---
title: "SumizAI vs Capacities"
url: "https://sumizai.com/alternative-to/sumizai-alternative-to-capacities.html"
date: "2026-08-14T00:00:00+02:00"
modified: "2026-08-14T00:00:00+02:00"
description: "Looking for a Capacities alternative? SumizAI and Capacities side by side: price, licence, platforms and what each one actually does."
tags: ["ai notes", "sumizai", "capacities", "alternative to Capacities"]
---

# SumizAI vs Capacities

Looking for a Capacities alternative? SumizAI and Capacities side by side: price, licence, platforms and what each one actually does.

## What Capacities is

Capacities is a German note-taking app built around the idea of objects instead of folders — every note, idea, or question becomes its own object with properties and relations to other objects. The company was founded in 2021, is headquartered in Berlin, and stores data on encrypted servers within the EU.

Key features:

Bidirectional linking connects related objects in both directions, and a graph view visualizes the entire network of connections between them. A built-in AI assistant helps summarize and query gathered content, and a rich text editor supports the formatting typical of other notebooks. Sync works across every device — Mac, Windows, Online, Android, iPhone, Android Tablet, Linux, iPad — so notes stay available regardless of the platform a user is on.

Who it's for:

Capacities appeals to people who feel constrained by traditional folder structures and want to think in terms of connected objects — ideas, questions, projects — combining the flexibility of a note network with database-like structure. Teams and researchers building an extensive, interconnected knowledge base get a tool matched to that style of work.

Use cases:

In practice, Capacities works well for building a personal knowledge base with clearly defined object types, managing tasks tied to specific projects or source notes, and visually exploring the connection network through the graph view when you need to rediscover forgotten links between ideas.

Pricing and business model:

The free plan offers unlimited notes and objects with 5GB of media storage. The first paid plan, with task management, an AI assistant, and calendar integrations, costs €10.99 a month (€8.99 a month billed yearly) and adds unlimited storage plus priority support.

Limitations and what to watch for:

The object-and-type-based model requires a different mindset than a simple text notebook, so setting up your own object types initially can be time-consuming. Advanced features like task management and the AI assistant are reserved for the paid plan.

AI notes as a distinct object type:

Capacities doesn't integrate directly with an external AI model for holding a conversation, but pasting an assistant's answer as a ai notes entry and giving it its own object type with relations to other notes is a natural part of the system. Such a ai notes entry automatically shows up in the graph view next to thematically related objects, making it easier to find later.

European data storage as a deliberate choice:

The decision to keep data exclusively on servers within the EU, rather than defaulting to US infrastructure, answers growing demand from European users and companies for solutions aligned with local data-privacy regulations.

What's worth checking before choosing:

Before deciding, check whether the free plan's 5GB storage limit is enough for your needs, and whether an object-and-relations model actually fits how you organize knowledge.

Bottom line:

Capacities is a solid choice for people who think in terms of connected objects rather than flat folders, with European data storage as an added advantage. Anyone who wants ai notes from AI conversations to land in the system automatically, without manually assigning an object type, will find a better-fitting tool elsewhere.

Comparison with SumizAI:

Capacities and SumizAI differ in how they organize content. Capacities builds a network of connected objects with relations defined by the user, with an optional AI assistant for summaries. SumizAI generates these notes directly from a conversation with an AI model — question, answer, Markdown file in the user's vault, with a title and place in the table of contents assigned automatically, on your own API key to one of seven providers. Anyone who wants to build a knowledge base of manually defined objects and relations will pick Capacities; anyone who wants these notes from AI conversations to be created automatically will find SumizAI the better-fitting tool.

**Key facts**

- Price: Freemium
- License: Proprietary
- Origin: Germany, EU
- Category: Note-taking, Todo List Manager

## What SumizAI is

A note-taking application built around a conversation with an AI model. You ask a question, the answer streams back, and the answers worth keeping become Markdown notes — filed into a vault that is a folder on your own disk.

A vault is a directory holding `base.md`, a generated table of contents up to six levels deep, and a `notes/` folder with one `.md` file per note. Before a note is written it is checked against the ones already there, so the fourth note about the same idea gets merged instead of added. Links between notes are ordinary Markdown links to files that exist.

The model is never ours: you bring your own API key to one of seven providers — Anthropic, OpenAI, Gemini, Groq, OpenRouter, a local Ollama or your own server — and pay that provider directly. A question sends the table of contents plus at most five relevant notes within a 24,000-character budget, and the app shows you which five it used.

## Where they differ

- AlternativeTo's description of Capacities does not mention an AI model. That is the whole starting point in SumizAI: you have a conversation with a model on your own API key, and the answers worth keeping become notes without you filing them.
- Capacities is freemium: there is a free tier and a paid one, and the line between them is the thing to read before committing. SumizAI has one plan at a dollar a month, so there is no feature held back for a higher tier — and an unpaid account still opens and exports every vault it already has.
- AlternativeTo's description of Capacities does not mention Markdown, so check what format your notes end up in before you fill it up. SumizAI writes standard `.md` files to a folder you picked, and an unpaid account can still export all of them.
- Capacities is described in terms of linking notes together. SumizAI links them too, but deliberately without a syntax of its own: a link is an ordinary Markdown link, `[Title](file-name.md)`, and the model may only point at a file that actually exists. There are no wiki-style `[[…]]` links to lose on export.
- Both are run from the EU: SumizAI's operator is registered in Poland and the servers are in Germany.

Full side-by-side comparison table and pricing: [https://sumizai.com/alternative-to/sumizai-alternative-to-capacities.html](https://sumizai.com/alternative-to/sumizai-alternative-to-capacities.html)
