Find your fit
Who it is for
Students and researchers can collect reading notes or highlights, move selected ideas onto a whiteboard and make connections visually. The product suits someone willing to maintain a card-and-board system, especially when PDFs or other sources need to be considered together.
A group can collaborate on selected boards or supported cards without exposing an owner’s entire private Space. Invite-only Free access may work for a collaborator, but it does not provide the personal card library, journal or AI tools of a regular subscription.
The work it supports
Core capabilities
Collect sources, write cards in a block-based editor and arrange them on whiteboards. Bi-directional links help connect a note beyond its board position. Try one real research topic to see whether the visual structure stays legible as the number of cards grows.
Read and annotate PDFs, selecting a passage to make a Highlight card. Separately, PDF parsing extracts ordinary and scanned text through OCR for AI reading; parsing does not itself create highlights. Check both reading and AI behavior with a representative file.
The desktop app keeps a local database for offline use. Cloud sync and connected services can still process data on servers; the vendor’s security article makes clear that server-side encryption is not end-to-end encryption. Review this boundary before adding sensitive material.
Invite people to specific whiteboards or supported cards with Full access, edit, chat or view rights. Sharing one location does not imply access to the whole Space, but a card may also be reachable through another shared board. Native mobile currently cannot open another person’s shared Space, so test collaboration on desktop or web.
Readwise highlights can appear in the Highlights area and be dragged onto a whiteboard. The vendor warns that some edited highlights have reverted after sync; save important edits elsewhere and contact support if that happens rather than experimenting with reconnecting or deletion.
Import Markdown, plain text or Word files, or use dedicated importers for Obsidian and beta importers for Notion, Roam Research and Logseq. Notion support is partial, and links, formatting or database structure may not survive exactly. Test a small selection first.
Export notes from desktop or web as Markdown. The complete export also contains All-Data.json for a Heptabase backup; a receiving app may not reproduce whiteboard layouts, relationships or metadata. Keep the complete package and test the destination before migrating.
AI requests may send a prompt, history and attached, referenced or retrieved content to the chosen model service. Ask the vendor about retention, training and processing requirements that matter to your research before enabling AI on confidential work.
Understand the offer
Pricing and getting started
Heptabase has no directly available personal Free signup. A new user can enter a limited Free state when invited by a paid user to collaborate, with access only to permitted shared boards and cards. Personal library, journal, tags, tasks, highlights and AI are outside that Free scope.
The October 20, 2026 official USD table lists regular Pro at $11.99 monthly or $107.88 billed yearly; Premium at $23.99 monthly or $215.88 yearly; and Premium+ at $71.99 monthly or $647.88 yearly. Earlier Pro subscribers may have separate early-bird pricing. Taxes and plan-change charges depend on checkout context.
Pro includes 100 monthly AI credits and Gemini-series models supplied by Heptabase. Premium includes 1,800 credits and supported Gemini, OpenAI and Anthropic models. Premium+ raises the allowance to 8,100 credits with otherwise the same Premium features. Unused monthly credits do not roll over.
All paid tiers currently list no cumulative monthly PDF parsing cap, though each parsed file must be at most 350MB and 3,000 pages. Pro upload rights are described as very high; Premium tiers list unlimited uploads. PDF parsing itself does not spend AI credits, unlike AI Agent, Tutor, transcripts, Insight generator and voice notes.
The subscription trial lasts seven days and includes unlimited PDF uploads/parsing with Premium-equivalent AI credits regardless of the selected plan. Running out of trial credits does not start billing early. On a paid subscription, optional on-demand AI usage can add charges after included credits are exhausted, subject to a spending limit you set.
When the trial or subscription ends, the vendor says you can still access and export content, but creating or editing notes requires renewal. Include a test export in the trial, especially if the whiteboard structure is important to you.
Look a little closer
Before you choose
Test a short PDF, make a few highlights and arrange related cards on a whiteboard. This checks the visual reading workflow without assuming AI parsing and highlight creation are the same action.
If collaborating, invite a test account to a harmless board, check the granted role and look for cards reachable through multiple shared locations. A native-mobile-only workflow is unsuitable if access to another person’s shared Space is essential.
Before committing to a plan, estimate monthly AI use, distinguish included credits from optional on-demand charges and check the exact USD billing term. Export a representative board and note whether another app keeps its layout and relationships.
9 distinct sources behind this profile. Research observed Oct 20, 2026. Features and offers can change.
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