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