Bike Outliner vs Checkvist

Bike Outliner is a macOS app for thinking, writing, organizing lists, notes, and documents. Its outlines support headings, ordered lists, task lists, and other row types, while a rich text editor handles formatting. Full-screen, typewriter, and focus modes provide distraction-free writing. Navigation includes keyboard movement by focus heading, back and forward controls, breadcrumbs, inline buttons, and a navigation bar. Deep links remain valid when an outline file is moved or renamed. Bike uses an HTML-based .bike format and also supports .opml and .txt files, with Markdown support, printing, Quick Look previews, and Finder thumbnails. Scripts, Shortcuts, and AppleScript can control the app. Free mode never expires and covers reading, writing, and editing outlines; additional row types, rich text formatting, Shortcut Actions, and AppleScript require purchase.

Checkvist is a keyboard-first outliner and online task manager for people who organize work and ideas in lists. Its lists support deep hierarchy, keyboard shortcuts, Markdown, code, tables, bulk operations, sorting and backlinks. Tasks can carry tags, due dates, notes, assignees, file attachments, priorities and progress counters. Lists can be shared privately or publicly with read-only or write access, password protection, expiration times and task assignment. Integrations include Zapier, Dropbox, Google Calendar sync, Jira, YouTrack, Slack, browser extensions and an Open API. Its mobile experience is a progressive web app for iOS and Android that syncs and works offline; the Web Clipper can collect tasks, bookmarks and notes from web pages and services including Gmail, Zendesk, Jira and GitHub. The free plan includes unlimited hierarchical lists and sharing, Markdown, due dates, tags, mobile offline use, browser extensions and Open API. PRO costs $3.90 per person per month, billed at $39 per year, and adds features such as task assignment, repeating tasks, Google Calendar synchronization, 2 GB of file storage and MCP access. A 14-day PRO trial is available without a credit card.