Eyrie vs Notion

When your files matter more than databases.

Notion has 30 million users for a reason — it's a remarkable product. But it's a database with documents pretending to be the other way around. Your notes live on Notion's servers in a proprietary block format, accessible only through Notion's app, with the bill arriving every month. If that's becoming a problem for you, here's the honest case for switching.

The fundamental difference.

Notion is a database that renders blocks. Eyrie is an editor that renders Markdown. The implication shows up everywhere:

• In Notion, your notes are rows in a Postgres database in someone else's data center, served to you through Notion's web app. You access them through Notion's client. If Notion goes down, your notes are inaccessible. If Notion raises prices, your only options are pay or export.
• In Eyrie, your notes are .md files in a folder on your Mac. You access them through Eyrie, or VS Code, or cat, or Spotlight, or Quick Look, or any of 30 other Markdown apps. Eyrie is the editor — not the storage layer. If we go out of business tomorrow, your notes are still there.

This isn't a technical detail. It's the difference between renting your knowledge and owning it.

Side-by-side.

The three problems Notion can't fix.

Notion's strengths are real, but a few problems aren't going away:

1. The export problem

You can export your Notion workspace as Markdown. The export is not a faithful representation. Databases collapse into tables. Embedded pages become broken links. Synced blocks duplicate. Complex page hierarchies flatten. The export "works" — it'll get your text out — but you lose roughly 40% of what made the original useful.

Compare that to Eyrie: your notes are already Markdown files. There's no "export" because there's nothing proprietary to convert.

2. The privacy problem

Notion runs on AWS. Your notes are encrypted at rest on their servers, but Notion has access to them — that's how features like AI, search, and sharing work. If you write anything sensitive (legal, medical, financial, journal entries about your boss), you're trusting Notion's data handling forever.

Eyrie's local-first design means your AI calls are the only thing that ever leaves your machine, and you control which LLM provider gets them. Your raw notes never leave your disk.

3. The pricing creep problem

Notion launched at $4/month. It's now $20/month for the AI tier. Pricing changes are the only constant in SaaS. With Eyrie's $79 one-time license, the price you paid is the price you keep.

The pricing math over three years.

• Notion AI: $10-20/month × 36 months = $360-720 per seat.
• Eyrie + your existing Claude Desktop: $79 once + your existing $20/month Claude subscription = $79 on top of what you already pay for AI.
• Eyrie + BYO API key: $79 once + $5-15/month in Anthropic API costs = $259-619 over three years.

The biggest swing isn't even the math — it's that Notion charges per seat per month forever, while Eyrie's one-time fee is amortized away by the second month.

When to stay on Notion.

We'd rather you stay if Notion is working for you. Genuinely good reasons to stay:

1. You live in databases. Notion's rollups, relations, formulas, and linked views are the product. Eyrie is plain Markdown. If your daily workflow depends on "show me all tasks across these 5 projects filtered by status, sorted by date," Notion is built for that. Markdown isn't.
2. Your team is on Notion. Real-time collaborative editing is a Notion thing. Eyrie is a solo Mac app. If your work requires multiplayer, you need Notion (or Coda, or AnyType for the open-source angle).
3. You publish public Notion pages. Notion Sites is a real product. If your portfolio, knowledge base, or docs site is a published Notion page with a custom domain, switching requires rebuilding that on Astro / Quartz / 11ty.

Migrating from Notion to Eyrie in 15 minutes.

The migration itself is straightforward; the goal is to keep your notes useful in plain Markdown.

1. Notion → Settings & Members → Settings → Export content → choose "Markdown & CSV" and "Include subpages."
2. Notion emails you a .zip when it's ready (often within minutes for smaller workspaces, up to an hour for large ones).
3. Unzip into ~/Documents/Notes/ (or wherever you want your vault).
4. Open that folder in Eyrie. The vault indexes in seconds.
5. Optional: run a search-and-replace pass to clean up Notion's export artifacts (database tables become Markdown tables, but some block types become awkward HTML you may want to simplify).

What you'll lose: database rollups (they become static CSVs), embedded synced blocks, the Notion Web Clipper. What you'll gain: real files, instant search, native AI with citations, and no monthly bill.

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