Valutorio vs Craft: Pretty docs vs plain files (2026)
Craft wins when the note has to be shown to someone: a shared doc, a client-facing page, a document you want to look designed. Valutorio wins when the note has to survive: plain markdown on your disk, linked, searchable, readable by anything. Both are native Swift apps, so neither drags an Electron runtime around. The split is the storage model and the audience. Craft keeps proprietary blocks in its own cloud with a 1,500-block free ceiling. Valutorio keeps .md files in a folder.
Quick verdict
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You send documents to clients and want them to look good
Pick Craft
Document styling and sharing are Craft's strongest features and Valutorio has neither.
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You want notes as files you can grep, script, and back up yourself
Pick Valutorio
Craft's format is proprietary blocks; a Valutorio vault is plain .md files.
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You hit the 1,500-block free cap and disliked the plan changes
Pick Valutorio
No block limits and no plan tiers, because your notes are files on your own disk.
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You want a graph over a few thousand notes
Pick Valutorio
Craft has wikilinks and backlinks but no graph view.
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You work across a Mac, an iPad, and a Windows machine
Pick Craft
Craft has native apps on Windows and Apple platforms plus web; Valutorio is macOS only.
| Valutorio | Craft | |
|---|---|---|
| Platforms | macOS 14+ | macOS, iOS, iPadOS, Windows, Web |
| Engine | native Swift + Rust | native |
| Data format | plain markdown folder | proprietary block-based documents; export to Markdown/PDF/DOCX |
| Pricing | paid app, Mac App Store (pricing at launch) | Free (1500-block limit, 1 GB); Plus ~$6.40/mo; Family $12/mo; Team $50/mo |
| Sync | Valutorio Sync (subscription): automatic, encrypted, conflict-free; personal MCP endpoint for AI assistants included | cloud-native via Craft's service; local/offline editing supported |
| Offline | yes | yes |
| Wikilinks | yes | yes |
| Backlinks | yes | yes |
| Graph view | yes | no |
| Open source | no | no |
Competitor rows come from public vendor documentation and pricing pages, checked August 2026. Valutorio rows describe the shipping macOS app.
Documents you show people
Craft is very good at making a note look like a finished document. Block-based editing, considered typography, and sharing that produces something you are happy to send are its point, and its native Swift apps on Apple platforms are lovely to use. Daily notes and tasks come along with it.
Valutorio does not compete here. There is no sharing, no publishing, no styled output, and no collaboration. It has a source and preview editor for markdown, a minimap, and that is the extent of the presentation story. If half your notes end up in front of somebody else, Craft is the better purchase and this page should not talk you out of it.
Winner Craft Craft wins visual documents and sharing, and Valutorio has no answer in that lane.
Blocks in a service, files in a folder
Craft documents are proprietary block-based objects synced through Craft's own cloud. Export goes to Markdown, PDF, or DOCX, and the markdown export keeps structure well, though assets need manual fixup afterwards. So leaving Craft is a conversion with a cleanup phase.
A Valutorio vault has no container around it. Each note is a .md file you can open in any editor while Valutorio runs, read on a machine that has never heard of Valutorio, or feed to a script. Nothing was imported to create the vault and nothing needs exporting to leave it.
That is a structural difference and not a feature difference, and it does not depend on either company's plans.
Winner Valutorio Markdown files need no export step, so there is no cleanup phase when you leave.
The free plan ceiling and the tier reshuffles
Craft's free plan caps you at 1,500 blocks and 1 GB, which is the single most common complaint about it, and repeated pricing and plan restructures have frustrated existing users. Paid plans run about $6.40 a month on Plus, $12 a month for Family, and $50 a month for Team.
Valutorio has no tiers, no block counting, and no storage quota, because the storage is your own disk. Buying the app once gets you a vault with no ceiling on it; Valutorio Sync is a separate optional subscription only if you want two Macs kept in step. Nothing about your existing notes can be moved behind a new plan later, because the notes are files you already have.
Winner Valutorio No block cap and nothing that can be revoked from notes you already wrote, against a 1,500-block free ceiling and a history of restructures.
Knowledge features under the surface
Craft has wikilinks and backlinks. It has no graph view, and its knowledge-management depth is shallower than tools built for that job first, which is a fair description of the trade it makes to be a great document app.
Valutorio is built the other way round. Wikilink autocomplete comes back in under 0.5 ms, and looking up what links to a note costs 0.65 µs. Backlinks arrive with the sentence around them. The force-directed graph renders a 2,000-file snapshot in 10 ms and filters from there, tags carry counts, and the quick switcher covers the whole vault. Full-text search over that 2,000-file, 55 MB vault returns in 1.8 to 6.6 ms, with a cold index of 1.07 s.
One more figure decides some cases outright: a 300 MB markdown file opens in under a second, and keystroke latency inside a 1 MB note is 0.1 ms.
Winner Valutorio Valutorio has the graph, the measured search, and the depth Craft deliberately skipped.
Who moves your notes between machines
Craft syncs through Craft's service, with local and offline editing supported, so it behaves well without a connection and still requires the vendor's cloud to reach your other devices.
Valutorio Sync is an optional subscription that runs in the background between Macs, encrypted in transit and at rest, at 0.56 s a cycle with nothing to configure. When two Macs edited the same note while apart, three automatic tiers resolve it: a three-way merge, then markdown-aware keep-both blocks, then keep-both artifacts. No conflict marker ever lands in a note, no conflicted copy appears beside it, and a sync interrupted halfway repairs itself on the next pass.
Cancelling changes what moves, not what you keep. The vault stays a folder of markdown you can read and copy by hand, which is not true of a Craft account you stop paying for.
Winner Valutorio Both sell sync, and only one of them guarantees you never see a conflict or lose access to the files.
What each one costs
Craft has a free plan capped at 1,500 blocks and 1 GB, then roughly $6.40 a month for Plus, $12 a month for Family, and $50 a month for Team. Valutorio is a paid Mac App Store app at a price not yet set, with Valutorio Sync as an optional subscription on top. Craft Plus over three years is around $230, and it buys document styling and sharing that Valutorio does not have at any price. The uncomfortable part of Craft's pricing is not the number, it is the history of plan restructures, and that is the part a folder of markdown on your own disk is immune to.
Who should choose which
Choose Craft if
- Your notes get shared, sent, or published, and appearance matters.
- You want block-based editing with polished document styling.
- You need a native Windows app alongside Mac and iPad.
- Integrated daily notes and tasks in one document tool suit how you work.
Choose Valutorio if
- You want plain .md files on your own disk instead of proprietary blocks in a vendor cloud.
- A 1,500-block free ceiling and repeated plan changes are why you are looking elsewhere.
- You want a filterable graph, which Craft does not have.
- You want sync between Macs that resolves overlapping edits without showing you a conflict.
- You keep large notes and want a 300 MB file to open in under a second.
Questions people ask
Can I move my Craft documents into Valutorio?
Yes, through Craft's Markdown export, which keeps document structure well. Export to Markdown, put the files in the folder you want as your vault, and open it in Valutorio. Budget time for assets, because images and attachments need manual fixup after a Craft export.
Does Valutorio have a graph view and does Craft?
Valutorio does and Craft does not. Valutorio's graph is force-directed with filtering and renders a snapshot of a 2,000-file vault in 10 ms. Craft has wikilinks and backlinks, which cover linking but not an overview of the whole set.
Can I share a Valutorio note with someone?
Only by sending them the file, since there is no sharing or publishing feature and no collaboration. The file is plain markdown, so anyone can read it in any editor. For polished sharing, Craft is much better at it and that gap is not narrowing.
Does Craft work offline?
Yes. Craft supports local and offline editing, with sync through its own cloud once you are back online. Valutorio is local first by design: the vault is a folder on your disk, and only Valutorio Sync touches the network.
Is there a free tier of Valutorio?
No. Valutorio is a paid app on the Mac App Store, with no free plan and no block or storage limit once you have it, and Valutorio Sync is a further optional subscription for syncing Macs. Craft's free plan exists and caps you at 1,500 blocks and 1 GB, which is where most of its complaints come from.
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