Octarine vs Tolaria

Octarine

• Writers who want Markdown notes kept as local files
• People who prefer a one-time license to a subscription
• Those who want linking, daily notes and views built in, not added as plugins

Tolaria

• People who want notes kept as plain Markdown files on their own disk
• Developers comfortable using Git for history and sync
• Users of CLI coding agents who want them to work on their notes

Octarine

• Properties, filtered views, note types, focus mode, note sharing and every AI feature need the $79 Pro license.
• There is no public phone app: an iOS beta runs on TestFlight for eligible Pro users, and no Android app is listed.
• AI features need your own API key or a local model, and syncing relies on a file-sync service or the built-in Git sync.
• Pricing is early-access: the docs say the price goes up as Pro features are added, while earlier buyers keep all future Pro features.

Tolaria

• Desktop only: no mobile or web app is offered, and the docs call Windows and Linux support early, with macOS as the primary target.
• There is no sync service of its own; syncing between devices means connecting a Git remote and relying on your system's Git authentication.
• Coding agents are installed separately and keep their own sign-in, and hosted model providers need your own API key.
• A spreadsheet note holds a single sheet; several tabs inside one note are not supported.

Octarine

Markdown files you keep

Notes are plain Markdown files in a workspace folder you pick, and core note-taking works offline. Files sync through any file-sync service or the built-in Git sync to GitHub or GitLab.

Daily Desk

Daily and weekly notes are part of the free plan, and unfinished tasks from yesterday's note can be moved into today's without copying.

Links, backlinks and graph

Wikilinks can point at a note or a single heading and carry an alias. Backlinks and mentions are listed in their own sheet, and a graph view maps the workspace.

Properties and Views

On Pro, Note Types start new notes with a set of properties, and Views filter, sort and group notes by any property in a table or kanban layout.

Quick Capture and Inbox

A Spotlight-style window opens over any app to take down a thought, which lands in an Inbox to be sorted into notes later.

Ask Octarine and Writing Assistant

On Pro, a chat over your notes can create, update and move notes, and an assistant rewrites text inline. Both need your own API key or a local LLM.

Tolaria

Plain Markdown vaults

A vault is a folder of Markdown files with YAML frontmatter. Attachments, type definitions and saved views are files too, and there is no database.

Block editor with wikilinks

A block-based editor with slash commands, wikilink autocomplete, a raw Markdown mode, whiteboards and media previews that saves to Markdown.

Types and relationships

Notes are grouped by a type field rather than by folder, and frontmatter fields holding wikilinks become relationships with computed inverses and backlinks.

Built-in Git client

Review diffs, commit, pull, push and resolve conflicts inside the app, with history for the whole vault and for each note. Sync runs through any Git remote.

Coding agents and direct models

The AI panel runs local CLI agents such as Claude Code and Codex with tools to edit the vault, or chats with Ollama, LM Studio, OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini or OpenRouter models.

Spreadsheet notes

A note can open as a single-sheet spreadsheet with formulas, stored as CSV-like text in the same Markdown file so it stays readable and diffable in Git.

Octarine

• Personal$0

  WYSIWYG editor, unlimited workspaces, daily and weekly notes, graph view, full-text search, templates, Mermaid diagrams, 4 themes and txt export.

• Pro$79

  one-time purchase

  Adds properties, filtered views, note types, focus mode, note sharing, AI tools, 30+ themes and PDF, HTML and DOCX export. One key works on 3 devices at a time.

Tolaria

• Free$0

  The full desktop app for macOS, Windows and Linux, including the Git client, the AI panel and the MCP server.