Tana vs Capacities: supertags or objects in 2026?
Capacities vs Tana is the structured-notes matchup: both reject folders for typed things — a #meeting supertag in Tana, a Meeting object in Capacities — and both are cloud apps with free tiers and a paid plan for the serious user. The differences are in what each charges for and who it’s for: Tana is an AI-first outliner metered by credits — and, since March 2026, one of two products sharing the name; Capacities is a polished, deliberately single-player studio. Every number below is dated, because both price lists moved this year.
The short answer: Capacities for structured personal notes — objects, daily notes and free sync in a beautiful app, with Pro at $9.99/month. Tana if you’ll genuinely use what its subscription buys: the botless meeting agent, voice capture, live queries and real-time shared workspaces — at $8–14/month for Tana Outliner. The common mistake is paying for Tana as a personal notes app, or expecting Capacities to ever do teams.
- Choose Tana if supertags and live queries fit how you think, meeting transcription and voice capture would replace tools you already pay for, or you need a real-time workspace with colleagues — and metered AI credits are acceptable.
- Choose Capacities if you want typed notes in a low-friction app that syncs free across every device, a bundled AI assistant on Pro, an API and MCP server for your own agents — and you are strictly solo.
| Tana | Capacities | |
|---|---|---|
| Data model | Outliner; supertags turn nodes into typed objects with fields | Typed objects with properties, daily notes, calendar |
| Price | Tana Outliner: Plus $8/mo, Pro $14/mo (22% off yearly) | Pro $9.99/mo (annual; $11.99 monthly); Believer from $12.49 |
| Free plan | Yes — 500 AI credits/mo, 3 workspaces, 0.5 GB | Yes — unlimited notes, sync; 5 GB media |
| AI | Meeting agent, voice agent, AI chat — credit-metered | Assistant on Pro; Pro+ add-on buys more AI budget |
| Collaboration | Real-time shared workspaces | None — stated as not planned |
| Offline | Personal workspaces since late 2025 | Cached per device, merges on reconnect |
| Agents | Local MCP server in the desktop app | Hosted MCP server + REST API with OAuth |
| Export | Markdown or JSON; supertags flatten | Markdown; object types flatten |
As of September 2026 — Tana Outliner plans per outliner.tana.inc (re-read Sep 19, 2026), Tana release notes Aug 28, 2026 (voice agent, natural-language search, daily briefs); Capacities Release 69, Aug 2026.
What is Tana?
Tana’s big idea is the supertag: slap #meeting or #person on any outline node and it gains fields, views and behavior — your notes become a queryable database without leaving the outline. Live queries collect matching nodes anywhere in your workspace, which makes Tana feel like Roam and Notion fused together.
Since 2025 Tana has pivoted hard into AI: a meeting agent that transcribes calls without a bot, voice capture that structures itself, semantic search, and a local MCP server so AI assistants can work with your workspace. In March 2026 the company split in two — the notes tool became Tana Outliner (outliner.tana.inc, the product compared here), while the plain “Tana” name moved to a separate agentic meeting platform. Outliner pricing as of September 2026: Free with 500 AI credits a month, Plus at $8/month and Pro at $14/month (22% off billed yearly; students, academics and NGOs get 50% off). It’s cloud-based with web, desktop and capture-focused mobile apps.
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.
Tana vs Capacities at a glance
| Tana | Capacities | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Plus $8/mo; Pro $14/mo (22% off yearly) — Tana Outliner, Sep 2026 | Pro ~$9.99/mo annual ($11.99 monthly); Believer ~$12.49/mo |
| Free plan | Yes — 500 AI credits/mo, 3 workspaces, 0.5 GB | Yes — generous core plan |
| Platforms | Web, macOS, Windows; iOS/Android capture apps | Web, macOS, Windows, Linux, iOS, Android |
| Storage model | Cloud | Cloud (offline support, not local-first) |
| Editing model | Outliner with supertags (typed nodes, fields, live queries) | Object-based pages with properties, blocks and daily notes |
| Backlinks & wiki links | Yes — references and backlinks | Yes — backlinks between objects |
| Graph view | No traditional graph view | Yes — per-object connection views |
| Search | Full-text, structured queries, semantic AI search | Full-text; AI search on Pro |
| Web capture | Mobile capture apps, voice capture | Weblink reader and mobile share |
| Email-in capture | No | No |
| RSS / feeds | No | No |
| Team collaboration | Yes — real-time shared workspaces | No — explicitly not planned |
| Publishing & sharing | Shared/published nodes | Read-only share links for pages |
| AI assistant access | Deep native AI (credit-metered) + local MCP server in the desktop app | Built-in AI assistant (Pro); developer API (OAuth) since 2026 |
| Offline access | Partial — desktop app, personal workspaces | Partial |
| Open source | No | No |
| End-to-end encryption | No | No |
| Data export | Markdown or JSON workspace export (supertags flatten) | Markdown export |
Pricing and features as of mid-2026 — check each product’s site for current details.
New to personal knowledge management? Start here: choosing a second brain app — every tool on this page, with a pick for each kind of thinker.
Supertags vs object types — same idea, different ceremony
Tana’s structure lives inside the outline: add #meeting to any bullet and it inherits fields, views and behaviour; a live query anywhere in the workspace then collects every meeting with a given attendee or date. Structure emerges from typing and is queryable to a degree nothing else in the category matches — which is also why Tana has a real learning curve and why its documentation reads like a database manual.
Capacities starts from the object rather than the outline: you create a Meeting, it has the properties its type defines, and browsing every meeting (or every book, or every person) falls out of the design without writing a query. Daily notes and a calendar anchor the experience. It is less powerful than supertags and much easier to live in; “project management in Capacities” is a real workflow on Pro (tasks, calendar sync, queries), but it is a well-organised notebook, not a Tana-style database. If the other object-first app is on your list too, we’ve compared Capacities against Anytype and both against Obsidian — Obsidian vs Tana, Obsidian vs Capacities.
Tana pricing vs Capacities pricing — what you actually pay
This is where the two diverge most, and the numbers are dated because Tana’s are labelled provisional. As of September 2026:
- Tana: first, which Tana — in March 2026 the notes tool became Tana Outliner (outliner.tana.inc) and the plain name moved to a separate meeting platform whose $20–30 “Pro” is what older comparisons quote. Tana Outliner is Free (500 AI credits a month, 3 workspaces, 0.5 GB), Plus at $8/month or Pro at $14/month, 22% less billed yearly, with 50% off for students, academics and NGOs. Everything AI is metered by credits, and the free tier cannot buy more.
- Capacities: Free covers unlimited notes and objects, custom types, sync across devices and export, capped at 5 GB of media (then 100 MB of new uploads a month). Pro is $9.99/month billed annually ($11.99 monthly) and adds the AI assistant, tasks, calendar integration, queries, formulas, unlimited media and API access; Believer starts at $12.49/month for early access. New in August 2026: optional Pro+ and Believer+ add-ons (about $8.33/month, annual) that buy a larger AI budget, replacing the old bring-your-own-key model.
Read that as: Capacities Pro at $9.99 sits between Tana Outliner’s Plus and Pro, and both free plans are usable — the difference is what the money buys. Capacities bundles its assistant; Tana meters everything by credits, and only wins the price comparison if the meeting agent replaces a transcription tool you already pay for — then the math changes.
AI — metered credits vs a bundled assistant, and MCP on both
Tana is AI-native by design: a meeting agent that transcribes Zoom, Teams and Meet calls without a bot, and since August 2026 a background voice agent that captures and files while you talk, natural-language search across the workspace, and daily briefs delivered to Slack. All of it draws on the credits that define its plans, which is the point: Tana is selling an AI workspace with notes in it.
Capacities bundles a more modest AI assistant on Pro and, since August 2026, lets you top up its budget rather than plug in your own key. Its real opening is to outside agents: a full REST API with OAuth (API 2.0) and an official hosted MCP server that connects Claude or any MCP client to a chosen space. Tana has an official MCP server too, running locally inside the desktop app. If the AI you want is Tana’s own, Tana; if it’s an assistant you already use, both work and Capacities is cheaper.
Collaboration and project management — real-time vs never
Tana is a multiplayer tool: shared workspaces with live co-editing, roles, and a Business tier built for teams. If your notes are shared with colleagues, this section ends the comparison. Capacities has put in writing that team features are not planned — it is a personal tool, and the sharing ceiling is read-only page links. That focus is part of why the solo experience is so coherent, and no amount of waiting changes it.
For a solo user managing projects, Capacities Pro does the job — tasks, a calendar view, queries over your project objects — but without Tana’s live queries and supertag inheritance. Capacities publishes an official “Switching from Tana to Capacities” guide, which tells you who is moving in which direction in 2026.
Offline, export and switching
Both are cloud services. Tana added an offline mode in late 2025 (full editing in personal workspaces, read access to shared ones); Capacities caches your notes on each device and merges edits on reconnect. Neither is end-to-end encrypted and neither can be self-hosted — if that matters, the object-based app with both is Anytype.
Leaving: Tana exports a whole workspace to Markdown or JSON; supertags and their fields flatten to text and node references lose their targets. Capacities exports Markdown; object types and properties flatten the same way. Tana → Capacities has that official guide (import the Markdown, re-type the objects); Capacities → Tana is a Markdown import with the same manual re-tagging. Trial-import a copy either way.
Where Tana shines
- Supertags are the most elegant structure system in the category — schema, views and queries grow naturally out of plain outlining.
- The AI feature set is the deepest here: botless meeting transcription, voice capture, agents, and semantic search.
- A local MCP server inside the desktop app makes it one of the few tools built for AI-assistant workflows.
- Real-time multiplayer workspaces work well for teams.
Worth knowing: AI usage is credit-metered on every plan and the free tier is thin (500 AI credits, 3 workspaces, 0.5 GB); serious use means Plus at $8/month or Pro at $14/month. Cloud-only and proprietary: no local files, no end-to-end encryption; export is Markdown or JSON, and supertags and fields flatten on the way out. The structure-first approach has a real learning curve; casual note-takers may find it over-engineered.
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 Tana if:
- You want notes with fields, views and queries — a database that emerges from writing.
- Meeting transcription and voice capture are core to your workflow.
- You’ll actually use enough AI to justify the price.
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
Both apps make you decide what a thing is before you write about it, and neither collects anything from the web for you. If a lot of what you want to keep arrives as articles, newsletters and feeds, Dexi starts there: everything you capture from your browser, inbox or RSS becomes a note beside the ones you type, #tags, @mentions and [[wiki links]] typed inline do the structuring, inline key:: value properties feed table and card views when you want them, and an MCP server lets Claude work with your notes directly — no credits. Free for up to 1,000 notes, $5/month after, below either app’s paid plan.
Frequently asked questions
Is Tana or Capacities cheaper?
Close, since Tana split its products. Capacities’ free plan covers unlimited notes and sync (5 GB of media) and Pro is $9.99/month billed annually ($11.99 monthly). Tana Outliner’s free tier is 500 AI credits a month, 3 workspaces and 0.5 GB; Plus is $8/month and Pro $14/month, 22% less billed yearly, with AI metered by credits on every plan. The $20–30 “Pro” quoted elsewhere is the separate Tana meeting platform. Prices as of September 2026.
Can I switch from Tana to Capacities?
Yes — Capacities publishes an official "Switching from Tana to Capacities" guide. Export your Tana workspace to Markdown, import the folder into Capacities, and assign object types to what arrives: supertags and their fields flatten to text on the way out of Tana, so the structure is rebuilt by hand. Run a trial import on a copy first.
Does Capacities do project management?
At a personal scale, yes: Pro adds tasks, calendar integration and queries over your project objects, and many people run their projects in it. It has no live queries, supertag inheritance or team workspaces — if projects mean colleagues, Tana is the one built for that.
Is Tana worth it over Capacities?
Only if you will use what the money buys: the botless meeting agent, the voice agent, live queries over supertagged nodes, and real-time shared workspaces. If you mainly write and organise personal notes, Capacities does that more pleasantly for a similar price, with a bundled assistant instead of a credit meter and a more generous free plan.
Do Tana and Capacities work offline?
Partially, both. Tana has had an offline mode since late 2025 — full editing in personal workspaces, read-only for shared ones. Capacities downloads your notes to each device, stores edits locally when offline and syncs on reconnect. Neither is local-first in the files-on-disk sense, and neither is end-to-end encrypted.
Which is better for personal knowledge management, Tana or Capacities?
Capacities for most individuals: typed objects, daily notes, free sync and a bundled assistant, with no team ambitions to dilute it. Tana for people whose personal knowledge management is really a queryable database with AI on top — and who will pay for it.
Collect, connect and search everything you read — free, no credit card required.
Try Dexi free