Bike Outliner vs Workflowy

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.

Workflowy is a note-taking app built around one expandable document and list. Users can nest items, focus on a bullet by zooming into it, and search across the document in real time. A bullet can become a checkbox, heading, board or table. Tags, dates, backlinks, mirrors and templates help connect or reuse material. Workflowy says it saves automatically and synchronizes across devices. Its API can read and write Workflowy data for apps, scripts and automations. Users can also enable multi-factor authentication with an authenticator-app code and recovery codes. The free Basic plan includes 100 nodes per month and 100 MB of uploads; reaching the node limit brings up a subscription prompt, though users can continue adding nodes. Pro lists unlimited nodes and uploads at $6.99 per month billed annually or $8.99 per month billed monthly. The annual option lists a seven-day trial. Workflowy supports web, Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS and Android, and lists a Chrome extension. Its integrations include Readwise, Kindle Highlights, Google Calendar, Zapier and Workflowy Desktop MCP.