SumizAI vs FUTO Notes

What FUTO Notes is

What FUTO Notes is

FUTO Notes is a notebook from FUTO where every note is a plain Markdown file in a single folder on the device, fully owned by the user. There's no closed database and no lock-in to a specific provider — the notes folder can be opened in a file app, edited from a computer, backed up any way you like, and the notes stay on disk even after uninstalling the app.

Key features

The app runs fully offline, with optional end-to-end encrypted sync that keeps the notes folder consistent across devices — content is encrypted on the device before it ever reaches a server. Users can bring their own sync mechanism or run the official server on their own infrastructure and sync over their own network. A native app runs on iOS and Android, and a real desktop app supports Linux, macOS, and Windows.

Who it's for

FUTO Notes appeals to people who want full control over their note files, without lock-in to a proprietary format or a single cloud. Anyone who values the philosophy that "your notes belong to you, not some private cloud you can't control" will find exactly that approach here.

Use cases

In practice, FUTO Notes works well for keeping notes edited from both a phone and a computer through the same folder on disk, self-hosting sync on your own server for maximum control, and migrating from closed notebooks into the open Markdown file format without losing data.

Pricing and business model

FUTO Notes is free — FUTO funds development of its tools through other revenue sources, betting on software with no ads and no selling of user data.

Limitations and what to watch for

Self-hosting your own sync server requires basic technical knowledge, so less advanced users may prefer simpler, ready-made sync over full independence. The lack of a closed database also means missing some advanced search features available in commercial notebooks.

AI notes as plain Markdown files

FUTO Notes doesn't integrate with any AI model, but because every note is a plain .md file, pasting an assistant's answer as an ai notes entry and saving it in the folder is as simple as creating a new text file. That ai notes entry is immediately accessible from any tool that handles plain files, not just the FUTO Notes app itself.

Files, not a database, as the foundation of the philosophy

The decision to store notes as plain files on disk rather than in a closed database is a deliberate architectural choice — it guarantees the data survives even a complete halt in app development, since .md files can be opened in any text editor.

What's worth checking before choosing

Before choosing FUTO Notes, check whether you want to use the official end-to-end encrypted sync or would rather fully self-host your own server, and how much technical knowledge that requires from you.

Bottom line

FUTO Notes is a notebook built on plain Markdown files with full user control over data, at the cost of some advanced features available in closed alternatives. Anyone who wants ai notes from AI conversations to land automatically in an organized archive with a table of contents needs a tool built around that workflow.

Comparison with SumizAI

FUTO Notes and SumizAI share a files-not-database philosophy but differ in content source. FUTO Notes is a notebook for hand-written notes stored as .md files in a folder. 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 an automatically built table of contents, on your own API key to one of seven providers. Anyone who wants full control over hand-written note files will pick FUTO Notes; anyone who wants these notes from AI conversations to be created automatically with a ready-made table of contents will find SumizAI the better-fitting tool.

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.

Every answer kept this way becomes one of these ai notes, ready to search again months later without hunting back through old chats.

Side by side

Where they differ

• AlternativeTo's description of FUTO Notes 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.
• FUTO Notes is free and SumizAI costs a dollar a month after a seven-day trial that takes no card. A dollar is what it costs to run accounts and licences without reselling the model; if free is the requirement, FUTO Notes wins that row outright.
• Both keep Markdown, which makes moving between them mostly a matter of copying files. In SumizAI a vault is a directory holding base.md — a generated table of contents — and a notes/ folder with one .md file per note.
• FUTO Notes 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.
• FUTO Notes can be self-hosted. SumizAI has nothing to host on the desktop — the vault is a folder on your machine — and if you want the model on your own hardware too, a local Ollama is one of the seven providers it speaks to.

Which one to pick