Capacities vs Tana: 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.

Tana Labs, Inc. presents Tana as an agentic meeting platform separate from Tana Outliner. Native video calls bring team members, AI agents, and shared context into one workspace, while decisions, tasks, drafted pull requests, customer journeys, and project plans enter a persistent context graph. The graph can propose merging recurring people, companies, decisions, or topics. Integrations, an API, an MCP server, export, and access controls are included. Spaces can limit content to everyone in a location, the owner, or selected people. The Free plan includes five hosted meetings monthly, one calendar connection, AI transcripts and summaries, editing, and 50 AI queries. Pro adds unlimited hosted meetings, integrations, and full MCP. Business adds SAML SSO, audit logs, compliance options, and data controls.

Tana supports meetings in its native video environment or through a meeting agent for Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet. Its AI agents can use participant tools such as screen sharing, document editing, and canvas creation. During or after a discussion, Tana can create decisions, tasks, project updates, customer journeys, storyboards, proposals, and other artifacts. Calendar connections import events, while integrations support GitHub, Linear, Jira, Slack, HubSpot, Pipedrive, Claude, Cursor, Codex, GitHub Copilot, and Lovable. External agents can read and write workspace content through MCP, with proposal review for changes. The Free plan includes five hosted meetings monthly, one calendar connection, transcripts, summaries, editing, and 50 AI queries. Pro adds unlimited meetings, integrations, and full MCP for $20 early bird or $30 per user monthly.

Tana’s main limitation is its meeting-centered design. It is not an IDE, production-code host, room-system integration, or replacement for tools such as Lovable or Bolt, though it can pass context to coding tools. Teams must manage access settings, connected services, model-provider policies, proposals, and plan-dependent AI usage. The Free plan includes five hosted meetings monthly, one calendar connection, AI transcripts and summaries, editing, and 50 AI queries. Pro adds unlimited hosted meetings, integrations, full MCP, and a meeting agent for Zoom, Teams, and Google Meet. Business adds SAML SSO, audit logs, security controls, and data-residency options. Tana says it does not sell data, advertise with it, or train models on customer content without notice and an opt-out opportunity.