How Altretta compares
Four honest side-by-side comparisons. Every figure about another product was read from that vendor’s own page on a date this page shows you. Start with whichever one you use today.
What Altretta is actually for
Altretta is a local-first notes app for people who want to point an AI at their knowledge and then be able to check what it says. Your notes stay as Markdown files on your own disk, you connect your own model over MCP, and answers come back with the passages they were drawn from. Underneath, every change lands in a signed, append-only history: nothing is destructively deleted, you can travel back to any point, and a shared vault’s contents are encrypted on your device with access you can hand out and take back one person at a time.
That is a narrower proposition than “a better notes app”, and it should be. Obsidian, Logseq, Anytype and Joplin are all good tools, all more mature than Altretta in ways these pages name, and all four run on phones where Altretta does not. These comparisons exist to help you work out which of those things matters more to you.
Five products, seven questions.
The Altretta column is answered from the source of the product itself. The other four columns are answered only from each vendor’s own pages — and where nothing has been checked, the cell says so rather than showing a dash.
| Capability | Altretta | Obsidian | Logseq | Anytype | Joplin |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Runs on iOS and Android | Not includedDesktop only: macOS · Windows · Linux. | YesWindows · Mac · Linux · iOS · Androidobsidian.md/download | YesiOS · Androidlogseq.com | YesMac · Windows · Linux · Android · iOSanytype.io/faq | YesWindows · macOS · Linux · Android · iOSjoplinapp.org |
| Free to use | YesThe desktop app is free forever, with one synced folder. | YesFree for personal useobsidian.md/pricing | YesFree for personal uselogseq.com | Yes100 MB of synced storageanytype.io/pricing | YesOpen sourcejoplinapp.org |
| Encrypted sync | YesInto storage you already own — your Dropbox, your OneDrive, a network share, a USB stick. No server of ours in the path and no key escrow. | YesEnd-to-end encryptedobsidian.md/sync | YesEncrypted file syncinglogseq.com | YesZero-knowledge encryptionanytype.io/faq | YesEnd-to-end encryptedjoplinapp.org |
| Open source | PartialThe engine is open source; the desktop app is not. | Not verified | YesOpen sourcelogseq.com | PartialOpen-source protocol, source-available appanytype.io/faq | YesOpen sourcejoplinapp.org |
| Signed history you can verify yourself | YesEd25519-signed and append-only. Removal is a signed tombstone, never a delete, so you can travel back to any point. | Not verified | Not verified | Not verified | Not verified |
| Answers that cite the note they came from | YesCited passages with the file and the line numbers, from the model you connect over MCP. | Not verified | Not verified | Not verified | Not verified |
| Reads your code repository too | YesSymbol extraction in twenty languages, in the same signed graph as the notes. | Not verified | Not verified | Not verified | Not verified |
Verified Every figure here about another product was read from the pages linked below, on that date, and from nowhere else. Follow them and check us — that is the whole idea.
“Not verified” means exactly that: it has not been checked on their site, so nothing is being claimed either way. It is not a polite “no”. The detailed pages go further on each product than this table can.
Pick the one you use today.
Each page goes further than the table above: what the two products genuinely share, what Altretta adds on top, where the other one is still the better choice, and what actually happens to your notes if you move.
Altretta vs Obsidian
The comparison most readers of this site are looking for, and the deepest of the four. The same file-over-app foundation; the differences are grounded answers, a signed history and an encrypted team vault.
Read the full comparisonAltretta vs Logseq
An outliner that ships flashcards, task management and PDF annotation in the box — several of which Altretta ships too. This page is mostly about what gets added on top, and what Logseq still does better.
Read the full comparisonAltretta vs Anytype
The closest of the four on privacy: encrypted before anything leaves your device, local-first, self-hostable. So the comparison is about data model and verifiability rather than about encryption.
Read the full comparisonAltretta vs Joplin
Open source, five platforms, end-to-end encryption, and the cheapest paid plan on any of these pages. Where Altretta differs is proof, not privacy.
Read the full comparisonA comparison page rots on its own. This one is wired not to.
Other companies change their prices and their feature lists without telling anyone, and a comparison page ages in silence: the words never change, so nothing in a code review ever catches it. Four things stop that here.
Every third-party claim is data, not a sentence
No price, storage limit or plan name belonging to another product is written into prose anywhere on this site. Each one is an entry in a single file, carrying the URL it came from and the day somebody opened that URL and read it.
The build fails when a fact expires
After 90 days an entry stops counting as checked and the site stops building. Not a warning: a warning about a stale competitor fact gets read once and never again. It becomes an engineer’s problem before it becomes a reader’s.
Only the vendor may be quoted about the vendor
A fact may only be sourced to a host that product owns. Every third-party pricing summary read while writing these pages disagreed with the vendor about at least one number, and one of them was the source of a plan tier that no longer exists.
The check is tested with planted failures
On every build it runs a stale fact, a date in the future, a fact sourced to a review site and a price written into the copy through its own rules, and fails if any of them slips past. A check nobody has tried to break is a check nobody knows the shape of.
Keep your files. Gain proof.
Altretta is free for macOS, Windows and Linux, and your existing Markdown notes work exactly as they are. Nothing leaves your machine unless you switch it on.