Notion API – public beta

Big fan of notion. Not a fan of the data lock-in or haphazard security. For tools like this, SaaS will almost always beat open source just by virtue of elbow grease and a product direction. So I’m willing to forego the open source alternatives. But I really wish Notion gave me more options for how to host my data. AFAICT they offer no “dedicated storage” or “on premise” plan, even if you want to pay for it.<p>In fact I heard a rumor that the entirety of Notion runs on a single unsharded database. If true, combined with the fact that this API took so long to ship, I have to assume that there is a crippling amount of tech debt in their stack. Hopefully it’s growing pains and they’re sorting it out, but it doesn’t make me feel confident about the security of my (most sensitive) data.<p>It’s maybe also a cautionary tale about what happens when you dismiss too many early decisions as “premature optimization.” You ship fast in the beginning but a few years later you’re buried in all the debt you generated.<p>Granted, it’s a good problem to have. If the choice is between a profitable, popular company buried in tech debt, or the perfect stack with no customers, I’ll take the debt.

When I initially signed up for Notion, I did so thinking the API was already usable. It was used as a selling point for their premium service even though it wasn&#x27;t implemented. This was a year and a half ago or so.<p>I felt pretty burned by it and killed my subscription. Hopefully this turns out well for the people who&#x27;ve been waiting for it, but that experience left a terrible taste in my mouth.

I&#x27;ve recently started using Notion and I&#x27;m surprised at few things that I find incredibly annoying with it so far. Since it seems there are some Notion staff here I&#x27;ll take this as a change to give some feedback to hopefully improve the product.<p>* No read-only mode. I like to have documents default to a read-only mode so I don&#x27;t accidentally typo random characters, or delete something when try copying. etc.<p>* No floating table of contents. There is a ToC block but it&#x27;s at a fixed position, where it&#x27;s not terribly usable especially for long documents having a giant ToC at the top isn&#x27;t great. I&#x27;ve tried using columns but it just squishes the rest of the document way too much<p>* Floating heads. When you have multiple collaborators the avatars zooming up and down the left side of the document is incredibly distracting. I&#x27;d love a way to disable this completely. I don&#x27;t care where in a document other people are reading.<p>* Database&#x2F;Table horizontal scrollbar. Almost every database in our documents end up with this giant scrollbar that spans edge to edge, looking like a horizontal rule, breaking up the visual flow of the page significantly. I keep thinking it&#x27;s some kind of page break.<p>These are just some of my initial impressions. I do think it&#x27;s a very visually nice product and has a lot of neat features but I&#x27;m pretty surprised by some basic QoL stuff missing and hope to see it further refined.

Full Disclosure - I have been lucky enough to have closed BETA access to the Notion API and here are some things I have noticed. BTW I do not work for Notion, im totally indie :P<p>- The team building the API has been super responsive and respectful, very good collaboration on their Dev slack and I had a great time testing things<p>- The documentation has been updated with the feedback from the community who had access, it&#x27;s in a MUCH better status now than when it started<p>- The API speed has increased, it was really slow, now its a bit faster :)<p>Looking forward to see how other companies are using the Notion API, whether natively or through other integrations, I&#x27;ve seen a lot of activity from the folks at Integromat and Typeform :) (which are awesome tools btw!)

And the Zapier integration is launched, too! <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;zapier.com&#x2F;apps&#x2F;notion&#x2F;integrations" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;zapier.com&#x2F;apps&#x2F;notion&#x2F;integrations</a><p>It has the same basic trigger (new item), actions (create&#x2F;update item), and search (find item) as every other CRM integration. It is missing a trigger for item getting updated - still excited to see how folks are using it though.

I have to give a shoutout to the dev who wrote Nishan, a wrapper around Notion&#x27;s internal API used by their webapp. I&#x27;ve been using it for a while and it will be a long time before the public API catches up. Getting users to find the api token from cookies has been a pain though, so I&#x27;ll be looking into migrating asap. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;Devorein&#x2F;Nishan" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;Devorein&#x2F;Nishan</a>

I was a huge Notion fan. However, the long sync times were driving me nuts. I have since moved to inkdrop (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.inkdrop.app&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.inkdrop.app&#x2F;</a>) because it&#x27;s much better for my use case:<p>* I can write Markdown notes. I&#x27;ve only wanted to write markdown notes.<p>* The syncing is incredibly fast because it&#x27;s using an existing technology purpose-built for syncing (CouchDB)<p>* I can bring my own CouchDB and not have my data locked in<p>* Has a mobile app that works well<p>* There is a &quot;vim mode&quot; and that makes me happy.

Finally! Cool API stuff aside, this could make an excellent use case for a content back-end to your Jam-apps or quick little apps.<p>For example, Vercel reverse-engineered the internal API and made a super awesome demo here when introducing &quot;Serverless Pre-Rendering&quot;. [1]<p>There&#x27;s a video demo and code of how they did it.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;vercel.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;serverless-pre-rendering" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;vercel.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;serverless-pre-rendering</a>

I have been using Notion in its API form for a while through notion-py[1]. Currently, it powers my blog[2] and for me, it&#x27;s a really good integration. I write something, ask my friends to review it. I run a command to publish it, and it&#x27;s live. The workflow is really, really good and removes a ton of friction because the software that you write in is also the one that powers your blog&#x27;s content.<p>Overall, I think Notion API can open up many, many possibilities, since it can become a really good CMS, besides already being a great note-taking tool, and a team app. Notion has millions of users, and it&#x27;s a huge market already.<p>Btw, if you&#x27;re interested in running your blog on Notion, I would love to hear from you! [3]<p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;jamalex&#x2F;notion-py" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;jamalex&#x2F;notion-py</a><p>[2]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;shubhamjain.co&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;shubhamjain.co&#x2F;</a><p>[3]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;shubhamjainco" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;shubhamjainco</a>

We integrated the Notion API into Pipedream. Triggers and actions coming shortly:<p>- Demo: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;pipedream.com&#x2F;apps&#x2F;notion" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;pipedream.com&#x2F;apps&#x2F;notion</a><p>- Workflow Example: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;pipedream.com&#x2F;@tod&#x2F;p_D1C3LlN" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;pipedream.com&#x2F;@tod&#x2F;p_D1C3LlN</a>

I’d be sold on their product if they had better security implementation. Company wiki’s are troves of sensitive information and I’m uncomfortable that I have yet to find any central logging on the product.<p>I wish these things were also taken into account

I&#x27;m writing a Python client right now, 99% copied from their JS implementation, if anyone wants to join the fun!<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;ramnes&#x2F;notion-sdk-py" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;ramnes&#x2F;notion-sdk-py</a><p>I hope they will release an OpenAPI specification file soon so that code maintenance between different clients is kept to a minimum. :)

I really like the idea of what notion is trying to do, but their &quot;databases&quot; drive me nuts. They force a default column that&#x27;s useless for relationships... and I never know if they want to be database like or excel like. Notion needs a good roadmap, and also start acknowledging user feedback, besides the &quot;we got your feedback&quot;.

Well that&#x27;s awesome! I&#x27;ve been waiting for this for a while. My company uses notion internally for project management and I&#x27;d love to extend it a little bit (eg to generate burndown charts).<p>I&#x27;ll probably try to resist the urge to build a massive, poorly-written project management tool on top of the notion api. Probably.

A little late for us. We ended up switching away after being a very early adopter. The downtime, slowness and poor search really did it in for us.<p>Hoping for the best to the team, you’ve grown so fast it’s incredible!

Seems extremely limited as an API, wondering what people can actually use this for.<p>For example markdown support for read&#x2F;write would make it much easier to use it as CMS or sync the data, instead of working on the custom block types.

I currently use a 1-person Slack workspace instead of Notion because I can write bots to help me with various things.<p>I&#x27;ll have to see if this API is complete enough to do what I want with Notion.

It&#x27;s been requested for at least 3 years. I totally understand that it takes a while so I&#x27;m not blaming them.<p>But it seems like in the meantime people have started to move on (I have). Let&#x27;s hope this can bring back some momentum for them.

For anyone looking for a open source notes app that let&#x27;s you keep control of your data, have a look at <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;joplinapp.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;joplinapp.org&#x2F;</a>.

I too tried notion for a while and I noticed that it&#x27;s just getting slower and slower with each release. Even on my M1 mac it&#x27;s not a very performant app which is sad. It&#x27;s a bit of a jack of all trades, while doing nothing especially well.<p>Just recently I tried using it again for a small project (3-4 people) and it quickly got chaotic and messy (used for simple task board, wiki, blogpost drafts).<p>Right now, I recommend:<p>- Craft (<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;craft.do&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;craft.do&#x2F;</a>) for collaborating on documents, information sharing, knowledge (can&#x27;t do tables and other fancy things yet, but is native and veeeery nice)<p>- Obsidian (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;obsidian.md&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;obsidian.md&#x2F;</a>) for personal knowledge database (although it&#x27;s also electron...)<p>- DEVONthink (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.devontechnologies.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.devontechnologies.com&#x2F;</a>) for digital office

How good is Notion? Is the lock-in worth it?<p>I&#x27;m fearful of lock-in, and just use markdown plain text, sync&#x27;d with dropbox, and then use different markdown apps on different OSes.

For the folks who find Notion slow or otherwise unreliable, I’d love to hear your feedback on minimal.app (or minimal.app&#x2F;#beta, depending on where you’re located).<p>Collaborative Notes just went live, making it a lighter, more focused alternative to Notion.

I used to use Trello for my personal life system inspired by the Getting Things Done method.<p>I get hooked 3 months ago by one of the Notion&#x27;s ambassador August Bradley who make an incredible system and course avalaible for free on Youtube.<p>I&#x27;m excited about the API and all automations i will make by scripting for my own use cases (like an easy way to add a new item on a certain database from my CLI, or a mail adresse hooked to a database).<p>But all your comments freak me out. As a developer, i dont&#x27;t know if i have to do my own markdown system hosted locally. Notion is a great product, and guys like August Bradley open my eyes for everything i can do with it.

So far the only new note taking app that I found polished enough[1] and worth the time is Bear and sadly it’s very very much a closed walled garden and with its subscription model it makes me very uncomfortable.<p>Tried FSNotes - extremely immature and it doesn’t seem to have any direction at all - it’s all over, Standard Notes - visibly none native and offers no exportable local storage (by design). Decided to stay away.<p>Hope to see some solid and simple new native apps around Notion API.<p>[1] Fast enough, not cluttered, and have native apps (I’ve realised after years of trial and use that my note taking app has to be native and that’s non-negotiable)

Time to integrate it with [Neo]Vim and Emacs!

Time to export articles as static website

This is a great news. I&#x27;ve been toying with the idea of generating parts of my blog from notion. There are currently some projects which reverse-engineered the API and provide an &quot;unofficial&quot; clients [1][2]. The problem though is that I&#x27;d like to blog to be minimum maintenance after a spike of work and I&#x27;m afraid the unofficial clients will inevitably break and will require updates.<p>The problem with the current beta is the limits of the API. E.g. code block are not supported[3], so you can&#x27;t really use it to generate a technical blog.<p>Looking forward to the GA :)<p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;jamalex&#x2F;notion-py" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;jamalex&#x2F;notion-py</a> [2]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;kjk&#x2F;notionapi" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;kjk&#x2F;notionapi</a> [3]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;developers.notion.com&#x2F;reference&#x2F;get-block-children" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;developers.notion.com&#x2F;reference&#x2F;get-block-children</a>

Notion is a clever front end that does not need to be backed by a cloud service.<p>IT departments should be able to setup whichever backed storage they want; s3 buckets to postgres.<p>I’m so done with propping up every wannabe unicorn. This app will never be a thing at my company.<p>Two or three devs could make a living off this UX as a standalone client. This isn’t a Google scale engineering need.

Who makes a database API with no way to change records in the database?

Thank you for the reminder that I should try converting from Evernote to Notion again. Last time I tried (~2 months ago), the automatic importer died after importing ~10% of my Evernote content.<p>Though, based on some of the comments in this thread, maybe I _shouldn&#x27;t_ and should try Obsidian instead.

Glad they learned from their painful mistake and ditched the .so domain in favor of a .com.

It&#x27;s nice to see this happening at last!<p>This is a promising start, but so far it&#x27;s read &amp; append it looks like -- no updating (of blocks at least).<p>Updating page properties can take it a way, but looking forward to seeing it expand a little.

Notion is probably the most prominent startup to make .so (somalia) domain more acceptable. I&#x27;ve seen plenty of .io and .ai, but .so was new for me when I first saw it.<p>I thought it was a scam when I tried Notion 3 years ago.

I love Notion, the tool&#x2F;product, but I want something exactly like it but open source and where I can store my data where I want it. I guess I should get started...

So Notion is essentially a CMS now. I still wonder what one could <i>realistically</i> do with the API other than small quirky experiments

Pretty big deal, people have been requesting this for years. Probably the number one requested feature I&#x27;ve seen.

I tried to use notion and liked the functionalities, even I only used &lt; 10% of them. You can basically create your own static website in it. But I stopped using it after finding I can&#x27;t even copy the whole note on iOS, only one paragraph at a time. Weird design decision.

I&#x27;ve seen Notion discussed on HN for a time now, and while this seems to be well received I&#x27;m not really sure what it&#x27;s for.<p>What are the use-cases here? What&#x27;s Notion being used for that this new API functionality will help in? How are you using it either personally or professionally?<p>Thanks

this will be great, people will make notion clients for terminal, i like terminal todo list or terminal apps and having a great productivity tool in terminal which will sync all the device is good idea. LIke there is spotify on terminal.

FWIW, my note taking app is github. Created a private repo, keeping my notes as &quot;issues&quot;. I can label, link, search them, insert images, add comments etc. Can someone name a relevant feature that is missing from github?

We&#x27;ve integrated Notion API into Bardeen. Here is a page demonstrating triggers and some example workflows:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bardeen.ai&#x2F;notion-beta" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bardeen.ai&#x2F;notion-beta</a>

I used to love notion and roughly a year ago I started migrating all our documentation into it.<p>Then someone at the company decided to turn our notion workspace into an ERP+CRM+Project Management tool.<p>Now I hate it and moved the docs all back to Gitlab.<p>Never logged back in.

Boost Note is a good Notion alternative I personally like. They have versatile markdown, collaboration features etc. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;boostnote.io&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;boostnote.io&#x2F;</a>

I absolutely love Notion and I&#x27;m excited for the future this API will bring.

I tried Notion for a while, but vendor lock-in makes these tools too risky for me. I&#x27;va ahd a good run with git+md notes. A while ago i successfully migrated to org-mode and not looking back.

That&#x27;s good news. Some services like <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;super.so&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;super.so&#x2F;</a> (which is brilliant) were already using unofficial APIs.

Thankfully Anytype, the Notion killer, will be soon in beta.

Interesting that there&#x27;s apparently no way to update databases. That&#x27;s unfortunate, because otherwise this might be a useful Jamstack data API.

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;anytype.io" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;anytype.io</a><p>Distributed, open source and aiming for public beta in the summer.

Beings using it for a year. Perfect and flexible for developing :) Maybe I try some pythonist adaptation for my homework...

I like the look of this site. Where can I get graphics similar to those cartoons on the page?

why has adguard flagged this site as &quot;dangerous&quot;<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;reports.adguard.com&#x2F;en&#x2F;developers.notion.com&#x2F;report.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;reports.adguard.com&#x2F;en&#x2F;developers.notion.com&#x2F;report....</a>

Congrats Alicia, if you&#x27;re following these comments.

should someone have perhaps roasted their landing page I wonder

It really irks me when the pricing page for any product has any tier that requires contacting &quot;Sales&quot;. If you don&#x27;t want to include pricing for a tier, exclude it from the pricing list or add a &quot;need something else&quot; or &quot;we also offer enterprise plans&quot; after the table. Maybe just a me thing, because I&#x27;m guessing it obviously works based on how often I&#x27;ve come across it.

Nothing is perfect. But if Notion had stylus support and a Linux native client (even Electron), it would be perfect to me.<p>They said in Twitter that stylus support is a priority, but no plans yet for a Linux client.<p>And, the Android app is quite clunky, not as good as Android native Notes apps.

&gt; Start building with the Notion API BETA<p>Okay, but what does it do and why do I want it?<p>Why do sooooo many businesses insist on homepages that tell me literally nothing about the product they provide?