Compare / Roam Research vs Capacities

Roam Research vs Capacities

Roam Research is the pioneering outliner that made bidirectional links and daily notes famous; Capacities is an object-based notes studio where every note is a typed thing — a person, a book, a meeting. Here’s how they compare on pricing, platforms, linking, search, capture and collaboration — and how to decide between them.

What is Roam Research?

Roam Research kicked off the modern “tools for thought” wave in 2020. Every note is an outline of blocks; any block can be referenced, embedded and linked from anywhere else, and the daily-notes page makes capture frictionless. Bidirectional links — see every place a page is mentioned — were its signature idea, since adopted by nearly every tool in this list.

Roam runs as a cloud-hosted graph with web, desktop and mobile apps, and supports multiplayer shared graphs. It costs $15/month or $165/year (no free plan beyond a 31-day trial), with a $500 five-year “Believer” plan. Development has visibly slowed since its heyday — recent years brought mostly backend work rather than new features — which is worth weighing against its still-excellent core outlining model.

What is Capacities?

Capacities organizes your knowledge by what things are. Instead of files in folders, you create objects — people, books, meetings, projects, quotes — each with its own properties and views, connected through backlinks and daily notes. Browsing by object type (every book you’ve noted, every person you’ve met) falls out of the design for free, and a calendar-centric daily view ties it to your day.

It’s a polished, cloud-based app on web, desktop and mobile, with a generous free core plan; Pro (about $10/month billed annually) adds the AI assistant, calendar sync and advanced queries. In July 2026 it shipped a developer API with OAuth, opening it up to integrations. One deliberate omission to know about: there is no collaboration, and the team has said it isn’t planned — Capacities is intentionally a personal tool.

Roam Research vs Capacities at a glance

Pricing and features as of mid-2026 — check each product’s site for current details.

Where Roam Research shines

• The block-reference model remains best-in-class: reference, embed and remix any bullet anywhere, with transclusion that keeps everything in sync.
• Daily notes as the default entry point suits journaling and interstitial note-taking.
• Powerful queries and roam/js customization for advanced users.
• Multiplayer graphs allow real shared workspaces.

Worth knowing: At $15/month with no free plan, it’s among the priciest tools here. Development pace has slowed markedly, and the mobile experience lags competitors. It’s cloud-hosted and proprietary, with no local-first storage for standard graphs.

Where Capacities shines

• Object types with properties give structure without the rigidity of databases or the chaos of free-form notes.
• One of the most polished, beautiful interfaces in the category, consistent across web, desktop and mobile.
• A genuinely useful free plan, with Pro at a mid-pack price.
• Daily notes plus calendar integration make it a natural journal-of-record.

Worth knowing: No collaboration — explicitly not supported and not planned; sharing is read-only page links. Cloud-first and proprietary, with no local-first storage or end-to-end encryption. Power features like queries sit behind Pro, and the object model can feel like ceremony for quick, messy capture.

Which should you choose?

Choose Roam Research if:

• Your thinking is outline-shaped and block references are central to how you write.
• You live in daily notes and build structure bottom-up.
• You’re already invested in a Roam graph and its query workflows.

Choose Capacities if:

• You think in entities — people, books, meetings — and want your tool to as well.
• Interface polish and aesthetics genuinely affect whether you’ll keep using a tool.
• You’re strictly solo and don’t need sharing or teamwork.

A third option: Dexi

If what you actually want is one searchable place for notes, bookmarks, newsletters and RSS — with tags, @mentions and [[wiki links]] that organize themselves as you write, semantic search that finds ideas even when the words don’t match, and an MCP server so Claude and other AI assistants can work with your notes directly — take a look at Dexi. It’s free for up to 1,000 notes, with no app to install.

• Dexi vs Roam Research
• Dexi vs Capacities

Frequently asked questions

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