Notion promises infinite flexibility, but that power comes with a hidden tax: constant internet dependency, sluggish loading times, and the nagging reality that your ideas live on someone else’s server. While it beats OneNote, after years of watching my second brain crawl through syncing delays, I migrated my entire knowledge vault to Trilium Next—a free, open-source, self-hosted note-taking app that combines hierarchical organization with the speed of local storage.

This isn’t about chasing privacy paranoia or open-source ideology. Trilium Next solved a practical problem: Notion stopped keeping pace with how fast I think, and I needed a knowledge base that felt as immediate as opening a text file.

TriliumNext

TriliumNext is a self-hosted, open-source knowledge base that lets you organize, link, and visualize your notes in a powerful, hierarchical structure.

Notion’s promise wore thin fast

The lag became part of my workflow

I didn’t switch away from Notion because I hated it. I switched because I started unconsciously avoiding it. Opening a note meant staring at loading spinners. Searching across databases felt like asking a distant server for permission to access my own thoughts, even with its handy integrations. The friction felt constant. When you’re capturing ideas mid-conversation or referencing notes during a meeting, three seconds of lag feels like an eternity.

Notion’s block-based architecture is elegant until you have 2,000+ notes. Every page load requires server communication, every search query travels through their infrastructure, and every embedded database view recalculates in real-time. The app wasn’t designed for people who treat their knowledge base like a living document—constantly jumping between notes, backlinks, and cross-references.

Trilium Next runs entirely on your machine, which means note retrieval happens in milliseconds, not seconds. No spinners. No “Connecting...” notifications. Just instant access to everything you’ve written.

Self-hosting sounds intimidating but it’s shockingly simple

You don’t need to be a sysadmin

The biggest barrier to Trilium Next isn’t technical complexity, it’s the mental model shift. “Self-hosted” conjures images of Docker containers, terminal commands, and weekend-long configuration sessions. In reality, installing Trilium Next on Windows, macOS, or Linux takes about five minutes. Download the executable, run it, and you have a functioning knowledge base running locally. No cloud account. No credit card. No data leaving your computer unless you explicitly set up sync.

For writers and researchers who need access across devices, Trilium Next offers encrypted sync through your own server or third-party options like Syncthing. You can also run yours on Raspberry Pi with Tailscale for remote access, giving you a personal knowledge server that syncs faster than Notion ever did. The control is intoxicating. You get the chance to decide where your data lives, who can access it, and when to back it up. Notion’s simplicity means trusting their infrastructure; Trilium Next’s setup means *owning *your infrastructure.

Hierarchical notes with relational superpowers

It combines Notion’s flexibility with Obsidian’s speed

Trilium Next organizes notes in a tree structure—think folders and subfolders, but smarter. Every note can exist in multiple locations simultaneously through “clones,” which mirror a note across different branches without duplicating content. This solves the fundamental organizational problem that plagues both Notion and traditional note apps: information rarely fits into a single category.

A research note about AI prompt engineering might belong under both “Writing Techniques” and “AI Tools.” In Notion, you’d need a database with tags or relations. In Trilium Next, you clone the note into both branches. Update it once, and changes appear everywhere. The tree structure provides spatial memory (you remember where notes live) while clones provide relational flexibility.

Backlinks work similarly to Obsidian but instead of typing [[Note Title]], you use the @ symbol, and Trilium Next creates a bidirectional link. The difference is performance: because everything runs locally, link graphs and backlink searches happen instantly. I can traverse 10 layers of connected notes without waiting for API calls. For building interconnected idea networks, this responsiveness changes how you think. You follow connections impulsively because the friction is zero.

Scripting turns notes into functional tools

It’s Notion formulas without the cloud dependency

Here’s where Trilium Next diverges from simple note-taking into genuine knowledge management: every note can contain JavaScript that manipulates other notes. Need a daily note template that auto-generates task lists from tagged notes? Write a script. Want a reading list that automatically updates when you tag articles with “to-read”? Script it. Notion has formulas and automation, but they run in their sandbox with strict limitations. Trilium Next gives you the full Node.js API.

This is great for users who are already familiar with creating their own scripts. Those who aren’t can learn how to build basic ones and fully automate their systems. While these aren’t features built into Trilium Next, they’re things you can make in 30 minutes because the platform doesn’t gatekeep functionality. For developers and power users, this extensibility is liberating. For everyone else, it means you can grow into the tool’s capabilities without hitting arbitrary feature walls.

Migration was easier than expected

Notion export works, but requires cleanup

Exporting from Notion gives you a folder of Markdown files and HTML documents. Trilium Next imports Markdown natively, but Notion’s export format is messy—database properties become frontmatter, and embedded content sometimes breaks. You would have to spend some time cleaning up formatting and recreating your database views as scripted notes. The process wasn’t seamless, but it was finite.

The hardest part wasn’t technical migration but the breaking of muscle memory. I’d trained myself to tolerate Notion’s lag, to wait for pages to load before typing. Trilium Next’s instant response felt jarring at first. Notes appeared immediately. Searches completed before I finished typing. The absence of friction revealed how much I’d adapted to slowness.

When Notion still makes sense

Cloud collaboration beats self-hosting

Trilium Next isn’t for everyone, and that’s fine. If you collaborate on shared workspaces with non-technical users, Notion’s real-time editing and permissioned databases are unmatched. Trilium Next has sync, but it’s designed for personal knowledge bases—one user, multiple devices. Team wikis and collaborative project management still belong in Notion or similar cloud platforms.

The visual polish matters too. Notion’s interface is gorgeous, and its block-based editing feels intuitive. Trilium Next looks functional but utilitarian—think VS Code versus Microsoft Word. If aesthetics drive your productivity or you need to impress clients with slick documentation, Notion’s presentation layer has value. But if you’re building a personal knowledge vault that prioritizes speed, ownership, and longevity over visual flair, Trilium Next delivers everything Notion promised without the compromises.

Instant access makes knowledge feel alive

Eliminate the pause between thought and capture

Notes load instantly. Searches return results before I finish typing. Backlinks appear without delay. This responsiveness transformed my knowledge base from an archive into an active workspace. I reference old notes more frequently because accessing them costs nothing. I build more complex connections because following links doesn’t interrupt flow.

Notion taught me that cloud-based knowledge management could be powerful. Trilium Next taught me it could be fast. For writers, researchers, and developers who treat their notes as a working memory extension rather than a filing cabinet, that speed difference isn’t a luxury—it’s the entire point.