When comparing Bear vs Trilium Notes, the Slant community recommends Trilium Notes for most people. In the question“What is the best single-user wiki?” Trilium Notes is ranked 6th while Bear is ranked 18th.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Beautiful interface
Well-designed app.
Pro Easy to use
Pro Instant markdown preview in the editor while preserving original MD code
Pro Easy tagging
For example: #tag/sub tag/foo/bar #tag2/foo/bar
Pro Flawless sync
It's everything Dropbox Paper promised to be, but without the embarrassment. The notes are always in sync between devices.
Pro Lots of export formats
PDF, RTF, DOCX, HTML, TXT and MD.
Pro Hashtag support
Adding a hashtag with a keyword tags the note to make it easy to search.
Pro Simple to back up/export entire note database
Notes are exported as plain text, not a proprietary format, along with all embedded objects.
Pro Note encryption
Pro Free and open source software
Pro Excellent WYSIWYG interface
Pro Attributes that can be assigned to nodes and inherited
Pro Graph of node connectivity
Pro Note versioning
Pro Synchronization with a server
You can set up synchronization but you need a server to do this.
Pro Database storage rather than files
This enables the tool to do a lot of things that would be difficult with plain text file storage.
Pro Archival functionality
Cons
Con Only subscription-based
Can not buy it straight up.
Con No Tabs - can only view 1 note at a time
Con No inline editing and markup of pictures
The only option is to open in an editor (thereby creating a copy) and saving it again.
Con Sometimes there are sync problems between iOS and macOS
Con Interface can be confusing
There is a fair amount of flexibility to the interface but it can also become confusing, especially when some parts are not necessarily simple to use. Most of the basic features nevertheless are intuitive.
Con Database storage rather than files
This makes it a little less simple to work with (also has benefits).
Con Not markdown
It will import and export markdown but it does not store content as markdown. This isn't necessarily a problem if you don't need it.
Con Synchronization requires use of Trilium's sync server
This can be problematic to set up unless you have a web server that will support the requirements of this.