Synap vs Capacities

Same idea. Different ownership model.

Capacities pioneered object-based note-taking with a beautiful UX and a data model that treats everything as typed objects rather than flat documents. Synap shares that philosophy. The difference is where your data lives and how much is done for you.

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Synap and Capacities, side by side

Synap compared with Capacities
Topic	Capacities	Synap
Data model	Typed objects you create	Typed records, created and filled for you
Hosting	SaaS only — no self-hosting	A dedicated PostgreSQL pod you own
Models	Its own assistant, no model choice	Any agent you connect
Developers	A public REST API with OAuth and a TypeScript SDK (2026)	Full tRPC API and SDK
Views	Object pages and collections	Board, calendar, table, graph and more

Structuring on capture is part of Pod + AI (€100/month). On the Pod plan (€20/month), the agent you connect does the structuring through Synap's tools. Either way, changes arrive as proposals you review.

Where Capacities is strong

Object-based data model
Clean, polished UX
Daily notes and tagging

Where they differ

Objects vs. records

Capacities and Synap share a key insight: information should be typed, not flat. In Capacities you create “objects” — a person, a book, a meeting — with custom properties. In Synap the equivalent is records — contacts, projects, tasks, articles — with typed profiles and property schemas.

The difference is who does the work. In Capacities, you create objects, assign types, and fill in properties by hand. In Synap, that's done for you: paste a link, forward an email, or type a messy note, and the type is detected, properties extracted, and relationships to existing records proposed. Same philosophy, very different experience.

Where your data lives

Capacities is cloud-only SaaS. Your objects, properties, and relationships live on its servers, with no self-hosting option and no standard database access. If Capacities changes pricing, removes features, or shuts down, your data is reachable only through its export — which may or may not preserve the full graph.

Synap runs on a dedicated PostgreSQL pod. Your records, relationships, and history live in a real database you control. Self-host it, export it with pg_dump, or build applications on top of your own data. The infrastructure is yours.

Beyond search

Capacities has added assistant features — mainly search and summarization — but you're tied to the model it chose, with no way to switch providers or run a local model.

In Synap, the work is structural. Your agent doesn't just find things: it creates records, proposes relationships, extracts properties, and builds views. Consequential changes arrive as proposals you review. And you choose the agent — switch freely without losing context.

Common questions

How is Synap different from Capacities?

Capacities and Synap both use a typed object model for knowledge. The differences: Capacities stores your data in its cloud, while Synap gives you a dedicated server you own. Capacities uses its own assistant; Synap works with any agent you connect (Claude, ChatGPT, Le Chat and others). Synap also exposes a full developer API for custom integrations.

Does Synap organize automatically like Capacities?

Synap goes further. It classifies each capture into a typed record with properties and relationships, without you choosing a type first. Capacities asks you to pick the object type and set up properties, then assists from there.

Is Synap's data ownership better than Capacities'?

Yes. Capacities stores your data in its shared cloud database. Synap provisions a dedicated server for each user. You can export SQL or JSON at any time, or self-host the entire Synap stack on your own infrastructure.

Objects that organize themselves.

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