Valutorio vs Agenda: Dates as spine vs links (2026)

In Agenda a note has a date, and that date is not metadata. It places the note on a timeline, ties it to a calendar event, and lets you scroll your history the way you scroll a calendar. Notes also link to reminders and to each other. For meeting-heavy work this is unusually well designed and nothing in Valutorio replaces it.

Valutorio does not know what day it is. A vault is a folder of markdown files, and structure comes from directories, wikilinks, backlinks with surrounding context, and tags with counts. If you want to browse by date you name your files by date, which is journaling rather than a timeline. Agenda's model beats that for anything calendar-shaped.

Agenda keeps notes in a proprietary local store and exports to markdown. The store is local, which is better than a cloud database, and sync runs over iCloud or Dropbox. It is still Agenda's format, so reading your notes with another tool means exporting them first.

Valutorio has no store. The vault is a folder, the notes are .md files, and any editor opens them while Valutorio is closed. Nothing is imported on the way in and nothing needs exporting on the way out. Valutorio Sync, an optional subscription, keeps two Macs in step in the background at 0.56 s per cycle, encrypted in transit and at rest, with nothing to configure. Without it the app still works: local vault, offline, forever.

Search is Agenda's documented weak spot, criticized by its own users, and the app has no graph view. That is survivable when the timeline is your primary way in, because you often remember roughly when something happened. It stops being survivable at a few thousand notes about things that never had a date.

Valutorio's measurements on a 2,000-file, 55 MB vault: cold index 1.07 s, full-text search 1.8 to 6.6 ms, wikilink autocomplete under 0.5 ms, backlink lookup 0.65 µs, graph snapshot 10 ms. The graph is force-directed with filtering, and there is a quick switcher and a minimap. Retrieval is the part of the product Valutorio spent its engineering on.

Agenda has one of the fairest pricing models in this category. The core app is free and stays usable forever, and premium features are a one-time purchase: you own the features released during your purchase window, including future ones from that window, with no expiring subscription. Nobody should sneer at that.

Valutorio is a paid Mac App Store app with no free tier, and Valutorio Sync is an optional subscription on top of it if you want two Macs kept in step. Agenda is the only app here you can evaluate for months without spending money, and that is a real advantage over asking for a purchase first.

Agenda is free to use indefinitely, with premium features sold as a one-time purchase you keep, including features shipped during your purchase window. That model has kept its users loyal and it means you can run the app for a year at zero cost. Valutorio is a paid Mac App Store app whose price is not announced, so I will not put a number next to Agenda's. Valutorio Sync is a separate optional subscription and I cannot quote that price either. Agenda lets you find out whether you like it before paying, and Valutorio asks up front.