Ampersand vs
Notion
Notion is a workspace several people edit at once. Ampersand is a folder of Markdown files one person writes in. Almost everything else follows from that.
These two apps are not competing for the same job, and pretending otherwise would make this page useless. Notion is a workspace: the unit is a block, the source of truth is Notion’s server, and the point is that several people can build and edit structured content in it at the same time. Ampersand is a writing app over a folder of Markdown files on your own disk. If the notes in question are a team’s shared surface, the rest of this page is academic and you should use Notion.
What Notion is genuinely best at is worth stating up front, because it is not a small list. Real-time multiplayer editing with live cursors, comments and per-page permissions. Relational databases with views, filters, rollups and formulas — not tables, actual databases, which nothing in Ampersand comes close to. A native AI Meeting Notes block that transcribes a Zoom, Meet or Teams call and writes it up. Sync that is included in every plan and needs no setting up, on apps for every phone and any browser.
The cost of that shape shows up in four places. Your writing lives as rows in a database you do not hold, so getting it out means an export — and Notion’s own Markdown export leaves behind database views, filters, rollups, formulas, comments and page history, because Markdown cannot represent them. Offline is partial: pages have to be marked available offline, the desktop cache runs about 72 hours, and while you are disconnected you cannot create a database, use an embed or a form, or change who can see a page. The price is per person per month, forever, and full Notion AI is bundled only into the $20-a-seat Business tier. And there is no client-side encryption at all — Notion says plainly that it does not use end-to-end encryption, because that would break collaboration, search and support access.
Ampersand takes the other side of each of those. Files you can read with any text editor, one payment of $29 rather than a seat charge, everything working with the network off, and bring-your-own-key AI that can run entirely on your machine. In exchange you give up real-time collaboration, databases, and — for now — any phone app at all. Those are real losses and they are the whole reason this comparison exists.
Ampersand and Notion, row by row
Every row states what both apps do. A dot marks whichever one leads — including the rows Notion takes.
| Feature | Ampersand | Notion |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Advantage: Ampersand.Free, then a one-time $29 (regularly $49) for export, AI agents, encryption and extra vaults. Three devices, 14-day money back, never a subscription. | Free tier, then Plus at $10 per member per month billed annually (about $12 monthly) and Business at $20 (about $24 monthly). Enterprise is quoted. Per person, every month, indefinitely. |
| Where notes live | Advantage: Ampersand.A folder you pick. Plain .md files with optional YAML frontmatter, readable by any text editor on any machine. | Notion’s servers, as blocks in a proprietary document model on Postgres-backed infrastructure. Every paragraph, image and database row is a block object. Nothing sits on your disk as a file. |
| Works offline | Advantage: Ampersand.Everything except cloud AI, and pointing it at a local model through Ollama removes even that. | Partly. Pages must be marked available offline — automatic on paid tiers — and the desktop caches roughly 72 hours. Offline you cannot create databases, use embeds, forms or buttons, share pages or change permissions, and a database view syncs only its first 50 rows. |
| Platforms | macOS 14+, Windows 10+ and Linux, on both Intel/AMD and ARM. There is no phone app yet. There is no web app either. | Advantage: Notion.macOS, Windows, iOS, Android and the web, all official. There is no Linux desktop app and Notion says there are no plans for one; Linux users run the web app. |
| Encryption | Advantage: Ampersand.Per-note, in the app, using age (X25519 + ChaCha20-Poly1305) under one vault passphrase, with Touch ID on macOS and a recovery kit. Unlocking your own notes is never gated behind a licence. | AES-256 at rest on Notion’s servers and TLS in transit, applied uniformly including on the free tier. No client-side or local encryption, no per-page password lock, and Notion states it does not use end-to-end encryption because that would break collaboration, search and support access. |
| Export | Advantage: Ampersand.Vector PDF from a real layout engine with running headers and controlled page breaks, editable Word with native equations and highlighted code, self-contained HTML, and Markdown. Whole-vault export too. | Markdown, HTML, CSV for databases, and PDF. The Markdown export drops database views, filters, rollups, formulas, comments and page history, and callouts come out as raw HTML inside it; only the HTML export keeps comments. Whole-workspace PDF export needs Business or Enterprise and is being removed entirely on a rollout ending 31 August 2026. |
| AI | Advantage: Ampersand.Bring-your-own-key throughout: Claude, OpenAI, Gemini, Apple Intelligence, local models through Ollama, and CLI agents, routed per feature. You pay the model provider directly at their price — no credits, no metering, no markup, and no tier to climb to switch it on. A local model costs nothing and sends nothing anywhere. Rewrite, grammar, translate and summarise are free. | Notion AI is built in and needs nothing configured, which is a real advantage over pasting in an API key. But it is bundled only into Business at $20 a seat and Enterprise — Free and Plus get a limited trial — and heavy use bills credits on top at around $10 per 1,000 a month. You cannot bring your own key, choose a different model, or run one locally. Its workspace-wide reach is counted in the Search, Databases and Meeting notes rows rather than twice here. |
| Search | Advantage: Ampersand.Full text across the whole vault, with case-sensitive, whole-word and regex toggles, and #tags, wiki-links and backlinks indexed alongside it. It covers encrypted notes too while the vault is unlocked. It does not read text inside images or PDFs. | Full text across every page and block in the workspace, and a database view is in effect a saved structured query — filters, sorts and grouping you keep. There is no regex and no case-sensitivity toggle, and no OCR: Notion AI can summarise a PDF or an image, but their contents are not indexed as searchable text. |
| Real-time collaboration | None. One person, one machine, one folder. | Advantage: Notion.Native and first-class: simultaneous editing with live cursors, comments, @mentions, granular per-page permissions and public web publishing. This is the thing Notion is for. |
| Structured content | Advantage: Ampersand.Notion-style blocks over plain Markdown: tables whose cells take spreadsheet formulas, Mermaid diagrams, Vega charts, KaTeX maths, live calculation blocks with units and currency, callouts and highlighted code — all round-tripping as ordinary .md. | Mermaid, KaTeX maths inline and block, highlighted code and callouts that nest other blocks are all native. The plain table block, though, is text only and takes no cell formulas, and charts exist only as a database view type — bar, line and donut. No live calculation. Databases are a different question and have the row below. |
| Databases | Tables with spreadsheet-style cell formulas, plus Mermaid diagrams, Vega charts and live calculation blocks. Useful, but a table is a table. | Advantage: Notion.Relational databases as a first-class object — multiple views, filters, sorts, relations, rollups and formulas, with any page able to be a row. Nothing in Ampersand is an answer to this. |
| Sync | None of our own. You bring iCloud Drive, Dropbox, Syncthing or a git repo, and set it up yourself — a vault is just a folder. | Advantage: Notion.First-party, included in every plan including the free one, across every platform, with nothing to configure. It is not end-to-end encrypted. |
| Meeting notes | Records a meeting in a room or on a call and transcribes it on your own Mac with a local Whisper model, then writes a note with a summary, the decisions and the action items as checkboxes. No bot joins, nothing is uploaded, and the audio is deleted once the transcript exists. macOS only, and part of Pro. | An AI Meeting Notes block transcribes microphone and system audio live from Zoom, Meet or Teams, or in a room, and generates a summary, decisions and action items in the page. It works on every platform Notion runs on, and it is gated to Business and Enterprise. |
| Extensibility | None. No plugins, no scripting API. What ships is what you get. | Advantage: Notion.An official REST API with OAuth integrations, plus a large template gallery. It is an integration model rather than a user-installable plugin ecosystem, but it is a real one and plenty of other software speaks it. |
| Publishing | Advantage: Ampersand.A share link you control: expiry of 7, 30 or 90 days or never; an optional password, or an email allowlist that can cover a whole domain; and a choice of how much a chat app may preview. Never indexed, no scripts, and changing the password signs every existing reader out. Pro; taking a note down never is. | Any page publishes to the open web from the share menu, and a paid plan can set the link to expire. There is no password option — Notion’s own help centre says so for every plan including Enterprise — and no way to limit a published link to named people or a domain; restricting a page instead means inviting someone as a guest, which requires them to have a Notion account. Published pages are indexable, with a toggle to control it. |
| Version history | Advantage: Ampersand.Every save, snapshotted into a git repository kept outside the vault, with a timeline and a line-by-line diff. Browsing and diffing are free; one-click restore is Pro. You set how long it keeps. | Native page history, held on Notion’s servers, with how far back you can reach set by your plan — seven days on Free, thirty on Plus, longer on Business and Enterprise. You can view a past version and restore it. It is also one of the things the Markdown export does not carry out with your notes. |
| Open source | No. The notes are plain Markdown and the encryption is the standard age format, so the files outlive the app either way. | No. |
Across these 17 rows, Ampersand leads 10, Notion leads 5, and 2 are a draw. The dot marks the leader. Where Notion leads, the dot is on its side of the table.
Ampersand is desktop-only today. An app for iPhone and iPad is in development and not yet released. The roadmap is where that gets announced.
Notion details checked against its own pricing and documentation pages on . If something here has gone out of date, tell us and we will fix it.
Where Ampersand pulls ahead
Your notes are files, not rows in someone’s database
Plain .md in a folder you chose, openable by any text editor on any machine, with no account and no server involved. There is no export step between you and your own writing, and nothing to get out if we go away — which is a different kind of ownership from being able to download a copy.
Paid once, not per person every month
A one-time $29 (regularly $49) covers three devices, with a 14-day money-back guarantee and no renewal. Notion Plus is $10 per member per month billed annually and Business — the tier that bundles full AI — is $20, so a team of five is spending more each year than Ampersand costs once.
Offline that means offline
Everything works with the network off: writing, search across the whole vault, backlinks, version history, export. Notion needs pages marked available offline, caches for around 72 hours, and while disconnected will not let you create a database, use an embed or change permissions.
AI you hold the keys to
Claude, OpenAI, Gemini, Apple Intelligence, a local Ollama model or a CLI agent — configured once and routed per feature, bring-your-own-key throughout, so you pay the provider directly and we take no cut. Run it locally and the text never leaves your machine, which is not an option Notion offers at any tier.
Send a document without handing over an account
Publishing gives you a link with a password or an email allowlist that can cover a whole domain, an expiry you choose, and a page that is never indexed and runs no scripts. Notion has no password on a published page on any plan, and narrowing access instead means inviting someone as a guest — which means they need a Notion account.
Export that carries the whole document out
Vector PDFs laid out by a real engine with running headers and controlled page breaks, Word files that are genuinely editable with native equations and syntax-highlighted code, self-contained HTML, and Markdown for the whole vault. Nothing is left behind and nothing is being phased out.
Where Notion is the better tool
Every page here names at least two, because Notion genuinely has them and a comparison that pretended otherwise would not be worth reading.
Several people writing in the same document at once
Live cursors, inline comments, @mentions and granular per-page permissions, all first-party and all reliable. Ampersand has no collaboration of any kind — one person, one machine — so if the notes are a shared surface for a team, this comparison ends here and Notion wins it.
Databases, not tables
Relations, rollups, formulas, filters and several views over the same records, with every row able to be a full page. It is the reason people build entire company operations inside Notion, and Ampersand has no answer to it beyond a table with cell formulas.
Sync that is included and needs no setting up
Every plan, including the free one, syncs across every platform with nothing to configure and no second service to pay for. Ampersand has no sync of its own at all — you point iCloud Drive, Dropbox, Syncthing or git at the folder and take responsibility for it yourself.
It runs on a phone, and in any browser
Official iOS and Android apps, plus a web app that works on anything with a browser — which is also how Linux users run it, since there is no Linux desktop build. Ampersand has native Linux but no phone app and no web app, so away from your desk there is currently nothing to open.
Which one should you use?
Choose Notion if
more than one person edits the same pages, you need relational databases with views and rollups rather than tables, or you want sync and a phone app that work the moment you sign in. Notion is the best tool in the category for collaborative structured content and that is not a consolation prize.
Choose Ampersand if
you write alone, you want the notes to be files on your own disk that no company holds, you want the app to work identically with the network off, and you would rather pay $29 once than a seat charge every month for as long as you keep writing.
Moving from Notion
Asked plainly
Is Ampersand a good Notion alternative?
It depends entirely on whether you write alone. Ampersand keeps notes as plain Markdown files on your own disk, costs $29 once instead of $10 to $20 per person per month, and works fully offline — so it is a good replacement for personal notes, drafting and research. It has no real-time collaboration and no relational databases, so it is a poor replacement for a shared team workspace. If more than one person edits the same pages, stay on Notion.
Can I use Notion offline?
Partly. Pages have to be marked available offline — which happens automatically on paid tiers — and the desktop app caches roughly 72 hours of content. While you are disconnected you can view and edit what is cached, but you cannot create databases, use embeds, forms or buttons, share pages or change permissions, and a database view only syncs its first 50 rows unless you download rows individually. Ampersand works entirely offline because the notes are files already on your disk; the only exception is cloud AI, and a local model removes that too.
How do I get my notes out of Notion?
Notion exports to Markdown & CSV, HTML or PDF from the workspace settings. The Markdown export is the one to use for moving to another app, but it does not carry database views, filters, rollups, formulas, comments or page history, because Markdown cannot represent them, and callout blocks come out as raw HTML. Ampersand imports the export zip directly, strips the hash suffixes Notion adds to filenames, brings attachments across and shows a dry run before changing anything.
Is Notion end-to-end encrypted?
No. Notion encrypts your content with AES-256 at rest on its servers and TLS in transit, on every tier including free, but it states plainly that it does not use end-to-end encryption because that would break real-time collaboration, full-text search and support access. There is no per-page password lock either. Ampersand encrypts individual notes on your own disk with age — X25519 and ChaCha20-Poly1305 — under one vault passphrase, and decrypting your own notes is never gated behind a licence.
Does Notion have a Linux app?
No. Notion publishes desktop apps for macOS and Windows and mobile apps for iOS and Android, and its own help centre states there is no Linux desktop app and no plans for one; Linux users run the web app in a browser. Ampersand ships a native Linux build for both Intel/AMD and ARM alongside macOS and Windows, but has no phone app and no web app at all, so the platform gaps run in opposite directions.
Is Notion AI included in the free plan?
No. Free and Plus get a limited trial of Notion AI; the full feature set — chat, the Enterprise Search agent, the Research agent and custom agents — is bundled into Business at $20 per member per month billed annually and into Enterprise, with heavy use billing extra credits at around $10 per 1,000 a month. Ampersand takes the other approach: you bring your own key for Claude, OpenAI, Gemini, Apple Intelligence or a local Ollama model, pay the provider directly, and we take no cut.
Other alternatives
Stop reading tables.
Open the app.
Ampersand is free to start and there is no account to make. Point it at the folder your notes are already in — including the one Notion keeps them in — and see for yourself.
Free to start · Mac, Windows & Linux · No account required