How Octarine compares
Octarine is a markdown note-taking app. So are Obsidian, Notion, Bear, Typora, and a dozen others. Here's where Octarine sits among them.
What Octarine is
A lightweight (under 30MB) cross-platform (Mac, Windows and Linux) desktop app for working with markdown files in a folder. It opens fast, searches instantly, and doesn't require an account. The core product is free, with an optional one-time paid license to unlock advanced features and workflows.
There's no plugin system, no proprietary sync, no collaboration features. It's a tool for personal notes — research, journals, documentation, whatever you keep in plain text with images/videos.
What Octarine isn't
It's not a team workspace like Notion. It's not a knowledge graph like Roam. It's not extensible like Obsidian. If you need databases, real-time collaboration, or an ecosystem of community plugins, Octarine isn't trying to be that and would not be a good fit.
The tradeoffs I've made
Speed over features. Octarine is fast because it doesn't try to please everyone.
Simplicity over flexibility. There's no plugin API because I want the app to work well without requiring assembly. The downside is you can't customize it much beyond themes.
One-time purchase over subscription. You pay $60 and you're done. I don't see your notes, I don't run sync servers, I don't have recurring costs to cover. The tradeoff is that some features — like backing up notes or syncing amongst your devices — you bring your own (iCloud / Dropbox / Git).
Specific comparisons
Octarine and Bear both are often lauded for their designs, and they both come with multiple themes to make them pop!
Why go with Octarine
You don't necessarily want to work only on a Mac. You want your notes to be interoperable and in markdown format that you can take away if needbe without needing to export every note individually. You want a tab based UI, access to AI chat for searching + helping you write stuff. A nice datatable view to see all your properties and frontmatter across your workspace and a sweet graph view to see linked connections.
Why stick with Bear
Want seamless sync via iCloud between your Mac and iPhone. Want a really simple editor focused on writing one note at a time. You care more about a tag based workflow than a folder → notes based one. You are fine paying a subscription (albeit much cheaper) instead of a one-time payment for additional features.
Ready to get started?
Been using Octarine as my daily driver for the past few days and I'm impressed. Seriously considering jumping from Noteplan.