Capacities

What Is Capacities?

Every other note-taking app stores your thinking in pages. Capacities stores it in objects — and that distinction reshapes how a knowledge base actually works. A person you met at a conference is not a page titled "John Smith." It is a Person object with properties: employer, meeting date, projects you discussed, books he recommended. Those properties link automatically to other objects in your space. John's employer links to the Company object. The books link to Book objects with reading notes attached. The meeting links to your Daily Notes. Nothing requires manual maintenance.

Capacities Labs GmbH is registered at Amtsgericht Saarbrücken (HRB 108844) in St. Wendel, Saarland, Germany. Founded in 2022 by Michael von Hohnhorst and Steffen Bleher, the company has taken no outside investment. No VC partners means no pressure to monetise user data, no growth-at-all-costs product decisions, and no risk of a pivot to enterprise that abandons individual users. The team states on their website that the core product is and will remain free — a promise they can make credibly because they are not accountable to a board with a return horizon.

The product runs on iOS, Android, macOS, Windows, Linux, and web. Over 2 million people have tried it. The App Store rating sits at 4.8/5.

Key Features

Object-Based Knowledge Structure

The founding insight of Capacities is that human knowledge is relational, not hierarchical. Folders and nested pages simulate structure by location. Objects create structure through type and property. When you save a Book object, you set its author (a Person object), its topic (links to Idea objects), your reading status, and any quotes. Those connections exist automatically. Finding all books recommended by people you met in 2025 is a Smart Query, not a manual search.

Custom object types extend this to any domain. Researchers build Experiment objects. Lawyers build Case objects with linked Person objects for clients and contacts. Project managers build Meeting objects that automatically surface the associated Project and every Person who attended. The system adapts to how you think rather than requiring you to adapt to it.

Daily Notes as a Connection Engine

Capacities surfaces relevant past objects inside your daily note based on what you are writing about. Mention a person's name and their linked content appears. Reference a project and associated meetings, tasks, and notes become visible. This is not search — it is automatic context. The daily note becomes a hub that connects current thinking to accumulated knowledge without any deliberate linking effort.

This behaviour distinguishes Capacities from both Notion (which requires manual database relations) and Obsidian (which requires manual backlinks). The automation does not replace intentional linking; it supplements it for users who cannot sustain perfect PKM discipline.

AI Assistant and MCP Connectors

The Pro plan adds an AI Assistant with summarise, rewrite, and autocomplete capabilities embedded directly in the editor. More significant is the AI Chat Connectors feature (also Pro), which exposes your Capacities space to external AI tools via the Model Context Protocol. Connect Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, or Le Chat and those tools can search your notes, read full objects, save content to your daily note, and link objects in their responses.

This is a meaningful architectural choice. Rather than building a proprietary AI chat interface, Capacities integrates with the AI tools their users already use. A researcher using Claude for analysis can have Claude search their Capacities knowledge base directly, surface relevant past notes, and save new findings back to the right objects. Access is scoped per space, so users control exactly what the AI tools can reach.

Cross-Platform Availability

Capacities runs natively on iOS, Android, macOS, Windows, Linux, and web. Many PKM tools compromise on at least one platform — Obsidian's mobile experience is functional but not native; Notion's desktop app is an Electron wrapper. Capacities offers genuine native apps across the full range of devices an individual user touches in a day. Sync is real-time across all platforms.

Pricing Transparency and Free Tier

The free plan includes unlimited notes, all core object types, daily notes, bidirectional links, and 5 GB storage. There is no feature nerfing designed to push users to paid plans — the free tier is a complete PKM system. Pro at $11.99/month (or $9.99/month billed annually) adds AI features, calendar integration, table formulas, and smart queries. The Believer tier at $12.49/month (annual) adds early access to new features including AI media analysis in beta.

No lifetime deal exists. No team plan exists. Capacities is, for now, a single-user product priced honestly.

Pricing

The free plan is unusually generous for a bootstrapped product. Unlimited notes with 5 GB storage covers the practical needs of most individual knowledge workers. Pro at $9.99/month (annual) or $11.99 month-to-month is the natural upgrade for users who want AI features or calendar integration. The price is fair relative to Notion's Plus plan ($10/month), and Capacities Pro includes AI features that Notion charges separately for.

Believer at $12.49/month annual is partly a patronage model. The name is deliberate. The extra $2.50/month funds the team's independent development and provides early access to features like AI media analysis. For users who prefer independent European software and want to support it directly, the Believer tier is the mechanism for doing that.

EU Compliance and Privacy

Capacities Labs GmbH is a German company with data stored in the EU, no outside investors, and no US parent company. That combination produces the cleanest possible GDPR compliance story for an individual application: no Schrems II transfer risk, no third-party data monetisation, no investor board that might pressure a future acquisition by a non-EU entity.

The privacy policy is published on capacities.io/impressum with the registered company details, VAT number (DE356317955), and managing director names. This level of transparency is uncommon among consumer PKM tools, where many competitors publish vague "we take privacy seriously" statements without matching legal specificity.

For individual users who store sensitive personal or professional information in their knowledge base, the absence of VC investors is a genuine structural advantage. The incentive to mine user data simply does not exist.

Who It's Best For

If you have tried Notion and found the database setup overhead too high, but Obsidian's pure Markdown approach too unstructured, Capacities sits precisely between the two. If you are a researcher, writer, or consultant who accumulates knowledge across many projects and needs it to surface automatically rather than requiring constant maintenance, the object model justifies the learning curve. If your organisation requires data to stay within EU infrastructure and you cannot use US-hosted tools for personal work notes, Capacities is a straightforward compliant choice. If you need team collaboration, shared workspaces, or deep integrations with tools like Slack and Google Drive, Notion remains the more practical option.

The Verdict

Capacities is the most structurally coherent approach to personal knowledge management in the EU market. The object model is genuinely different from folder-based thinking, and for users who invest the two or three weeks needed to shift their mental model, it pays back that investment continuously. The bootstrapped German structure means the privacy story is clean without qualification. The integration ecosystem is the honest weak point — five MCP connectors do not replace 500 native Notion integrations for teams that need workflow connections. But for an individual knowledge worker who prioritises structure, EU compliance, and a permanent free plan, Capacities deserves serious consideration alongside any of the American alternatives.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Capacities GDPR compliant?

Yes. Capacities is operated by Capacities Labs GmbH, a German company registered in Saarland with no outside investors. Data is stored in the EU. The company has no financial incentive to monetise user data, and the privacy policy is published with full legal entity details.

What makes Capacities different from Notion?

Capacities uses typed objects (Person, Book, Project) with automatic relational linking. Notion uses database pages in a flexible hierarchy. Notion is stronger for team collaboration and third-party integrations. Capacities is stronger for individual PKM where automatic context surfacing matters more than workflow connections.

Is Capacities free to use?

Yes. The core product is permanently free with unlimited notes, all object types, daily notes, and 5 GB storage. Pro ($9.99/month annual or $11.99 monthly) adds AI features, calendar integration, and smart queries.

Does Capacities work offline?

Capacities requires an internet connection for sync and is not fully offline-first. For users who need local-file-based offline notes, Obsidian is the better alternative.

Who built Capacities?

Capacities was founded in 2022 by Michael von Hohnhorst and Steffen Bleher and is operated by Capacities Labs GmbH in St. Wendel, Saarland, Germany. The company is entirely founder-owned with no outside investment.