Heptabase vs Toxvas: Local Files or Cloud Canvas?

Heptabase and Toxvas look alike in screenshots — cards on an infinite canvas, arrows between ideas. Underneath they are opposite bets about where your thinking should live: Heptabase in a polished cloud workspace, Toxvas in a folder of files on your Mac. This is the honest comparison, including where we lose. (Yes, we make Toxvas.)

Price math

Heptabase Pro is $8.99/month billed yearly ($11.99 month-to-month) after a 7-day trial; there’s a $17.99/month Premium tier above it. That’s roughly $108/year, every year, for as long as you think.

Toxvas is $9 once (early access; $19 when it ends), with a free 7-day trial and no account. Year one: $9 vs ~$108. Year three: still $9 vs ~$324. The math isn’t close — which is exactly why the rest of this comparison matters more than the price. Cheap doesn’t help if it’s the wrong tool.

Where your work lives

Heptabase stores your cards and whiteboards in its cloud, in its format. It exports to Markdown, but the workspace itself is something you access through Heptabase.

Toxvas stores everything in a folder you choose: one Markdown file per card, one JSON file per board, attachments alongside, plus a spec file documenting the format. Open it in Finder, read it in any editor, version it in Git, hand it to an AI agent with shell access. Uninstall the app and nothing changes about your notes — there is nothing to export because there was never anything locked in.

If “my notes in ten years” is your test, files win structurally, not just philosophically. If “my notes on all my devices today” is your test, Heptabase’s cloud wins practically. Name your test before you pick.

Offline and accounts

Both desktop apps work offline. The difference is what offline means: in Toxvas there is no account, no sync server, and no telemetry — offline is the absence of anything needing the network. In Heptabase you sign in, your work syncs to their cloud, and offline is a mode the app supports. One is local-first; the other is cloud-first with good offline manners.

The research workflow

This is Heptabase’s home turf and we won’t pretend otherwise. Its PDF workflow — annotate, highlight, turn highlights into cards on the whiteboard — plus Readwise-style integrations and built-in AI credits, is purpose-built for academic and literature-heavy research. Real-time whiteboard collaboration is included, with collaborators joining free.

Toxvas has no PDF annotation workflow, no built-in AI, and no real-time collaboration. What it has instead: media that lands directly on the board, ink connectors that follow cards, section frames, and a CLI-shaped surface where agents read and write the same files you arrange. Different strengths for different work.

Who should pick which

Pick Heptabase if: you do highlight-driven research across papers; you collaborate on whiteboards in real time; you work across Mac, Windows, and mobile; you want AI features built in; $9–18/month is a fair price for your thinking environment.

Pick Toxvas if: your notes are Markdown files you want to arrange spatially; you refuse accounts, subscriptions, and telemetry; you want agents or scripts working directly on your workspace; one Mac is where you think; $9 once beats $108 a year.

Pick neither if: you need Windows and files (take Obsidian Canvas), or free team mood-boards (take Milanote) — see the full Heptabase alternatives roundup.

The one-line version: Heptabase is the better research cloud; Toxvas is the better folder. Choose according to which sentence describes where you want your thinking to live.