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

# SumizAI vs Hana

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

## What Hana is

Hana is an AI assistant you add to a Google Chat space exactly the way you'd add a new human colleague — instead of a separate app, it becomes part of the team's existing communication channel. It's powered by OpenAI's GPT-4o, and Hana is a verified app on the Google Workspace Marketplace, using Google's secure authentication.

Key features:

A custom retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) flow combined with deep integration inside Google Chat lets Hana help a team with doubts, decisions, questions, and knowledge gaps, finding the right sources without leaving the chat window. The assistant understands images posted to the channel, browses the web for current information, remembers context from previous conversations, and can generate images on request. Reminder and task-creation features let Hana act like a real team member — it reminds people of deadlines, creates tasks, and puts together a morning rundown of the inbox. In large, multi-person spaces, Hana can reply privately so it doesn't clutter the shared channel.

Who it's for:

Hana appeals to teams already working in Google Workspace who want to add an AI-assistant layer directly into their existing communication flow, instead of moving conversations to a separate chat app. Companies with extensive internal knowledge scattered across many Google Chat channels gain a central point for asking questions.

Use cases:

In practice, Hana works well for quickly finding information scattered across many earlier channel threads, generating a morning summary of unread correspondence, creating tasks directly from a team conversation without switching to a separate project-management tool, and answering questions enriched with current web results.

Pricing and business model:

Hana runs on a freemium model, installable from the Google Workspace Marketplace as a verified app. Conversations are processed via the OpenAI API, and the makers state a data-privacy policy for information passed to the model.

Limitations and what to watch for:

Deep integration with Google Chat means Hana is only useful for teams already using Google Workspace — there's no standalone version outside that ecosystem. Dependence on the OpenAI API also means response quality and service availability are tied to the external model provider's infrastructure.

AI notes woven into daily team communication:

Hana doesn't create a lasting, searchable note archive in the traditional sense — its contextual memory serves better answers within the ongoing conversation, not a separate knowledge base. Anyone who wants valuable fragments of Hana's answers to land as ai notes in a separate archive outside the chat channel has to copy them manually into a different notes app.

Verification and integration security:

Verified-app status on the Google Workspace Marketplace means Hana went through Google's review process regarding the permissions it requests from a workspace — an extra layer of trust compared to unvetted integrations installed outside the official marketplace.

What's worth checking before choosing:

Before installing, check the exact scope of permissions Hana requests within Google Workspace, and the retention and processing policy for conversations passed to the OpenAI API, especially for teams working with sensitive company data.

Bottom line:

Hana is a GPT-4o-based AI assistant built directly into Google Chat as a verified Workspace app, combining web search, contextual memory, and task management in one place within a team's communication. Anyone who wants valuable answers to automatically become ai notes in a separate, searchable archive needs a tool built around that workflow.

Comparison with SumizAI:

Hana and SumizAI differ in environment and purpose. Hana is a team assistant built into Google Chat, with no lasting note archive of its own. SumizAI is an individual notebook where conversations with an AI model — on the user's own API key with one of seven providers, including OpenAI — automatically become ai notes saved as Markdown files in a vault the user owns. Anyone who wants an AI assistant integrated with team communication in Google Chat will pick Hana; anyone who wants these notes from AI conversations to build a personal, searchable archive independent of a team platform will find SumizAI the better-fitting tool.

**Key facts**

- Price: Freemium
- License: Proprietary
- Category: AI Chatbot

## 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

- Hana is a place to have the conversation. SumizAI is not a chatbot — the conversation is the input, not the product. What comes out of it is a `.md` file with a title, a place in `base.md` and a duplicate check against the notes already in the vault. If you only want to talk to a model, you do not need SumizAI.
- Hana 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 Hana 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.
- Hana 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 Hana over SumizAI.
- Hana runs in the browser. SumizAI is a desktop and mobile application, and on the desktop the vault is a folder on your own disk rather than a document in someone's cloud.

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