 GiB (4 GB) | -$4,723 |
| 5 people | $113 | $141 | $28.80 | Basic 4 GiB (4 GB) | -$1,468 |
| 10 people | $226 | $141 | $28.80 | Basic 4 GiB (4 GB) | +$2,601 |
| 25 people | $565 | $141 | $28.80 | Basic 4 GiB (4 GB) | +$14,807 |
| 50 people | $1,130 | $141 | $28.80 | Basic 4 GiB (4 GB) | +$35,151 |
| 100 people | $2,260 | $141 | $28.80 | Basic 4 GiB (4 GB) | +$75,839 |
| 250 people | $5,651 | $170 | $57.60 | Basic 8 GiB (8 GB) | +$196,866 |
The balance tips in favour of self-hosting at around 10 people.
Where the self-hosted money actually goes at 10 people
| Line item | Per month | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| Server | $24.00 | Basic 4 GiB at DigitalOcean: 2 vCPU, 4 GB RAM, 80 GB disk |
| Backups | $4.80 | Provider snapshots at 20% of the server price. Skipping this is not a saving, it is a bet. |
| Your time | $112 | 1.5 hours a month of updates, upgrades and the occasional broken thing, at $75 an hour |
| Total | $141 | Plus $450 once, for roughly 6 hours of first-time setup |
Notion at this size costs $226 a month. 10 seats at $22.60 each. The vendor quoted EUR, converted at the dated rate on the methodology page.
What Outline needs to run at 10 people
Needs PostgreSQL, Redis and S3-compatible object storage for attachments. The object storage requirement is the part people miss when budgeting.
| Resource | Required | How it is derived |
|---|---|---|
| Memory | 2.6 GB | 2 GB for the stack at rest, plus 12 MB per active user, plus 25% headroom |
| Disk | 18 GB | 15 GB base, plus 0.3 GB per user |
| vCPU | 2 | The project's own baseline. For this workload memory runs out before the processor does. |
What you give up, stated plainly
- Uptime is now yours. Notion has an operations team on call. Self-hosted, a failed upgrade at 18:00 on a Friday is your evening.
- Backups only exist if you test restoring them. The $4.80 line above buys snapshots, not a rehearsed recovery.
- Outline is a multi-container stack with a database you have to back up yourself. That is why the maintenance line is 1.5 hours a month rather than zero.
- Feature parity is never exact. Outline covers the core of what teams use Notion for; the long tail of integrations and enterprise controls is where the gap shows.
Where to put Outline
2.6 GB of memory and 18 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.
Outline at a glance
| Licence | Other not a standard open-source licence |
|---|---|
| Written in | TypeScript |
| GitHub stars | 40,524, checked 2026-09-12 |
| Latest release | v1.10.1 |
| Last commit | 2026-09-12 |
| Ships Docker images | Yes |
| Project | www.getoutline.com · outline/outline |
Every figure on this page, and where it came from
| Input | Value used | Source | Read on |
|---|---|---|---|
| Notion Business | EUR 19.50 per seat per month | vendor pricing page | 2026-09-12 |
| DigitalOcean Basic 4 GiB | $24.00 per month | provider pricing page | 2026-09-12 |
| Exchange rate | 1 EUR = 1.1592 USD | Frankfurter, European Central Bank reference rates | 2026-09-11 |
| Engineer time | $75 per hour | our published assumption | — |
| Outline sizing | 2 GB base, 12 MB per user | project documentation | — |
Prices move. If the vendor has changed theirs since 2026-09-12, the figures above are stale and the source links are the authority, not us. How we handle that.