Heptabase Pricing and Cost of Each Plan

Short answer: Heptabase has no free plan. After a 7-day trial, Pro costs $8.99 a month billed yearly, Premium $17.99 and Premium+ $53.99. Paying month to month costs about a third more, roughly $11.99, $23.99 and $71.99. The plans differ mainly in AI credits (100, 1,800 and 8,100 a month) and in PDF handling: unlimited PDF uploads and OCR start at Premium.

Most people look up Heptabase pricing at one of two moments: the trial is about to end, or they have been on Pro for a while and keep running out of AI credits halfway through the month. Both are buying decisions, so this page sticks to what you pay, what each plan unlocks, and when Heptabase is the wrong tool for the money. Prices are taken from the Heptabase pricing page, where the yearly toggle is selected by default.

Heptabase pricing by plan

Heptabase advertises yearly billing as a 25% saving, which is where the monthly figures come from: $8.99 is 75% of $11.99. If you are not sure the app will stick, one or two months at the monthly rate cost less than committing to $107.88 up front and quitting in March.

What each Heptabase plan includes

Pro is the knowledge base itself: unlimited notes, whiteboards and tags, unlimited image uploads, unlimited collaborator invites, PDF highlights and YouTube transcripts. Its AI agent runs on Gemini models only, and you get 100 credits a month. That is enough to try the AI, not to rely on it daily.

Premium is the plan for people who work from PDFs. It adds unlimited PDF uploads, unlimited PDF parsing with OCR, unlimited Q&A with basic AI models, a choice of GPT, Claude or Gemini for the agent, and the AI tutor. The credit allowance jumps to 1,800. Heptabase pitches it at learners and researchers.

Premium+ keeps every Premium feature and changes only the AI economics: 8,100 credits a month and a 33% discount on extra credits. It makes sense only if you burn through Premium's allowance every month and buy top-ups.

Apps are available for Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS, Android and the web, and invited collaborators do not need their own subscription to work with you.

Is there a Heptabase free plan?

No. Heptabase offers a 7-day trial and then requires a paid plan to keep working. That is unusual in this category, where Obsidian, Logseq, Capacities and Tana all have a free tier. The upside is that the company is funded by its users, not by upselling a crippled free version. The downside is that you have one week to decide whether whiteboard-based thinking suits you.

Heptabase cost for students and researchers

The pricing page does not list a student or education discount, so plan on paying the standard rate unless Heptabase tells you otherwise after you ask. For a graduate student the realistic choice is Pro at $107.88 a year if you mostly read and map ideas, or Premium at $215.88 a year if you upload scanned papers and want OCR and the AI tutor. Premium is the plan built for heavy PDF work, and its price shows it.

If what you actually want from those PDFs is to test yourself before an exam, a dedicated tool that turns a PDF into a practice quiz does that job directly instead of through a general AI agent.

How Heptabase AI credits work in practice

Credits are the real price lever. The pricing page lists the monthly allowance per plan but not the cost of each individual action, so the only reliable way to size it is to watch your own usage during the trial. A practical rule: if you use the AI agent a few times a week, Pro's 100 credits will run out. If you ask questions across your PDFs most days, Premium is the floor, and the unlimited basic-model Q&A on Premium matters more than the credit number.

Premium+ is a bulk discount, not a feature upgrade. At three times the Premium price you get four and a half times the credits and a third off top-ups. Run the math against your actual top-up spend before moving up.

Is Heptabase worth the price?

For visual thinkers, yes. Nothing else in this price range lets you drag cards, highlights and PDF excerpts onto a whiteboard and see how ideas connect. If you write a thesis, plan a book or map a research field, $9 to $18 a month is a fair price for a tool you open every day.

It is worth less if your notes are mostly linear text, if you rarely use whiteboards, or if you came for the AI. Heptabase's AI is a helper inside a visual workspace. It answers questions about your cards and PDFs, but it is not designed to answer in your voice or to let other people ask your material questions.

Heptabase vs NotebookLM and Obsidian on price

For the full Google side of that comparison, see our NotebookLM pricing and limits breakdown. If you are weighing Obsidian against paying for Heptabase, the Obsidian alternative comparison covers the free-app route in detail.

When Heptabase is the wrong thing to pay for

A common pattern: someone signs up for Heptabase to organize years of work documents, uploads the PDFs, and then realizes they never arrange them on a whiteboard. What they wanted was to ask the archive a question ("what did I tell the client about rollout timing?") and get an answer that sounds like them. That is a different product.

That is the job MentalClone does. You upload your reports, notes, Word files and scans, and it answers only from those documents, in your tone, quoting the files it used. You can also share a link so a client or colleague asks your clone directly. It costs more than Heptabase Pro, 199 PLN a month (about $54) or about $27 a month billed yearly on Starter, and it has no whiteboards. You pay for a private library that answers like you, not for a canvas. Try the three-question demo on your own writing before deciding.

If you already decided to leave Heptabase and want the wider field, our Heptabase alternative comparison covers Kosmik, Capacities, Tana, Logseq and Obsidian side by side, and the LiquidText alternative page is the better read if PDF annotation is the main reason you pay.

Questions people ask about Heptabase pricing

How much does Heptabase cost?

Heptabase Pro costs $8.99 a month billed yearly ($107.88 a year) or about $11.99 billed monthly. Premium is $17.99 a month yearly, about $23.99 monthly. Premium+ is $53.99 a month yearly, about $71.99 monthly. Every plan starts with a 7-day trial.

Is Heptabase free?

No. Heptabase has no free plan. New accounts get a 7-day trial, and after that you need Pro, Premium or Premium+ to keep using the app. Collaborators you invite can join your work without paying for their own plan.

What is the difference between Heptabase Pro and Premium?

Premium adds unlimited PDF uploads, unlimited PDF parsing with OCR, unlimited Q&A with basic AI models, a choice of GPT, Claude or Gemini for the agent, and the AI tutor. It also raises AI credits from 100 to 1,800 a month. Pro's AI agent uses Gemini models only.

Does Heptabase have a student discount?

The Heptabase pricing page does not list a student or education discount. Students pay the same rate as everyone else unless Heptabase offers something directly. The cheapest way in is Pro billed yearly at $107.88, which works out to $8.99 a month.

What is Heptabase Premium+ for?

Premium+ is for heavy AI users. It includes everything in Premium, raises the allowance to 8,100 AI credits a month and gives a 33% discount on extra credits. It does not add new features, so it pays off only if you regularly buy top-ups on Premium.

Is Heptabase worth it?

It is worth it if you think visually and will use whiteboards to connect notes, highlights and PDFs every week. It is poor value if you mostly write linear notes or came mainly for AI answers, where a tool built around asking your documents gives more for the money.