Short answer: Obsidian is the strongest Heptabase alternative for most people, because its free Canvas view gives you whiteboards on top of plain markdown files you own. Kosmik is the closest swap if you mostly collect PDFs, videos and web pages onto boards. Capacities and Tana suit people who want structure more than space, and Logseq is the pick if you want open source. If you are leaving because your boards stopped getting updated, the last section is the one to read.
Why people look for a Heptabase alternative
Heptabase is a thoughtful product. Cards live on whiteboards, the same card can sit on several boards, and PDF highlights turn into cards you can arrange next to your own notes. People who leave it usually give one of four reasons, and each one points to a different replacement.
There is no free plan
After a 7-day trial, Heptabase Pro costs $8.99 a month on yearly billing, and the vendor says yearly saves 25%, which puts month to month at about $11.99. Premium is $17.99 and Premium+ is $53.99, both at yearly rates. For a tool you might use twice a week, that is a real line item, and several alternatives start at zero.
AI runs on credits
Heptabase's AI agent is metered. Pro includes 100 AI credits a month and only Gemini models. Premium raises that to 1,800 credits and adds GPT and Claude. If asking questions of your material is the main reason you pay, a credit meter changes how often you ask.
Spatial thinking takes upkeep
A whiteboard is only useful while you keep arranging it. Many people build three beautiful boards in the first month, then fall behind as the project speeds up. The tool did not fail. The maintenance simply stopped fitting the week.
The notes are not ordinary files
Heptabase stores data locally for offline use and syncs it, but it is a closed, proprietary app. People who want every note as a markdown file they can open in any editor end up on Obsidian or Logseq.
Heptabase alternatives compared
US list prices read off each vendor's pricing page in September 2026. Yearly rates are marked, because in this category the yearly discount is often 20 to 25%.
| Tool | Price (US, Sept 2026) | Whiteboards | AI over your material | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Heptabase | Pro $8.99/mo, Premium $17.99/mo, Premium+ $53.99/mo, all billed yearly. 7-day trial, no free plan. | Core feature, cards reused across boards | AI agent with 100 credits on Pro, 1,800 on Premium | Researchers who map ideas and annotate PDFs spatially |
| Obsidian | Free for personal use. Sync $4/user/mo annual, $5 monthly. Commercial license $50/user/year. | Canvas, built in | Community plugins with your own API key | People who want boards on top of markdown files they own |
| Kosmik | Pro $14.99/mo, or $11.99/mo billed yearly. Ambassador $20.99/mo, or $16.99 yearly. 1-week trial. | Infinite canvas with a built-in browser | Unlimited AI requests on Pro, including auto-tagging | Visual collectors of PDFs, images, video and web pages |
| Capacities | Free Basic plan. Pro $9.99/mo. AI Power-Up add-on $8.33/mo billed yearly. | No, object-based notes | AI assistant on Pro, larger budget with the add-on | Notes organized as typed objects: people, books, meetings |
| Tana | Free tier with 50 AI queries. Pro $30/mo, or $20/mo on the annual early bird rate. | No, outline and database views | Yes, metered on lower tiers | Structured thinkers who want supertags and typed data |
| Logseq | Free and open source. Optional sync from $5/mo. | Basic whiteboards | Plugins only | Outliner fans who want open source and local files |
| MentalClone | Starter 79 PLN/mo (about $21), or about $11/mo billed yearly. Professional 199 PLN/mo (about $54). Billing runs in PLN. | No | Built around it: ask questions, answers come only from your uploads | People whose knowledge sits in documents they wrote, not in boards |
One thing the table cannot show: Heptabase still wins on reusing one card across many boards and on turning PDF highlights into movable cards. If that is how you think, none of these replace it exactly, and staying may be the right call.
Which Heptabase alternative fits your work?
You want whiteboards and file ownership: Obsidian
Obsidian's Canvas lets you drop notes, images and PDFs onto a board, and every note underneath is a markdown file on your disk. It is free for personal use, and the plugin ecosystem covers most gaps. The trade is setup time. You assemble the workflow yourself, which is exactly why some people moved to Heptabase in the first place. Our Obsidian alternative comparison covers where that setup cost starts to hurt.
You collect more than you write: Kosmik
Kosmik puts a browser inside the canvas, so web pages, videos and PDFs land on the board without a trip through downloads. AI requests are unlimited on Pro. At $11.99 a month on yearly billing it costs a little more than Heptabase Pro, but the unmetered AI closes much of that gap if you use it daily.
You think in structure: Capacities or Tana
If your boards were mostly a way to group things by type, a structured tool does that job with less dragging. Capacities treats each note as an object with properties and has a free plan. Tana goes further with supertags and costs more. Neither is visual in the Heptabase sense.
You want open source: Logseq
Logseq is free, keeps notes as local files and has basic whiteboards. It is closer to Roam than to Heptabase, so expect an outliner first and a canvas second. The Logseq alternatives guide and our Roam Research alternative comparison cover that family of tools in more depth.
When the real problem is the boards themselves
Here is a pattern worth checking against your own account. Open Heptabase and look at the date your most important board was last rearranged. If it was months ago, while you kept writing reports, proposals and research notes elsewhere, then the thing that stopped working is the habit of mapping, and a different canvas will not bring it back.
The alternative is a tool that does not need the map. You upload the material you already produce, the PDFs you annotated, your drafts, interview transcripts, a Heptabase export, and you ask it questions in plain English. "Which sources disagreed with the pricing model?" pulls the passages from whichever files hold them. That is what an AI second brain is for. MentalClone answers only from your uploads and tells you when your material does not cover the question, so nothing is filled in from general knowledge.
It is a different kind of thinking tool. Heptabase helps you see how ideas connect before you have them straight. A question-answering archive helps you get back what you already worked out. Plenty of people use both: a board while a project is young, and an archive once the writing piles up. And when you are stuck at the very start of a project, with a blank board and no angle yet, it can help to generate a first batch of ideas to arrange before any mapping begins.
How to move out of Heptabase
Export before you decide anything. Heptabase can export your cards as markdown, which Obsidian and Logseq read directly, and whiteboard layouts do not survive the trip into most other tools, so take screenshots of the boards you care about. Keep the subscription running until the new setup has handled two real working weeks.
Then move only what you reopen. Project boards and the cards behind them usually matter. Old journal cards rarely do. Test the new tool with a question from this week's work, not a demo question. If it helps, move the rest. If not, you have lost an afternoon.
Questions people ask before switching
Is Heptabase free?
No. Heptabase has no permanent free plan. It offers a 7-day trial, then Pro costs $8.99 a month billed yearly, about $11.99 billed monthly, and Premium is $17.99 a month billed yearly, per heptabase.com in September 2026. Obsidian, Capacities, Tana and Logseq all have free tiers if cost is the deciding factor.
Is Heptabase worth it?
Heptabase is worth it if you genuinely think on whiteboards and annotate a lot of PDFs, because reusing cards across boards is something few tools do as well. It is harder to justify if your boards have gone stale or you mainly want AI answers, since AI is metered at 100 credits a month on Pro.
Is Heptabase open source?
No. Heptabase is proprietary, closed-source software. It stores data locally so it works offline, but you cannot inspect or self-host the code. Logseq is the main open-source alternative, and Obsidian, while not open source, keeps every note as a plain markdown file on your own disk.
Is Heptabase better than Obsidian?
Heptabase is better if you want whiteboards and PDF annotation that work without setup. Obsidian is better if you want free personal use, notes as files you own and a huge plugin library. Obsidian's Canvas covers basic boards, but it does not reuse one card across several boards the way Heptabase does.
Does Heptabase work offline?
Yes. Heptabase keeps your notes and files on your device, so you can read and edit them without a connection, and changes sync when you are back online. Obsidian and Logseq also work fully offline because they store notes as local files. Web-first tools, including MentalClone, need a connection.
What is the cheapest Heptabase alternative?
Logseq and Obsidian are free for personal use, and Capacities has a free Basic plan. Among paid tools, Capacities Pro is $9.99 a month and Kosmik Pro is $11.99 a month billed yearly. MentalClone Starter is about $11 a month billed yearly, with unlimited documents and questions. See the plans for the details.
The short version
Want boards and file ownership, pick Obsidian. Collect media onto a canvas, Kosmik. Prefer structure, Capacities or Tana. Want open source, Logseq. If your boards went quiet while your documents kept growing, stop looking for a better canvas and point a question at what you already wrote. Paste a page into the box at the top of this article and ask it something you would otherwise go looking for.