Free vs Pro
The free tier is genuinely useful on its own, and Pro unlocks the power features when you're ready. Everything you buy unlocks the same Pro feature set — you just choose how to pay.
The Free Tier
Everything you need to think and write in a single space:
- The Inbox — an always-free home for your notes, with no time limit
- The full Markdown editor with live highlighting and preview
- Backlinks, the knowledge graph, the co-occurrence matrix and link predictions — computed over the
[[ ]]links you wrote yourself - All three views: Note, Node and Theme
- Semantic relations — related notes and tag suggestions, worked out entirely on your own device: no network, no cost
- Quick Note, templates, tags, import and export, encrypted backups, iCloud sync and the trash
- Filtering — by tag, node or theme, but one condition at a time (stacking them is Pro; see below)
Free is not a trial
The Inbox has no time limit, and the editor, backlinks, the graph, the matrix, the canvas and sync all work inside it. Pro adds multiple projects, AI, agent access over MCP on the Mac and cross-filtering — the one limit inside the Inbox itself is that filters apply one condition at a time.
The line is drawn at who makes the links
The analysis tools — graph, matrix, link predictions — are entirely free, but what they analyse are the connections you made by hand: the [[ ]] you typed, plus the literal matches you backfill in one click (backfilling is free too; it is not AI).
What needs Pro is having the AI find what to link: Smart Node scanning a project to propose concepts, backlink suggestions surfacing notes related in meaning but worded differently, Smart Theme doing the affinity mapping.
Put another way: analysis of a network you built by hand is free; having the AI build it for you is Pro.
Pro-locked Projects Stay Readable
Free users can still open and read a project that needs Pro — you can zoom, pan, and view notes. Only editing (moving cards, regrouping, changing content) prompts you to unlock. Your notes always stay yours: you can export them — a note, a selection or the whole project, as Markdown or PDF — and move notes back to the Inbox at any time, with or without Pro.
What Pro Unlocks
Pro is for people who organize across many topics and want AI in the loop:
| Feature | What it does |
|---|---|
| AI Features | All AI helpers — smart node creation, summaries, automatic titles, enrichment, tidy up, semantic suggestions |
| Multiple Projects | Create projects beyond the single free Inbox, and sync them across your devices; importing a folder as a new project, or into an existing one, falls under this too |
| Agent Access (MCP) | On the Mac, let AI agents you authorise read your notes over MCP — read-only and off by default |
| Bulk Move | Move notes out of the Inbox into projects in bulk |
| Cross-filtering | Filter by tags, nodes and themes at the same time (see below) |
Cross-filtering
The free tier filters by one condition at a time:
- At most one of tags, nodes and themes can be active
- Tags and nodes, the two multi-select dimensions, allow one selection each
Pro lifts that entirely, letting you stack all three — "notes in theme A, tagged to-read, mentioning a given node".
Unaffected: sorting, search, the trash and project scope, plus the backlinks filter inside a node's detail view — those stay complete on the free tier.
Locked options are greyed out but still clickable, telling you why rather than hiding: you should be able to see what Pro does.
Bring Your Own Key
Pro unlocks the AI capability; the AI itself runs on your own provider API key. Unlock Pro first, then add your key — see AI Setup.
Paying for It
A monthly subscription, a yearly subscription, or a one-time purchase — all unlocking exactly the same Pro. Pricing, Universal purchase, subscription management and restoring are covered in Plans & Pricing.
Next Steps
- Plans & Pricing — The three ways to pay, and subscription management
- Unlock Pro — Where the unlock screen appears and what tapping does
- AI Setup — Configure AI after unlocking