Alternatives to Notion

Notion Labs, Inc. is a US company headquartered in San Francisco. User data, documents and databases are stored on Amazon Web Services infrastructure in the United States. EU data residency is available only in the Business and Enterprise tiers and was first announced in 2023. As a US company, Notion is subject to the CLOUD Act (2018), which can compel the disclosure of data to US authorities even when it is stored within the EU.

Notion does not provide end-to-end encryption. Content is encrypted in transit (TLS) and at rest on Notion servers, but Notion holds the keys. This enables server-side search, full-text indexing and AI features (Notion AI, based on OpenAI models). It also means that Notion staff and, under subpoena, US authorities can access document content. The Schrems II ruling (2020) found that US surveillance laws conflict with the GDPR.

When Notion AI is enabled, Notion data is forwarded to OpenAI to power the AI features. The privacy policy permits this processing under data processing agreements, but the data flow leaves the Notion ecosystem. For organisations with confidentiality obligations (law firms, research institutions, public agencies, consultancies), this is an additional compliance factor. Anytype instead uses end-to-end encryption on the user's own device, so the provider cannot technically read content.

Anytype (Switzerland) and Nuclino (Germany) cover two distinct use cases. Anytype is a local-first application with a block-based editor, linked databases and graph view, and comes closest to the Notion experience; all data is end-to-end encrypted on device and synchronised through a peer-to-peer network. Nuclino is a hosted wiki solution with real-time collaboration, EU data residency in Germany and a clear focus on structured team documentation. Both providers are subject to European data protection law and operate independently of US cloud infrastructure.