Joplin vs Recall

Joplin is an open-source note-taking app with offline access and support for notes containing images, videos, PDFs and audio. It runs on Android, iOS, Windows, macOS, Linux and the web, with a Chrome extension and API also listed. A web clipper for Chrome and Firefox saves pages or screenshots as notes. Notes can sync through Joplin Cloud, Dropbox, OneDrive, Nextcloud, S3, WebDAV or a local filesystem. Joplin uses end-to-end encryption, and shared notebooks can be set to editable or read-only. Basic costs €2.99 a month, with 2 GB of storage and a 10 MB limit per note or attachment. Pro costs €5.99 a month for 30 GB and a 200 MB per-note or attachment limit; Pro 100 GB costs €9.99 a month. Teams costs €7.99 a month per user, with a minimum of two users, and includes 50 GB of storage. Plans include a 14-day free trial. Students and teachers can receive a 50% discount for one year, renewable while in education.

Recall is a personal AI knowledge base for saving, summarizing, organizing, connecting, and discussing articles, videos, podcasts, PDFs, and notes. It can connect related saved items in a knowledge graph and surface those links while users browse. Users can chat with their saved material, the open web, or both using models including ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini. Recall can also generate quizzes and use spaced repetition to revisit saved content. Its MCP server connects with Cursor, Claude, ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini CLI, but currently allows read-only access to the knowledge base. Recall says it does not use user data for advertising, profiling, or AI training; it also describes augmented browsing as local-first, with processing on the device and no browsing data sent to its servers. Users can access, export, or delete their data. The Free plan includes 10 AI summaries per month, unlimited saved content and notes, and API and MCP access. Plus costs $10 a month billed yearly; Max costs $38 a month billed yearly. Recall supports web, iOS, Android, browser extensions, and offline access.