Roam Research Alternatives 2024

A list of Roam Research alternatives

Last updated: 18 Feb 2024

Roam Research has been my favourite software to write in for a while now. They were the first to popularise backlinks, block references, among other key features in the note-taking space. This is a collection of alternatives that I have used or are on my radar in case anything happens to Roam.

Free

• Logseq is currently the closest (feature-wise) and most stable alternative to Roam. It is heavily inspired by Roam, open-sourced, privacy-driven and local-first.
• Athens Research is an open-sourced clone of Roam Research. It has ambitious origins, created by Jeff Tang after getting rejected from Roam. Since then, it has taken a life of its own, raising $1.9M from investors! Personally, I haven’t explored Athens as a daily driver as much as Logseq as it is currently (as of July 2021) missing backlink filters which is one of my most used features.
• Obsidian is a local-first markdown note-taking app with backlinks and a beautiful graph view. Obsidian is better optimised for long-form writing. But with plugins, you can transform Obsidian into an outliner as well.
• Foam uses markdown and is built upon VS Code. It has the basic backlinks + graph view.
• Remnote seems more optimised for learning and has a flashcard-style approach.
• Mem optimises for capturing information. Currently in early stages too, but it is extremely fast.

Paid

• Hypernotes has a free plan of 10,000 blocks which goes faster than you’d think. It’s still in its early days and has more of an enterprise-focus.
• Craft is a new iOS-based block based note-taking app that has a focus on UX and speed. Currently lacking tagging and filters but there has been a lot of noise on how fun it is to use, similar to what started the RoamCult craze.