Head-to-head

Capacities vs Craft

Both want to be the place your notes and work live, but one starts from structured knowledge and the other starts from polished documents. The real choice is whether you want a personal knowledge system or a workspace that helps you finish and share the work.

Last updated April 2026 · Pricing and features verified against official documentation

Most people who compare Capacities and Craft are not looking for another plain notes app. They want a place where reading, ideas, projects, and writing can live together without turning into a mess. That makes this a real comparison, because both products promise a calmer way to organize work, but they start from different assumptions about what “organizing” should mean.

Capacities is built around structure. It treats people, books, projects, and ideas as objects, then uses links, properties, and contextual AI to make that model useful over time. Craft is built around presentation and flow. It wants to make documents look finished, keep tasks and calendar items close by, and let small teams move from draft to shareable page without bouncing across tools.

The choice is simple: pick Capacities if your work is mostly about building a personal knowledge system, and pick Craft if your work is mostly about producing polished documents inside a broader workspace.

The Core Difference

Capacities asks you to think in entities and relationships. Craft asks you to think in pages, tasks, and shared workspaces. That difference drives almost everything else: Capacities is the better tool for retrieval and long-term knowledge organization, while Craft is the better tool for turning that work into something other people can read, review, or use.

Knowledge Model

Capacities wins. Its object-based model is the point of the product, not a decorative layer on top of notes. If you want a person, a paper, a meeting, and a project to each have their own shape and metadata, Capacities gives you a system that rewards that way of thinking instead of fighting it.

Craft is more flexible but less disciplined here. It can absolutely hold notes and collections, but it still behaves like a workspace built around documents. That makes it easier to start in, but less powerful when the real job is to make information reusable later. If your main pain is “I cannot find or connect what I already know,” Capacities is the stronger choice.

Writing And Publishing

Craft wins. It is the better tool when the output has to look good, move cleanly through review, or be published for other people to read. Documents, page sharing, publishing, and a more polished visual system make it better for writers, founders, and small teams that care about presentation as much as capture.

Capacities can support writing, but it is not trying to be a document studio. Its advantage is what happens before the draft is finished: organizing the raw material, linking the right entities, and keeping the knowledge base coherent. If the work ends with a shareable document, Craft is the easier place to finish it.

AI And Automation

Capacities wins for contextual AI. Its AI features are tied to the note model itself, with chats, autofill, and query help that sit on top of the objects you already created. That makes the assistant feel like part of the knowledge system rather than a generic chat window glued to the side.

Craft is still useful here, especially when you want an assistant that can work across a document or a whole space and edit content directly. But the AI layer is secondary to the workspace design. If you want AI to help think through your own knowledge graph, Capacities is sharper; if you want AI to clean up documents inside a broader workspace, Craft is better.

Collaboration And Reach

Craft wins decisively. It is built to be shared, published, and used across a wider set of surfaces, with native apps, web access, team plans, and integrations that make it easier to keep a group in the same workflow. That matters if the app has to serve more than one person or live alongside other collaboration systems.

Capacities is intentionally more personal. It can sync across devices and expose a public API, but the product still feels like a solo knowledge environment first. That is not a flaw if you are buying it for yourself. It is a limitation if your buying trigger is shared docs, approvals, or a team-wide workspace.

Pricing

Capacities is the more expensive solo buy. As of April 2026, its Pro plan is $17.99 per month or $199 per year, with a free core product beneath it. That pricing is easy to justify only if the object model and contextual AI are doing real work for you every day.

Craft is cheaper to enter. Its Starter tier is free, and Plus currently sits at $8 per month, with a lower yearly effective rate on the live pricing page. That makes Craft the easier purchase for individuals who want a serious workspace without a heavy upfront commitment. For teams, Craft is also the cleaner budget story because it has explicit family and team bundles instead of assuming every user is operating alone.

Privacy

Capacities has the better default privacy posture for individual users. It is GDPR-compliant, stores data on encrypted servers in the EU, describes itself as offline-first, and says AI providers do not use your content to train models. That is a strong combination for people who care about where their notes live and how much of them leave the app.

Craft has the stronger formal compliance story. It lists SOC 2 Type I & II and says it does not use your content to train AI models, but it is still a cloud-first workspace without end-to-end encryption. The practical conclusion is straightforward: pick Capacities if you want the tighter consumer privacy posture, and pick Craft if the deciding factor is a more explicit compliance badge for a team or business context.

Who Should Pick Capacities

• The solo researcher or writer who needs structure more than polish. Capacities wins because its object model makes it easier to organize papers, people, and projects in a way that stays useful months later.
• The note-taker who keeps running into retrieval problems. If the issue is not capture but connection, Capacities gives you a better long-term system than a flatter document workspace.
• The privacy-conscious individual who wants a stronger default posture. EU hosting, GDPR alignment, and offline-first behavior make Capacities easier to defend for personal knowledge work.

Who Should Pick Craft

• The writer or founder who needs the output to look finished. Craft wins because it turns documents into something you can share or publish without extra cleanup.
• The small team that wants notes, tasks, and calendar work in one place. Craft is the better fit when collaboration and presentation matter as much as capture.
• The buyer who wants a lower-friction subscription. Craft is materially cheaper for an individual, so it is easier to justify if you are still figuring out how much you will actually use the workspace.

Bottom Line

Capacities is the better choice when the hardest part of the job is making your knowledge behave like knowledge. It gives you structure, retrieval, and contextual AI around a model that rewards careful organization. That is why it feels more like a personal knowledge system than a notes app.

Craft is the better choice when the hardest part of the job is finishing and sharing the work. It is more polished, more collaborative, and cheaper to adopt, which makes it the more practical workspace for people who want documents, tasks, and light project coordination in one place. If you think in objects, pick Capacities. If you think in pages and publishable output, pick Craft.