Add to Chrome
Add to Edge
Add to Firefox
Add to Opera
Add to Brave
Add to SafariWhen comparing Roam Research vs Dendron, the Slant community recommends Roam Research for most people. In the question“What are the best knowledge base systems for personal use?” Roam Research is ranked 17th while Dendron is ranked 18th.
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro In place page creation / linking with brackets or hashtags
Pro Rename a page and all everything that references it renames as well
No broken links!
Pro Each bullet point can be either linked to, or included in full in any page (including the page it originated on. Yay transclusion!)
Pro Shift click on a link pulls up the link in a side panel without navigating you away
Pro Each bullet point on a page is zoomable as it's own 'wiki page'
Pro Helpful slash (/) commands while editing for autocomplete, TODOs and more
Pro Easy page merging.
Pro Explicit linked references included on every page at the bottom
Pro Supports markdown
Pro Bi-directional links
Pro Graph overview allows you to easily see how nodes relate
Pro Supports in place datalog queries
Pro In place editing
Pro Supports hiccup syntax for HTML snippets
Pro A default place for "Daily Notes" means not having to worry where a new note *should* go.
Pro Local-first
Dendron does not pull notes off your system unless you want to explicitly. There are easy guides for syncing with Github or you can always use Dropbox, Onedrive etc. to sync your notes wherever you want.
Pro Open-source
Pro Built into VSCode
If you're already developing in VSCode, it's great to have your notes in a familiar environment. Reduces switching costs and you can use familiar keybindings.
Pro Flexible hierarchies
Dendron makes it easy to create and refactor hierarchies at will.
Pro Powerful built-in publishing
Dendron ships with a configuration for publishing your notes with Next.js. The resulting site is searchable and easy to navigate, and the VS Code extension can easily place links to notes in your clipboard for rapid sharing.
Pro It works the way your brain works
You can literally just start writing; Dendron doesn't force you into bullets, folders, projects, etc. You build your vault the way you want it, and Dendron takes care of the presentation.
Pro Helpful development team
Dendron's developers are always putting out videos and office hours to help others become familiar with Dendron.
Cons
Con No mobile app
You can port Roam to Hermit, but there is no offline capacity.
Con No established pricing model, this could get expensive later
Rumored to be upwards of $30/month
Con No offline mode
The information can be accessed on the browser offline, but you cannot edit it.
Con Very expensive pricing model, no 'free' tier
For what still feels like beta-software, it's pricing model is very expensive in comparison with competitors that generally offer free tiers for example.
Con Forces you to edit with markdown, rather than wysiwyg
This issue is made worse by super basic formatting bugs, like if you want to for example unbold some text with control/cmd-b, it rather double-bolds it (e.g. it becomes bolded text), making the non-wysiwygness even more messy.
Con No vim mode
Con Little bit of a learning curve
If you're not familiar with VSCode, there may be a steep learning curve.
Con No mobile app
Dendron runs in VSCode so no ou-of-the-box mobile sync/experience.
