When comparing Athens vs Checkvist, the Slant community recommends Checkvist for most people. In the question“What are the best alternatives to Roam Research?” Checkvist is ranked 9th while Athens is ranked 16th. The most important reason people chose Checkvist is:
Checkvist hits a sweet spot between minimal and complexity. It gives you a host of options and extras to use on your lists, but you can completely ignore them if you don't need them and keep it very simple. This makes Checkvist a one-stop shop, regardless of what type of 'list' you need.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Athens is open-source, private, extensible, and community-driven
Pro You can use Athens as a local desktop app that saves data to your filesystem or with a self-hosted server
Pro You can modify Athens's source code. We are also building a plugin system for custom themes, keybindings, and integrations with other data sources
Pro Athens has [[bidirectional links]] and ((block references))
Take notes on anything from any page. Just [[link]] or ((reference)) another page or block - and voilà! - you can now go to this page and see all the places that linked back to it. The next time you press [[ or ((, you will be indexing through your previous notes, helping you connect the dots. You've started creating a graph of your knowledge!
Pro Written in Clojure
Ensures possibility of feature parity with Roam.
Pro As simple or as complex as you need
Checkvist hits a sweet spot between minimal and complexity. It gives you a host of options and extras to use on your lists, but you can completely ignore them if you don't need them and keep it very simple. This makes Checkvist a one-stop shop, regardless of what type of 'list' you need.
Pro Tasks can be managed with custom tags
Pro vim-like commands
Pro Convenient search by text or tag filtering
Pro Converts incoming emails to todos - this is a way to enter tasks from anywhere.
Pro Great search
Search filters help you search for tasks by tag, due date, assignee, etc.
Pro Very flexible
To-do lists often need to be grouped and regrouped for clarity. The outline-based nature of Checkvist makes it easy to move things across categories, to increase and decrease priority, etc.
Pro Smart parsing of items
Parses markdown, html links, hashtags to become formatted text, clickable links, and tags, respectively.
Pro Generous set of free features
Checkvist offers many free features if you are using this individually.
Pro Supports comments on tasks
Any item can have a free-text comment, which can be shown or hidden as desired.
Cons
Con Limited capability in the android app
Checkvist is primarily a web interface.