SumizAI vs Citronote

What Citronote is

What Citronote is

Citronote (also known on GitHub under the project name ideaNote) is a free, open-source note-taking app for Windows, built by a developer known as Korange and released under the Apache-2.0 license. The app supports four entry types — Markdown notes, loose scraps, to-do lists, and plain text — in one unified interface with no account registration required.

Key features

Distraction-free mode strips away unnecessary interface elements while writing, letting you focus purely on the note's content. A hierarchical structure organizes entries in a folder-tree-like fashion, making navigation easier as the number of notes grows. A built-in live preview renders Markdown on the fly without switching between an edit mode and a separate preview window. Dark mode, no ads, and full offline operation round out a set of traits typical of lightweight, local notebooks built for privacy and speed rather than cloud features.

Who it's for

Citronote appeals to Windows users looking for a simple, local notebook with no cloud accounts and no subscription — someone who wants to jot down a thought in Markdown, add a quick information scrap, or drop a task onto a list, all in one app instead of juggling several tools. People who value open source code and being able to see how the app handles their data will find a transparent project on GitHub.

Use cases

In practice, Citronote works well for daily distraction-free thought capture, for building short task lists tied to a specific project, or for collecting loose information scraps that can later be organized into the hierarchical structure. Someone writing technical documentation in Markdown will appreciate the built-in live preview without switching windows.

Pricing and business model

The app is entirely free and open source under the Apache-2.0 license, available for download from GitHub Releases or the Microsoft Store. No subscription, no ads, and no freemium model — this is a straightforward, one-time project without the expected revenue typical of commercial notebooks.

Limitations and what to watch for

The app is Windows-only, with no Mac, Linux, or mobile version, ruling it out for users on other platforms or anyone wanting to sync notes between a computer and a phone. As a project developed by a single developer, the pace of updates and long-term support is worth checking directly in the repository before building an important archive on top of it.

AI notes pasted without losing Markdown formatting

Citronote has no built-in AI integration, but thanks to native Markdown support, pasting an ai notes entry from a conversation with a language assistant while preserving its formatting — lists, headings, bold text — takes just a moment thanks to the built-in live preview. Such an ai notes entry lands immediately in the local structure with no extra configuration.

Bottom line

Citronote is a simple, free, open-source notebook for Windows combining four entry formats in one place, with no subscription and no cloud. Anyone who wants ai notes from AI conversations to land there automatically instead of manual pasting should consider a tool built specifically around that workflow.

Comparison with SumizAI

Citronote and SumizAI differ in platform and note content source. Citronote is a local Windows notebook for notes written by hand by the user across four formats. SumizAI generates these notes directly from a conversation with an AI model, available on macOS, Windows, iOS, and Android, turning answers worth keeping into Markdown files in a vault the user owns. Anyone who wants a simple Windows notebook for hand-written notes will pick Citronote; anyone who wants these notes to arise automatically from an AI conversation across multiple platforms 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 Citronote 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.
• Citronote is open source (Apache-2.0), and SumizAI is not. If reading the source is what decides it for you, that is a real argument for Citronote. 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.
• 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.
• Citronote also does tasks. SumizAI does not — no boards, no due dates, no projects. It files knowledge, not work.
• AlternativeTo lists no mobile version of Citronote. SumizAI runs on macOS, Windows, iOS and Android.

Which one to pick