Hypernotes vs Roam Research

A Hypernotes review

Hypernotes first caught my eye after watching Francesco D’Alessio’s first impression video and his ambitious description of Hypernotes.

“Better than Roam Research or Obsidian, Hypernotes is the latest bi-directional note-taker on the market.”

Since then, I have tried using Hypernotes as my daily driver for note taking. The short summary is Hypernotes is a great introduction to the world of bi-directional links, but not yet ready for heavy use. The more I wrote, I ran into limitations that impeded my workflow while encountering incomplete features. Here’s my experience on how it currently stacks up against Roam. Hypernotes appears to be a clone of Roam Research but with a business twist and a notion-like design. Similarities including:

• Outliner
• Daily notes
• Backlinks
• Sidebar
• Block references
• Graph view

Pricing

Hypernotes is an excellent gateway to bi-directional links as it has a free plan with an upgrade of $8 per month, compared to Roam’s $15 per month. Although Hypernotes offers a free plan, one thing I dislike is that they sneakily do not mention anywhere that it is only for 10,000 blocks. Once you reach this limit, you are prompted with a “plan exceeded” notification and a prompt to upgrade before your trial expires in 14 days.