Instead of Roam Research, try one of these 4.
Every alternative is lined up against Roam Research on what people actually switch for: price, open source, self-hosting, offline use and platforms. Roam Research sits in the first row, so you can see what you give up.
How to read this. “Yes” means fully supported by the maker. “Partial” means it works with caveats. Likes reflect community popularity; vendors can’t pay for them or for placement. Our pick, marked in lime, is the option we would point most people leaving Roam Research to first. How we compare.
Roam Research alternatives at a glance
Roam Research is a paid productivity app (from $15/mo). We compared 4 alternatives: 2 are open source, 2 are completely free, 0 can be self-hosted and 3 work fully offline. The most popular is Obsidian, with 3.9k likes, while our pick is Logseq.
Private, local-first knowledge base built on plain Markdown files.
Freemium · Works offlineOutliner for networked thought, with backlinks and daily journals.
Free · Open source · Works offlineLocal-first, end-to-end encrypted workspace with objects and sets.
Free · Open source · Works offline