Pikos vs Notion

The short version

Notion is a workspace for a group. Databases, relations, permissions, templates for everything, and a page anyone with the link can open. If more than one person needs to see the thing you're writing, that's the whole argument and Pikos doesn't compete.

Pikos is a workspace for one person, on one machine. There's no server between you and a page, everything works offline, and nobody is hosting your notes.

Stay with Notion if

You share pages with anyone. Pikos has no collaboration, no comments, no sharing, and no permissions. There's no server to host a shared page on, which is the point, and also the limit.

You use databases. Relations, rollups, filtered views over structured records: Pikos has none of it. It has pages with tags, folders, priorities, and dates, and that's the ceiling.

You want your notes on the web, on a phone, and on someone else's computer. Notion is everywhere. Pikos is a Mac and Linux app today, with an iPhone app in the works.

Try Pikos if

You're the only person who ever reads your notes. Notion is built for teams, and a lot of what makes it good is doing nothing for you if you're the only one there.

You want it to work offline without planning ahead. Notion works offline only for pages you've marked for it. Pikos reads a file on your disk, so everything is there with or without a connection.

You'd rather not have your work on someone else's servers. Nothing you write in Pikos is sent anywhere. There's no account to make, so there's no account to lose access to.

What Pikos doesn't do

No collaboration, no sharing, no databases, no web version, no templates gallery, no AI writing features. Notion is a much bigger product and this is not a case where the smaller one quietly does more.

Moving your pages across

Notion exports Markdown. In Notion, open the workspace or page menu, choose Export, and pick Markdown & CSV. You'll get a folder of .md files.

Pikos imports that folder directly: Settings, then the Data tab, then Select Folder next to Markdown. It walks subfolders, but Pikos folders don't nest on import, so each subfolder becomes its own folder named after its path, like "Projects / Work". Databases export as CSV and won't come across as structured records, because Pikos has nothing to put them in. Expect the prose to survive and the tables not to.