Nodum vs Heptabase
A Heptabase alternative for people who link notes rather than arrange them
Nodum is an open-source alternative to Heptabase for people who connect notes with links rather than by arranging cards on a board. Heptabase is a proprietary, subscription visual note tool where whiteboards are the primary surface. Nodum is MIT licensed, markdown-based, and organised around wikilinks, backlinks and a knowledge graph.
What Heptabase is
Heptabase is a proprietary tool for visual sensemaking: notes are cards you place on infinite whiteboards, grouping and connecting them spatially while you work through a topic. For literature review and research synthesis it is genuinely distinctive.
Side by side
| Property | Heptabase | Nodum |
|---|---|---|
| Licence | Proprietary, closed source | MIT — the whole stack, frontend and backend |
| Hosting | Heptabase's cloud, with offline support | Hosted at nodum.md, or self-hosted with one Docker Compose command |
| Your notes are | A hosted store with local cache; markdown export | Plain markdown files, exported as a folder-true zip whenever you ask |
| Linking | Card links, backlinks and spatial grouping on whiteboards | [[wikilinks]], [[path/Note]], [[Note|alias]], ![[embeds]] — Obsidian syntax |
| Graph | Whiteboards rather than a force-directed graph | Global and local force-directed graph, GPU-rendered on WebGL2 |
| Pricing model | Paid subscription with a trial | Free and open source; self-host at your own infrastructure cost |
| Platforms | Browser, desktop, mobile | Any modern browser, desktop and mobile; installable as a PWA |
| Getting out | Markdown export | Vault zip of .md files, plus a REST API and an MCP server |
Where each one actually wins
The left-hand column is the honest part. If none of it applies to you, the switch is probably worth making; if several do, it probably is not.
What Heptabase does better
- Whiteboard-first thinking, which is a real and different way to work through a topic.
- PDF and highlight workflows for research reading.
- Card-on-board spatial memory that a force graph does not replace.
What Nodum does better
- Free and MIT licensed rather than subscription-only.
- Plain markdown files with a folder-true export and Obsidian-compatible import.
- A force-directed knowledge graph over the whole vault, plus backlinks with context.
- Self-hostable, with collaboration, publishing and MCP included.
- Nodum has a canvas too — it is simply not the centre of the product.
So — switch, or stay?
Switch to Nodum if…
- You want linked notes as the backbone, with a canvas available when you need one.
- You want to own the files and stop paying a subscription.
Stay on Heptabase if…
- The whiteboard is how you think through a problem.
Heptabase and Nodum: common questions
Does Nodum have a whiteboard or canvas?
Yes. Nodum includes freeform canvas boards alongside notes, so you can arrange cards spatially. It is not as central or as developed as Heptabase's whiteboards, which are the whole product there rather than one feature among many.
Before you move anything
Whatever you decide, run this once. It takes ten minutes and it is the difference between a migration and an incident.
- Export from Heptabase first, and keep that export somewhere safe.
- Import a copy into a throwaway Nodum vault, not your main one.
- Open the graph and look for ghost nodes — those are links that did not resolve.
- Export the Nodum vault and diff it against what you put in.
- Only then delete anything.
Other comparisons
Every comparison is on the alternatives index, and the glossary defines the vocabulary these pages use.
Bring your Heptabase notes with you.
Import a zip, look at the graph, export it again. Nothing about it is one-way.