Roam Research vs SiYuan

Roam Research is a note-taking tool for networked thought, designed to connect ideas in Roam Graphs. Its site describes a document-like experience paired with a graph-database model, and says it helps users organize research over the long term. The Pro plan costs $15 a month and includes unlimited private or public graphs, unlimited collaborators, API access, and Apps. Roam supports note sharing and offline access. It is available on the web, Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, and Android, with a Chrome extension also listed. Integrations include the Roam Backend API, Roam Append API, Roam Alpha API, and Roam Depot extensions. The Pro page offers a 31-day free trial to people who have never had a plan, with billing after the trial. There is no free plan.

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.