Looking for a Capacities alternative? Discover powerful options like Anytype, Reflect Notes, and Kortex—each offering a unique approach to secure, structured, and AI-enhanced note-taking. Whether you value local-first privacy, intuitive object-based organization, or smart AI features, these tools are worth exploring.
So you’re seeking Capacities alternatives, and you’re wondering what application is most similar to Capacities when it comes to managing your notes, daily notes, objects, AI chats, and more.
We’ve put together a comprehensive list of Capacities alternatives that we believe to be easy, approachable, and something that makes moving away from Capacities much easier, if you’re not gelling with it for some reason.
Capacities offers a clean and sleek alternative to PKM tools, which gives you the balance of PKM whilst the clean look and appeal of Notion, which is the reason why many people like it as a good middle ground. But Capacities might not be attractive to you for a variety of reasons.
You might not like object based note-taking - The first of those is object-based note-taking might not be right for you, and this might be tricky to want to move away from
You might not like how Capacities structures things: Many people might not gel well with Capacities way of organizing their account and bringing things together.
So we’ve put together a few alternatives that meet both of those criteria. Some of them do have object-based note-taking, and some of them have a different style of structure and organization than what Capacities has.
Anytype is one of the most similar apps to Capacities in terms of features.
The reason being is because they support object-based note-taking, which is something that helps you structure your account, creating almost a template for each of the notes that you create. This can be tricky to start up, but incredibly valuable once you’ve got it going, as it’ll help determine what things are in your account. And in the advent of artificial intelligence, it might be considerably easier in the future to work out what something is and where something is in your account.
Anytype focuses itself on privacy, security, and having an ethos around being a trusted brand that helps you to store your notes locally and securely — which is a plus that Capacities doesn’t have as much focus on.
But Anytype can also offer their user a good solid experience for connecting notes up and has more database functionality than initially people think, with six or seven different types of database views. The comparison with Anytype and Capacities is that it’s a lot more difficult to get started on Anytype than Capacities in terms of a learning approach. But the benefit is you get a lot more security, better local support, and overall a better build quality of application, in our opinion.
Reflect Notes is a note-taking application that looks really attractive. Again, like Capacities, it has that balance between being a PKM tool and being approachable, which is really nice. It also has Kindle and Readwise integrations, but it is locked under premium. So this is very much a premium software. So if you’re looking and you were using the Capacities free setup, then this might not be suitable for you.
But it has less of a focus on object-based note-taking. There are things called tags which can help you to structure notes, but in a much more relaxed fashion. It doesn’t feel as intense as others. It also has artificial intelligence weaved through it with custom prompts and abilities — things like this can really help you save time with the small errands across your workday. So Reflect Notes is much more suited to those who want a secure but more premium and AI-focused alternative to Capacities.
Kortex AI is something that we checked out more recently. It’s developed by a YouTuber called Dan Koe, and it is really similar in style and look to Capacities, and it calls itself the AI-powered second brain. The application is easy to use and does come with similar features like chat-based AI which can help you to narrow down your notes.
The difference with Kortex is that you can switch between large language models, which makes it easier to be able to switch between a model that’s more suitable for you. You can do that in Capacities to some extent by using the OpenAI API key, but when it comes to exact science, Kortex does a much better job.
Kortex doesn’t have object-based note-taking but it does have tags, which can help you set things up really easily. Many people are liking Kortex for that balance. It’s also free and does have a premium pricing if you decide to increase how you want to use it, and the focus on AI features — as you’re limited in the free plan with how many AI requests you can do.
Amplenote is really easy to use, and allows you to better manage your nodes alongside your tasks and countdown. It’s not the most attractive in comparison with Amplenote, but what it will do is be available on all devices, work well offline, and have that good balance of traditional note-taking alongside task management.
Well worth consideration for somebody that is looking for something slightly alternative to the likes of Capacities.
Another consideration is Obsidian. This one is a locally-stored note-taking application which can help you to plan, which can help you to take notes, and easily manage your notes in the graph, with bidirectional nodes, in the same capacities as you can with Capacities. But the difference is that it’s very much free.
If you have Obsidian, it’s $4 a month, and you can use it on other devices. But luckily, Obsidian is a great alternative. It’s basic, free, secure, and easy to use. It’s everything stored locally in your device via your Obsidian folder. It’s a consideration for somebody that didn’t like the upgrades inside of your application.
Mem is another note-taking application that’s designed for teams. It helps you to take your notes and chat with your notes using artificial intelligence. You can see related notes and bring together collections.
The more recent Mem allows you faster collaboration and speed, but it’s a sort of interesting balance between trying to be a PKM tool and more of a document management tool for teams to collaborate on. But primarily, it has an AI-focused experience, which many people find a good consideration if you’re looking into that market.
So, time to narrow down your options for note-taking choices:
I’d have a look at Anytype if you’re looking for the simple object-based note-taking alternative, and you want an easy-to-use, local-first application. Anytype takes a little bit more time to learn, but it’s a consideration if object-based note-taking is something you don’t want to move away from.
If privacy is a concern, then I’d take a look at Reflect Notes and Anytype as well, because they both have a secure, focused base and ethos as a company.
If you’re looking for something AI-centric, then I’d take a look at Mem or Kortex, which are both great alternatives with some good AI chats. Kortex is a little bit more optional in how you structure the artificial intelligence model, but both are really strong alternatives in the market.