Capacities vs Heptabase: pricing, features and which to choose

Capacities is a personal knowledge-management and note-taking app made by Capacities Labs GmbH in Germany. Steffen Bleher and Michael von Hohnhorst started the company in 2020, and the product entered public beta in 2022. It runs on the web, Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS and Android. The company describes itself as bootstrapped with no outside investors, while CB Insights records a different funding history involving Media Lab Bayern. Capacities reports more than 50,000 active knowledge workers and a six-person remote European team. Its defining choice is to treat notes as typed objects, such as people, books, projects and meetings, rather than as unstructured pages.

A typical workflow starts in daily notes, imported material, or captured media. Users turn that material into typed objects, add properties, connect entries with backlinks, then retrieve information through full-text search, smart queries, related content and the graph view. Tasks, whiteboards and calendar integration extend the workspace beyond notes. The in-app assistant can use selected notes or search context, and saved conversations become searchable objects. AI Chat Connectors use MCP, allowing supported clients such as ChatGPT, Claude and Cursor to search, read, create and update objects, append content and work with media. Capacities recommends searching or listing first instead of asking an external client to read an entire workspace.

Capacities is cloud-only, lacks end-to-end encryption, and does not offer team accounts or realtime collaboration. Its object model can take time to learn, while regular AI use requires Plus or additional top-ups. Notion offers broader shared workspaces, pages and databases. Obsidian stores local Markdown files and supports plugins, while Capacities provides hosted sync and structured objects. Anytype takes a local-first, open-source-oriented approach, unlike Capacities' hosted service. Tana focuses on structured outliner workflows and team use, whereas Capacities is more explicitly personal. Pick Capacities if you want an individual knowledge base built around typed objects, linked notes and optional AI.

Heptabase is made by Hepta Platforms, Inc. and is an actively developed visual knowledge-management service. Its focus is research and learning rather than general project management. The product combines reusable cards, PDFs, journals, databases, tags, research imports, AI chat, and agent workflows. Desktop storage has local-first and offline behavior, while optional cloud sync works across unlimited devices. Mobile supports capture and reading. Heptabase is proprietary software, not an open-source project, and its hosted design means cloud processing remains part of the service even when one device holds a local database. The company describes its early-bird offer as ending on August 31, 2023, with version 1.0 launching at that time.

A typical Heptabase workflow starts with PDFs, web or video content, notes, and highlights. Documents can be parsed or processed with OCR, after which selected passages become reusable cards. Users arrange cards on nested whiteboards, connect them with tags, and search the resulting knowledge base. Cards can appear on multiple boards, which suits projects that revisit the same source material. AI Tutor, chat, transcripts, Insight Generator, and voice-note features add assistance around collected material. Users can publish or share selected spaces. PDF extraction creates text for AI, including scanned text through OCR, but it does not automatically create highlight cards. Users must select passages when they want highlight cards.

Heptabase's main tradeoff is cost and service dependence. Premium and Premium+ meter AI work through monthly credits, there is no end-to-end encryption or supported self-hosted Heptabase server, and server-side indexes contain content chunks, metadata, and vectors. Obsidian offers local Markdown and optional Sync, while Heptabase provides a stronger built-in PDF, card, and whiteboard workflow. Scrintal is stronger for real-time collaboration, templates, and tablet ease, while Heptabase is more research-focused. Notion is better for team databases and project management. Logseq offers an open-source, outliner-oriented alternative with stronger local ownership. Pick Heptabase if spatial source synthesis matters more than local ownership or low subscription cost.