What AI knowledge base apps do
These are the apps you keep everything in: notes, documents, project pages, meeting records and the half-formed ideas that turn into work. What separates them from a meeting notetaker is that the notes are the point rather than the by-product — a notetaker captures a call and hands you a summary, while a knowledge app is where that summary goes to be linked, searched and reused months later.
The AI layer now sits in all of them, but it does different jobs. In Notion and Superhuman Docs it drafts and queries inside documents. In Mem it acts as an agent that reads what you write and tracks the tasks it finds. In Tana it joins your calls without a visible bot and turns what was said into structured entries. In Obsidian and Craft it is deliberately a smaller part of the product.
What to look for
What the billing unit actually is. The per-month figure matters less than what it counts. Superhuman Docs bills only the people who build docs; Mem meters how many notes you create; Craft charges per account but puts shared spaces behind a bundle. Two apps at a similar headline price can differ several-fold once you map them onto how your team really works.
Whether collaboration is included or sold separately. Several of these are excellent single-player products where the second user is the expensive one. Check the price of the smallest configuration that includes sharing, not the price of the cheapest paid plan.
What happens to your notes if you leave. Export quality is the difference between switching and starting over. Obsidian is the outlier here because its storage format is plain Markdown on your own disk; everywhere else, test the export before you have thousands of notes to move.
How recently the pricing changed. This category has been unusually unstable. Coda is now sold as Superhuman Docs, and Tana has restructured around meetings at roughly triple its former price — so most of what is written about both describes a product that no longer exists.
How we evaluate
We use each tool on real work rather than a demo document, compare the plans on what they actually meter, and report transparent, dated pricing taken from the vendor’s own pricing page. Every figure here carries the date it was checked, and individual tool reviews are added to this category as we complete them.
We have reviewed 5 AI knowledge base apps in full, pricing each from the vendor’s own page rather than a third-party summary. Obsidian rates highest at 4.5/5. Your data is a folder of Markdown files on your own machine. All 5 offer a free tier (Obsidian, Craft, Coda (now Superhuman Docs), Tana and Mem).
Among the plans priced per month in dollars, entry cost runs from Obsidian at $4/user/mo annual (Sync add-on) to Tana at $20/user/mo annual early bird (Pro) — roughly 5× for tools that get compared against each other directly.
The tools, compared
Every figure is taken from the vendor’s own pricing page and re-verified on the date shown in each review. Ratings are DigiJaws editorial ratings, not aggregated user scores.
| Tool | Rating | Entry price | Free tier | Best fit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Obsidian | 4.5/5 | $4/user/mo annual (Sync add-on) | Yes – the full app, unlimited | Local-first Markdown vault you own |
| Craft | 4.0/5 | $6.40/mo annual (Plus) | Yes – 1,500 blocks, 1 GB | Design-led documents on Apple platforms |
| Coda (now Superhuman Docs) | 3.5/5 | $12/Doc Maker/mo billed annually | Yes — collaborative docs, tables, views, forms, formulas and automations | Organisations where many people read and few people build documents |
| Tana | 3.5/5 | $20/user/mo annual early bird (Pro) | Yes – 5 hosted meetings a month | Meeting-centric AI workspace |
| Mem | 3.0/5 | $9/mo (Plus) | Yes – 25 notes and 25 messages a month | AI agent that tracks tasks across notes |
If you only read this far
Obsidian
Your data is a folder of Markdown files on your own machine.
Craft
Rated 4.0/5. Documents that look designed without any effort from you.
All 5 reviewed, in rating order
Obsidian
Your data is a folder of Markdown files on your own machine.
Suits: Researchers, writers and analysts building a knowledge base they expect to keep for years. Not for: Teams that need real-time collaborative editing as the primary mode.
Watch out: Everything is a decision. There is no default structure, no onboarding path that ends in a working system, and roughly 2,000 community plugins to choose between.
Pricing: $4/user/mo annual (Sync add-on) · working tier $8/site/mo Publish add-on
Free tier: Yes – the full app, unlimited
Full review publishes 2026-10-01.
Craft
Documents that look designed without any effort from you.
Suits: Solo writers and consultants whose documents get sent to other people. Not for: Teams of two to four who need collaboration at a sensible per-head price.
Watch out: A shared Space is not part of the individual Plus plan.
Pricing: $6.40/mo annual (Plus) · working tier $50/mo Team (up to 10 accounts)
Free tier: Yes – 1,500 blocks, 1 GB
Full review publishes 2026-10-01.
Coda (now Superhuman Docs)
You pay only for Doc Makers. Editors and Viewers cost nothing, forever.
Suits: Organisations where many people read and few people build documents. Not for: Buyers who need stability of naming, ownership and roadmap above all.
Watch out: The product you researched under the name Coda has been renamed, re-homed and bundled into a four-product suite in under two years.
Pricing: $12/Doc Maker/mo billed annually
Free tier: Yes — collaborative docs, tables, views, forms, formulas and automations
Full review publishes 2026-10-01.
Tana
The botless meeting agent. Tana joins Zoom, Teams and Google Meet without a visible bot participant, then turns what was said into structured, tagged content in your workspace rather than a transcript you have to process.
Suits: People whose calendars are mostly meetings and whose notes never get revisited. Not for: Anyone arriving from a 2024-era article about Tana’s outliner and old pricing.
Watch out: Almost everything written about Tana before 2026 describes a different product and different prices.
Pricing: $20/user/mo annual early bird (Pro) · working tier $80/user/mo Max early bird
Free tier: Yes – 5 hosted meetings a month
Full review publishes 2026-10-01.
Mem
The agent actually follows through. Mem reviews notes you create or edit, detects tasks and projects on its own, tracks them as open items, and — via Connections — notices when work has already been completed elsewhere.
Suits: People who keep few, considered notes and want them acted on rather than filed. Not for: Prolific note takers — the monthly note cap will bind quickly.
Watch out: Creating a note is a metered action. 100 new notes a month on the $29 Pro plan works out to roughly three a day.
Pricing: $9/mo (Plus) · working tier $29/mo Pro
Free tier: Yes – 25 notes and 25 messages a month
Full review publishes 2026-10-01.
How to actually choose
The pricing page is rarely where these tools differ. What separates them is the limit you hit first — the metered unit, the seat policy, or the tier where the feature you actually came for finally appears. Here is the constraint that binds on each:
- Obsidian: Everything is a decision. There is no default structure, no onboarding path that ends in a working system, and roughly 2,000 community plugins to choose between.
- Craft: A shared Space is not part of the individual Plus plan.
- Coda (now Superhuman Docs): The product you researched under the name Coda has been renamed, re-homed and bundled into a four-product suite in under two years.
- Tana: Almost everything written about Tana before 2026 describes a different product and different prices.
- Mem: Creating a note is a metered action. 100 new notes a month on the $29 Pro plan works out to roughly three a day.
Featured review
Start with our Notion review — a hands-on look at the most widely adopted option in this category, and a useful baseline for judging the others.
Make sure AI can see you
A good knowledge base helps your team; being findable helps your buyers. See how ready your site is to be cited with the free AI Visibility Checker, and learn the playbook in our guide to generative engine optimization.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best AI knowledge base app?
It depends on which constraint binds first. Obsidian is the pick if you want your notes to outlive the app — the working format is Markdown files on your own disk, and the application itself is free with no sign-up. Notion is the strongest all-rounder for a team that wants docs, databases and AI in one place. Craft produces the best-looking documents with the least effort. Superhuman Docs (formerly Coda) has the most forgiving seat model, because only Doc Makers are billed. Mem and Tana are narrower bets: Mem is a notes agent, Tana a structured outliner that has become a meeting agent.
How do these apps actually charge — per person, or something else?
The billing unit varies more than the headline price does, and it is usually the real cost driver. Superhuman Docs charges $12 per Doc Maker a month billed annually and lets Editors and Viewers in free, so a 100-person company where eight people build docs pays for eight. Craft prices individuals at $6.40 a month billed yearly, which includes link-sharing, but a shared Space for real collaboration is not part of that plan — it starts at the Family bundle at $12 a month. Mem meters actions rather than seats: the $9 Plus plan allows 50 new notes a month. Tana charges $20 per user a month on an early-bird annual rate against a $30 list price. Obsidian charges nothing for the app and $4 per user a month for Sync.
Can I get my notes out if I stop paying?
Only Obsidian makes that a non-question: your vault is a folder of Markdown files on your own machine, so there is nothing to export because nothing was ever taken away. Everywhere else, export is a feature rather than the storage format, so check what the export actually produces before you commit a few thousand notes to it — and check it on the free tier, before the notes exist.
Best AI Knowledge Base Apps (2026): Personal Notes and Team Docs Compared. DigiJaws, 2026. https://digijaws.com/reviews/best-ai-knowledge-base-apps/