Capacities Review, Pricing & Alternatives (2026)

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 routes its AI features through enterprise APIs from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Gemini, xAI, Mistral, DeepSeek and Moonshot. Users can choose a provider or Auto, and the model picker marks EU-hosted options. Local and custom models are not supported inside Capacities, while the earlier bring-your-own-key option was removed in release 69. In May 2026, the service added provider selection and recurring tasks. The July release added API 2.0 with REST CRUD, OAuth 2.1 with PKCE, a TypeScript SDK and weblink analysis. September brought PDF analysis, version history and more CalDAV calendars. October releases added early-access audio recording, transcription and summaries for Believer subscribers.

Basic is free and includes unlimited spaces, objects, blocks and custom object types, synchronization, import and export, full-text search, offline use and view-only sharing. Media uploads cover 5 GB total, then 100 MB per month. Pro costs $9.99 per month and adds AI, whiteboards, tasks, smart queries, calendar integration, media analysis, Readwise and Kindle imports, version history, connectors, public API access and unlimited media under fair use. Believer starts at $12.49 per month and adds beta access. Pro and Believer include a light monthly AI budget. Plus is an optional add-on with a larger budget and top-ups, priced at $8.33 per month when billed annually.

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.