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

# SumizAI vs Treedome

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

## What Treedome is

Treedome is a local, encrypted notes app built around tree structures — instead of a flat list of documents or a linked graph like Obsidian's, notes are arranged into a hierarchy of branches and sub-trees, saved in rich text format. The app runs locally, with no account and no cloud forced on the user by the maker, and encryption protects note content in case the device is lost or stolen.

Key features:

The tree structure lets notes nest inside other notes to any depth, which naturally fits topics with a clear hierarchy — a project, its sub-projects, tasks within those sub-projects. Rich text format supports bold, lists, headings and other elements typical of a WYSIWYG editor, unlike the plain Markdown many competing notebooks use. Local file encryption protects note content even if someone gets physical access to the device. The app is available on Mac, Windows, and Linux, giving a consistent experience regardless of operating system. Open source code under the AGPL-3.0 license means anyone can verify exactly how the encryption works, instead of relying solely on the maker's claim.

Who it's for:

Treedome appeals to people who think about their knowledge in terms of hierarchy rather than a web of connections — users used to folder-and-subfolder structures, project managers breaking large tasks into smaller and smaller subtasks, or students organizing notes by subject and sub-topic. People who value privacy and local data storage, skeptical of notebooks requiring a cloud account, find a natural home in Treedome.

Use cases:

In practice, Treedome works well for planning a large project, where the main branch is the overall goal and successive levels are phases, tasks, and subtasks — the whole structure visible at a glance. A travel journal keeper can build a tree with a branch for each country, with sub-trees inside for individual cities and attractions. A student preparing for exams organizes notes into a tree with a branch per subject, branching further into lecture topics. A freelancer managing several clients at once keeps a separate branch per client, with sub-branches for individual assignments.

Pricing and business model:

Treedome is free and open source under the AGPL-3.0 license, with no charge for core functionality and no subscription model. That model is typical of community projects maintained by enthusiasts and open source contributors, where development is driven by passion and community bug reports rather than monetization pressure.

Limitations and what to watch for:

The rigid tree structure, Treedome's main strength, becomes a limitation for notes that naturally belong to several categories at once — unlike wiki-style linking, a tree forces a choice of one primary location for each note. A smaller community around the project compared to more well-known notebooks means fewer ready-made guides and extension plugins. No built-in sync across devices means setting up an external mechanism yourself if notes need to be available on more than one computer.

AI notes within a tree structure:

Treedome has no built-in AI model integration, so preserving a ai notes entry from a conversation with an assistant requires manually pasting the text into the right branch of the tree, manually placing it at the correct spot in the hierarchy. For users maintaining an organized topical tree, that means an extra decision every time — you have to consciously choose exactly where in the structure a given ai notes entry belongs before pasting it there.

Hierarchy discipline:

Building a good notes tree takes some discipline upfront — deciding what the main branches will be and how deeply to nest further levels before the structure grows to hundreds of notes. People who previously tried keeping a notebook with no structure at all and got lost in a mess of loose files often come to appreciate that requirement — the hierarchy forces organized thinking at the moment of writing, not just during occasional cleanup.

Export and data portability:

Because Treedome saves notes locally and is an open source project, users keep full control over their data — there's no risk that access to a years-long archive vanishes overnight because of a business decision by the app's maker. That matters especially for people building large, multi-year note archives, for whom lasting access to their own data matters more than the convenience of cloud sync. The same principle applies to recovering from hardware failure — backing up the whole tree is simply copying the folder of files, with no dependency on whether the provider's cloud service happens to be working at that moment.

Rich text in daily use:

Choosing rich text over plain Markdown has practical consequences — on one hand formatting is visible immediately while typing, with no need to know Markdown syntax, on the other hand files aren't as portable between different text tools as plain text. For users coming from a classic word processor rather than another Markdown-based notebook, that difference tends to be less noticeable and can actually make onboarding easier.

What's worth checking before choosing:

Before moving your whole notes system to Treedome, it's worth testing whether the tree structure actually fits how you think about your topics — for some people it's a natural match, for others a rigid constraint compared to more flexible linking.

Bottom line:

Treedome is a solid choice for people who prefer hierarchical note organization over wiki-style linking, with an emphasis on privacy and local data storage. Anyone who wants ai notes from AI conversations to land automatically in the right spot in the structure, without manually placing them in the tree, should consider a tool built around that workflow.

Comparison with SumizAI:

Treedome and SumizAI agree on privacy — both store data locally, with no forced cloud. They differ in structure and content source: Treedome organizes notes into a tree hierarchy the user builds by hand over years of use, while SumizAI generates ai notes directly from a conversation with an AI model, saving them as Markdown files in a vault the user owns, with no need to decide on a place in a rigid hierarchy. Anyone who likes a tree's order will pick Treedome; anyone who wants ai notes from AI conversations to land in files automatically, without manually placing them in a structure, will find SumizAI the better-fitting tool.

**Key facts**

- Price: Free
- License: Open Source
- Origin: Indonesia
- Category: Note-taking

## 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 Treedome 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.
- Treedome 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 Treedome. 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.
- AlternativeTo's description of Treedome 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.
- Treedome 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.
- AlternativeTo lists no mobile version of Treedome. SumizAI runs on macOS, Windows, iOS and Android.

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