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Comparison · Collab
AFFiNE vs Trilium Notes
A side-by-side editorial comparison of AFFiNE and Trilium Notes — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
AFFiNE vs Trilium Notes: at a glance
What is AFFiNE?
AFFiNE's canary stream is mostly dependency hygiene, with AI-model work just behind it
AFFiNE is a local-first, open-source knowledge base shipping near-daily canary builds. The recent window is dominated by automated maintenance: Renovate dependency bumps, CI action upgrades, a build-system migration to rspack, and small bug and reliability fixes. The more directional work, integrating Gemini 3.5 Flash and updating Claude Sonnet with a BYOK key UI, sits just outside this six-entry window.
What is Trilium Notes?
Trilium adds spreadsheets and OCR while deliberately ripping out its LLM integration
Trilium Notes is on a steady minor cadence under its post-handover maintainership. The current arc is striking for cutting against the grain: 0.103 introduces new note types (spreadsheet) and OCR, while 0.102 removed the built-in LLM integration outright and shipped urgent security fixes.
AFFiNE vs Trilium Notes: editorial side-by-side
AFFiNE
5.0COLLAB
AFFiNE's canary stream is mostly dependency hygiene, with AI-model work just behind it
◆ Current state
AFFiNE is a local-first, open-source knowledge base shipping near-daily canary builds. The recent window is dominated by automated maintenance: Renovate dependency bumps, CI action upgrades, a build-system migration to rspack, and small bug and reliability fixes. The more directional work, integrating Gemini 3.5 Flash and updating Claude Sonnet with a BYOK key UI, sits just outside this six-entry window.
◆ Where it's heading
Day-to-day cadence is maintenance churn that keeps the canary channel healthy rather than changing the product surface. The signal worth tracking is the embedded-AI investment from late May: model bumps plus bring-your-own-key provider UI point at AFFiNE positioning AI as a first-class part of the editing experience, not a bolt-on.
◆ Prediction
Expect continued rapid canary releases and more AI provider and model expansion building on the BYOK work. The dependency and CI churn will keep flowing in the background and isn't itself a signal of direction.
Trilium Notes
3.8COLLAB
Trilium adds spreadsheets and OCR while deliberately ripping out its LLM integration
◆ Current state
Trilium Notes is on a steady minor cadence under its post-handover maintainership. The current arc is striking for cutting against the grain: 0.103 introduces new note types (spreadsheet) and OCR, while 0.102 removed the built-in LLM integration outright and shipped urgent security fixes.
◆ Where it's heading
The direction is a focused, locally-grounded knowledge tool — adding structured data (spreadsheets) and document capture (OCR) while shedding hard-to-maintain AI features. Trilium is optimizing for a maintainable, privacy-respecting core rather than chasing AI parity.
◆ Prediction
Expect continued capability depth in note types and capture (spreadsheet, OCR) with AI staying out of core, and security responsiveness remaining a priority.
Alternatives to AFFiNE and Trilium Notes
Other Collab products tracked by Sparkpulse, ranked by recent ship velocity. Each card links to a full editorial trajectory and lets you pivot into a head-to-head comparison with either AFFiNE or Trilium Notes.
GitHub
GitHub bends its security stack toward governing the coding agents now writing the code.
BookStack
BookStack runs a disciplined security-release cadence, with occasional CalVer feature drops.
pCloud
pCloud's feed is mostly storage marketing — with one real feature in Rewind point-in-time recovery.
Asana
Asana keeps maturing AI Studio while hardening enterprise governance and cross-app integrations.
Mattermost
Mattermost doubles down on sovereign, post-quantum defence collaboration with an agentic layer on top.
See all AFFiNE alternatives → · See all Trilium Notes alternatives →
Recent activity from AFFiNE and Trilium Notes
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 2d agoAFFiNEFix transport availability; silence console logs in production
- 5d agoAFFiNEBump RevenueCat iOS SDK to 5.76.0
- 6d agoAFFiNEUpgrade codesign-certs CI action to v7
- 7d agoAFFiNEMigrate client build to rspack; fix Electron workspace deletion
- 9d agoAFFiNEBump RevenueCat iOS SDK to 5.75.0
- 10d agoAFFiNEFix server mail test and retry handling
- 26d agoTrilium Notesv0.103.0 ⚡
- 2mo agoTrilium Notes0.102.2: urgent security fixes
- 3mo agoTrilium Notesv0.102.1
- 3mo agoTrilium Notes0.102.0: LLM integration removed ⚡
- 4mo agoTrilium NotesWeb Clipper v1.1.0
- 4mo agoTrilium NotesWeb Clipper v1.1.0
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between AFFiNE and Trilium Notes?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. AFFiNE is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 5.0 vs 3.8), with 0 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 1. See the at-a-glance table above for a side-by-side breakdown of velocity, recent sparks, and editorial themes.
Is AFFiNE better than Trilium Notes?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. AFFiNE is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 5.0 vs 3.8), with 0 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 1. For your specific use case, the alternatives sections above list other Collab products to evaluate alongside.
What are the best alternatives to AFFiNE?
Top AFFiNE alternatives in Collab are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "AFFiNE alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/affine for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to Trilium Notes?
Top Trilium Notes alternatives in Collab are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "Trilium Notes alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/trilium for the full list with editorial commentary on each.