Valutorio vs Capacities: Typed objects vs plain files (2026)
Capacities asks you to declare what a note is. A book is a book, a person is a person, a meeting is a meeting, and the app knows the difference. Valutorio asks nothing. Every note is a markdown file in a folder, linked by wikilinks, indexed cold in 1.07 seconds. Capacities buys you structure and costs you offline access, a public API, and plain files. Valutorio buys you files and speed and costs you the typed model entirely.
Quick verdict
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You think in entities and want a books database that behaves like one
Pick Capacities
Object types with their own properties are its whole design, and Valutorio has no equivalent.
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You work on trains and planes without signal
Pick Valutorio
Capacities has documented offline limits; Valutorio reads and writes local files and never waits on a server.
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You want your notes readable by a script in five years
Pick Valutorio
A folder of markdown needs no vendor and no export step to stay readable.
| Valutorio | Capacities | |
|---|---|---|
| Platforms | macOS 14+ | macOS, Windows, Linux, iOS, Android, Web |
| Engine | native Swift + Rust | web |
| Data format | plain markdown folder | proprietary object database (cloud); markdown export |
| Pricing | paid app, Mac App Store (pricing at launch) | free plan; Pro ~$12.49/mo (less billed annually) |
| Sync | Valutorio Sync (subscription): automatic, encrypted, conflict-free; personal MCP endpoint for AI assistants included | cloud-native |
| Offline | yes | no |
| Wikilinks | yes | yes |
| Backlinks | yes | yes |
| Graph view | yes | yes |
| Open source | no | no |
Competitor rows come from public vendor documentation and pricing pages, checked August 2026. Valutorio rows describe the shipping macOS app.
Typed objects against a flat folder
This is the real disagreement between the two apps. In Capacities you create an object type, give it properties, and every note of that type inherits the shape. Query the type and you get a proper collection: all your books with their authors and reading dates in one view.
Valutorio has no types. It has files, wikilinks, tags with counts, backlinks with surrounding context, and a force-directed graph you can filter. You can get most of the way to a books collection with a tag and a search, and it will be fast, but it will not be a schema and it will not validate anything. Capacities is genuinely better at this and it is the reason people pick it.
Winner Capacities Capacities: typed objects with properties, which no amount of tagging in Valutorio reproduces.
Offline behaviour
Capacities lists limited offline functionality among its known weaknesses, and users have documented it. The app is cloud-native, so the network is not an accessory. Performance complaints on mobile appear in the same reports.
Valutorio never needs the network to work. Indexing, full-text search, wikilink autocomplete, backlinks, and the graph all read from local files. Search on a 2,000-file, 55 MB vault returns in 1.8 to 6.6 ms whether or not you have wifi, because the index is on your SSD and the code that queries it is Rust.
Winner Valutorio Valutorio: everything works with the wifi off, because nothing was ever remote.
Storage and getting out
Capacities keeps your objects in a proprietary cloud database and offers a markdown export. There is no public API, which has been a standing request from its users, so the export is the main door out and it is not a live one.
Valutorio's vault is a folder. Ten thousand notes are ten thousand .md files with names you chose, sitting in directories you made, which you can copy anywhere. There is no import, no conversion, and no export, because there is nothing to convert from.
Winner Valutorio Valutorio: no export path needed, because the storage format is already the portable format.
How fast each one feels
Capacities runs on web technology on every platform it ships to, which is how it covers macOS, Windows, Linux, iOS, Android, and the browser from one codebase. That reach is real and Valutorio cannot match it.
The cost is the layer between your keystroke and the text. Valutorio is Swift and AppKit with a Rust engine and no JavaScript runtime. Keystroke latency in a 1 MB note is 0.1 ms. A graph snapshot takes 10 ms. A 300 MB markdown file is on screen in under a second. Cold indexing of the whole benchmark vault takes 1.07 seconds, once, when you open it.
Winner Valutorio Valutorio: 0.1 ms per keystroke, with no web view in the way.
Sync, and what happens when two machines disagree
Capacities syncs through Capacities. It is included in the plan and you do not configure anything. Simplicity is a feature and both apps take that route.
Valutorio Sync is an optional subscription with nothing to configure either: it runs in the background at 0.56 s a cycle, encrypted in transit and at rest, and the first full pass over 2,000 files takes about 30 seconds. What differs is the failure case. When two machines edit one note, three tiers run in order: a three-way merge, then markdown-aware keep-both blocks, then keep-both artifacts. No conflict marker is ever written into a note, no conflicted copy appears next to it, and a sync killed mid-cycle repairs itself. Subscriptions also come with a personal MCP endpoint, so Claude or another MCP-capable assistant can search and write the vault from anywhere, which Capacities has no equivalent for.
Winner Valutorio Valutorio: a documented three-tier merge that never leaves you a conflict, plus an MCP endpoint for your own AI assistant.
What Valutorio does not have
No Windows, Linux, Android, iOS, or web app. macOS 14 and later, and that is the list. The vault is readable by any editor on any system, but that is a property of markdown, not a second Valutorio client.
There is also no plugin ecosystem, no real-time collaboration, and no built-in AI chat, though a Sync subscription's MCP endpoint lets you point your own assistant at the vault. Valutorio is a young app with no reviews behind it yet. Capacities has an active community and a development pace people notice. If either of those matters more to you than milliseconds and file ownership, Capacities is the better bet and you should take it.
Winner Capacities Capacities: six platforms, a community, and a track record Valutorio has not had time to build.
What each one costs
Capacities has a free plan that people genuinely use, with Pro at roughly $12.49 a month, less if you pay for a year at once. Three years of Pro is somewhere near $450 at the monthly rate. Valutorio is a paid Mac App Store app, and its price is not decided, so I am not going to invent one. Valutorio Sync is a separate optional subscription with an unannounced price too. The one thing worth comparing without numbers: Capacities without a plan is a limited cloud account, and Valutorio without a subscription is a complete offline app on a vault you own.
Who should choose which
Choose Capacities if
- You want object types with properties, not tags standing in for them.
- You need the same app on Windows, Android, or in a browser.
- The free plan is enough for you and you would rather not pay anything yet.
- You like daily notes with a visual sense of place and Capacities' organisation clicks for you.
Choose Valutorio if
- You want plain markdown files on disk, no database and no export button.
- You work offline often enough that partial offline support is a dealbreaker.
- Search in a couple of milliseconds matters more to you than a schema.
- You want an MCP endpoint your AI assistant can query, which Capacities has no answer for.
Questions people ask
Will my typed objects survive a move to Valutorio?
The text will, the types will not. Capacities exports markdown, and Valutorio reads a folder of markdown as a vault with no import step. What you lose is the schema: a book object with an author property becomes a note with that information written in the body or the frontmatter. Tags and links carry across because they are already text.
Is Capacities usable on a plane?
Partly. Limited offline functionality is one of its documented weaknesses and mobile performance draws complaints. Valutorio has no cloud dependency at all: the index, the search, and the graph read local files, so a flight changes nothing about how it behaves.
Does Valutorio have anything like Capacities' object model?
No, and it is not pretending to. It has wikilinks with autocomplete under half a millisecond, backlinks shown with context, tags with counts, and a filterable graph. That covers a lot of what people build objects for, and it covers it quickly, but it is not a type system.
What happens if Valutorio disappears tomorrow?
Your vault is still a folder of markdown files on your own disk. Any text editor opens it and any backup tool copies it. That is the argument for plain files, and it holds whether the app in front of them is Valutorio or something else.
Can I run both for a while?
Yes, on separate material. Keep project notes in a Valutorio vault and structured collections in Capacities, since the two models do not fight when they are not describing the same notes. Running one set of notes through both means exporting from Capacities repeatedly, which gets old fast.
Related comparisons
This comparison is published by the Valutorio team. Competitor details verified August 2026 from public sources; corrections welcome. All Valutorio comparisons · What Valutorio is