--- title: "SumizAI vs DeepNotes" url: "https://sumizai.com/alternative-to/sumizai-alternative-to-deepnotes.html" date: "2026-08-14T00:00:00+02:00" modified: "2026-08-14T00:00:00+02:00" description: "Looking for a DeepNotes alternative? SumizAI and DeepNotes side by side: price, licence, platforms and what each one actually does." tags: ["ai notes", "sumizai", "deepnotes", "alternative to DeepNotes"] --- # SumizAI vs DeepNotes Looking for a DeepNotes alternative? SumizAI and DeepNotes side by side: price, licence, platforms and what each one actually does. ## What DeepNotes is DeepNotes is an open-source, visual note-taking app with end-to-end encryption and an infinitely nested canvas — a note can contain another canvas, which can contain another, with no theoretical depth limit. Instead of a linear document, the user gets a space to move through like a mind map, going deeper and deeper into a topic's details. Key features: Deep page navigation lets you nest notes inside notes without limits, and real-time collaboration lets multiple people work on the same canvas at once. A flexible note system lets you place elements anywhere on the canvas, even inside other notes, which works well for mind maps, diagrams, or kanban boards. End-to-end encryption means note content is unreadable even to the service provider itself. Who it's for: DeepNotes appeals to visual thinkers who feel boxed in by linear text documents and prefer exploring a topic spatially, branching deeper instead of writing top to bottom. Teams working on complex projects get a shared canvas where every thread can expand into its own nested layer. Use cases: In practice, DeepNotes works well for planning complex projects with many levels of detail, building mind maps for studying or research, and real-time team brainstorming on one shared canvas. Someone documenting a product with many interconnected threads gets a structure that a flat file list simply can't provide. Pricing and business model: The basic plan is free forever and includes a limited number of pages, while the Pro plan unlocks unlimited pages and expanded team-collaboration options. The source code is publicly available on GitHub under an open-source license. Limitations and what to watch for: The visual, spatial model of organizing notes requires a different mindset than a traditional text notebook, so the learning curve can be steep for people used to linear documents. Working on a large, deeply nested canvas can also become hard to keep track of without discipline in naming and organizing layers. AI notes on a nested canvas: DeepNotes has no built-in AI integration, but pasting a fragment of a conversation with an assistant as a ai notes entry onto one of the nested canvases is simple — you can place it deep inside the relevant thematic structure right next to related material. Building an archive of ai notes this way, though, still requires manually copying every worthwhile answer out of a separate chat window. Encryption as a foundation, not an add-on: The decision to build end-to-end encryption into the architecture from day one, rather than as an option bolted on later, means even DeepNotes' own creators have no technical way to read users' note content — a fundamentally different stance than most competing visual note-taking tools. What's worth checking before choosing: Before choosing DeepNotes, check the exact page limit on the free plan, and test whether navigating deeply nested canvases fits how you actually want to work over the long run. Bottom line: DeepNotes is a unique, spatial approach to notes with a strong emphasis on privacy through end-to-end encryption, at the cost of an unusual learning curve. Anyone who wants ai notes from AI conversations to land automatically in an organized archive without manually moving them between canvases will find a better-fitting tool elsewhere. Comparison with SumizAI: DeepNotes and SumizAI differ fundamentally in organizing model and content source. DeepNotes is a spatial, visual canvas for notes written by hand by the user, with a strong emphasis on end-to-end encryption. SumizAI is a notebook built around the conversation with an AI model itself — question, answer, Markdown note landing automatically in a vault on the user's own disk, with a title and a place in the table of contents assigned without manual work, on your own API key to one of seven providers. Anyone who wants a visual, nested canvas for their own notes will pick DeepNotes; anyone who wants these notes from AI conversations to build up automatically will find SumizAI the better-fitting tool. **Key facts** - Price: Freemium - License: Open Source - Origin: United States - Category: Note-taking, Mind Mapping ## 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 DeepNotes 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. - DeepNotes is open source (AGPL-3.0), and SumizAI is not. If reading the source is what decides it for you, that is a real argument for DeepNotes. The guarantee SumizAI offers instead is structural rather than legal: the notes are Markdown files in a folder you chose, so they open in any editor whether or not the application is running. - DeepNotes 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 DeepNotes 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. - DeepNotes is described as something more than one person uses at once. SumizAI is not: there are no shared vaults, no comments, no permissions and no sync between devices. If the work is a team's, that is a reason to pick DeepNotes over SumizAI. - DeepNotes advertises encryption. SumizAI answers the same worry a different way: on the desktop the notes never leave your disk, and the material a question sends to the model is capped at the table of contents plus at most five notes — and the app shows you which five it used. - DeepNotes also does tasks. SumizAI does not — no boards, no due dates, no projects. It files knowledge, not work. Full side-by-side comparison table and pricing: [https://sumizai.com/alternative-to/sumizai-alternative-to-deepnotes.html](https://sumizai.com/alternative-to/sumizai-alternative-to-deepnotes.html)