Linwood Butterfly vs SiYuan
Linwood Butterfly
butterfly.linwood.dev
SiYuan
b3log.orgSide by side
| Figure | Linwood Butterfly | SiYuan |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | $148/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | Yes |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| iOS | Yes | Yes |
| Android | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 4 |
| Spec score · Note-taking apps | 8.5 (#51) | 9.1 (#12) |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Integrations | WebDAV,Nextcloud | Paid options include third-party S3 and WebDAV data sync and backup; users must provide their own storage, and Nutstore is not supported for WebDAV. |
| Note sharing | Yes | Yes |
| Offline access | Yes | Yes |
| Platforms | The maker lists Android, Windows, macOS, Linux, and browser support; its iOS version is in preview and may not work as expected. | Windows,macOS,Linux,iOS,Android,web interface,Chrome/Edge extension,API,Docker self-hosting |
| Purpose | Butterfly is a note-taking app for handwriting, sketching, annotating, and organizing work on an infinite canvas. | SiYuan describes itself as a privacy-first personal knowledge management system supporting Markdown, block-level references, and bidirectional links. |
| Self-hosting | The maker provides instructions for building and hosting Butterfly’s web app, including a Docker image. | SiYuan can be deployed on a server using its Docker image, with access rights controlled through an authorization code. |
Plans
SiYuan
- FreeFree
- Subscription$148 a month
- PRO Features$64, paid once
- Subscription$148, paid once
In their own words
Linwood Butterfly
Linwood Butterfly has no write-up on Specifiction yet; its figures are above.
SiYuan
SiYuan is a personal knowledge management system for building a linked collection of notes. It supports Markdown, block-level references and bidirectional links, and organizes content into blocks with more than 20 block-level and more than 10 span-level element types. Backlinks can be filtered and searched; relationship graphs are available across a notebook and at block level. Databases support relations, rollups and templates, while flashcards use the FSRS spaced-repetition algorithm. Its AI feature connects to OpenAI for writing continuation, translation, summaries, brainstorming and grammar or spelling corrections. SiYuan supports offline access, and the maker describes multi-device synchronization as incremental and end-to-end encrypted. It is available on Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android and the web, with a Chrome/Edge extension, API and Docker self-hosting. The maker says data stays under the user's control on their device. Free access is free; PRO Features is listed at $64 a month with lifetime-use wording, and Subscription at $148 a month with 8GB cloud storage.