🪶 Quillpad
Local-first markdown notes — your knowledge base is a folder of plain .md files you own.
Quillpad at a glance
| Price | $29, once — no renewal |
| Replaces | Notion at $12/mo per seat — roughly $144 a year, every year |
| Type | Desktop app — runs offline |
| Platforms | Windows, macOS, Linux |
| Category | Productivity |
Quillpad features
📁 Your vault is just a folder
Notes are real .md files, folders are folders. Edit them in any other app — Quillpad watches the disk and refreshes live.
✍️ Live-styled markdown editor
CodeMirror 6 with inline preview styling — sized headings, rendered bold/italic, highlighted code. Ctrl+E toggles full preview.
🔗 [[Wikilinks]] + backlinks
Type [[ for fuzzy autocomplete over every note; aliases supported; missing notes are created on click. Every note shows who links to it, with context.
#️⃣ Tags
#hashtags anywhere appear in the sidebar — click to filter.
🔎 Full-text search + quick switcher
Instant search with highlighted matches across the vault; Ctrl+P jumps to any note, recent first.
📅 Daily notes
Ctrl+D opens (or creates) today's daily/YYYY-MM-DD.md.
⚡ Global quick capture
Ctrl+Shift+N from anywhere in Windows pops a tiny window; Enter appends to inbox.md.
🔒 100% local
No account, no cloud, no database, no telemetry, no network calls — ever.
$29 once — that's the whole pricing page
Notion charges $12/mo per seat — roughly $144 a year, every year. Quillpad is a single payment, and it keeps working whether or not we ever sell another copy.
Or get Quillpad inside the full suite — every app in the catalog, currently $97 for the bundle. See the bundle →
Quillpad guides & pages
Honest answers
Is it really free on GitHub?
Yes — MIT source at github.com/bensblueprints/quillpad-notes-mvp, always. $29 buys the signed installer with auto-updates.
How do I sync between machines?
Your vault is a plain folder, so any file sync works: Dropbox, Google Drive, Syncthing, git. There's no built-in sync service — that's a feature, not a gap: it's why there's no account and no monthly fee. If you want turnkey encrypted mobile sync, Obsidian Sync is good at that.
Can it replace Notion databases?
No — Quillpad is notes, links and tags, not tables, kanbans and formulas. If your workspace is really a database app, Notion earns its seat fee. If it's actually a pile of documents, files are better.