About Roam Research
Roam Research is a commercial note-taking application built around the idea of networked thought. Notes are written as an outline, and any page or phrase can be linked to others, so related ideas form a graph that can be explored and queried like a database.
According to the vendor, it works with others in real time or can keep all data stored locally. Only brief page text was available when this entry was prepared, so detailed features and pricing should be confirmed on the official site. It is a proprietary product and is not hosted by users.
Key features
- Outline-style note taking
- Bidirectional links between notes
- Graph view of related ideas
- Real-time collaboration with others
- Option to store data locally
Good fit for
- →Personal knowledge management
- →Research notes with connected ideas
- Tags
- note-taking
- networked-thought
- knowledge-graph
- outliner
- research
- linking
Roam Research: questions and answers
- What is Roam Research used for?
- Roam Research is a note-taking tool for networked thought that links notes into a graph while feeling like a simple bulleted outline. It is a good fit for personal knowledge management and research notes with connected ideas.
- Is Roam Research open source?
- No. Roam Research is proprietary (closed-source) software. Open-source alternatives to Roam Research include Logseq, Foam and Neuron.
- What are some alternatives to Roam Research?
- Roam Research competes with Obsidian, Notion and Tana. For open-source options, see Enlisted's ranked list of open-source Roam Research alternatives.
Open-source alternatives to Roam Research
See all
Logseq
Note Taking
A privacy-first, open-source platform for knowledge management and collaboration. Download
AGPL-3.0vs Notion★ 45k
Foam
Note Taking
A personal knowledge management and sharing system for VSCode
OSSvs Roam Research★ 17k
Neuron
Note Taking
Future-proof note-taking and publishing based on Zettelkasten (superseded by Emanote: http
AGPL-3.0vs Obsidian★ 1.6kInkstone
Note Taking
A self-hosted Markdown notebook that runs entirely on Cloudflare Workers.
OSSvs Obsidian★ 1.1k
Tangent
Note Taking
The Tangent monorepo.
Apache-2.0vs Obsidian★ 561
Notabase
Note Taking
A second brain for your knowledge, thoughts, and ideas.
AGPL-3.0vs Roam Research★ 913
SaaS alternatives to Roam Research
See all
Obsidian
Note Taking
Obsidian is a free, flexible note-taking app for private notes, with plugins, linked notes and optional paid Sync and Publish services.
SaaS
Notion
Note Taking
Notion is an AI-enabled workspace for notes, docs, wikis and projects, with agents, meeting notes and search across connected apps.
SaaS
Tana
Note Taking
Outliner-based knowledge workspace with supertags and AI features
SaaS
RemNote
Note Taking
Note-taking app with built-in spaced repetition flashcards
SaaS
Heptabase
Note Taking
Visual note app that arranges cards on whiteboards for research and learning
SaaS
WorkFlowy
Note Taking
Infinite outliner for notes and lists with zoom-in navigation
SaaS

