# Baalda vs Tana

> Baalda vs Tana: Tana is a powerful cloud outliner that moved toward meetings in 2026. Baalda is a local-first, open-source team second brain built on plain markdown.

Source: https://baalda.com/compare/tana
Site: Baalda, https://baalda.com

Pick Tana if you want a structured supertag outliner and its meeting-capture direction, all in the cloud. Pick Baalda if you want a local-first, open-source team second brain where notes are markdown files you own, edited together in real time, with AI writing to the same files.

## Side by side

| | Baalda | Tana |
|---|---|---|
| Real-time multi-user editing | Yes · CRDT, keystroke-level | Yes |
| Notes are plain markdown files on your disk | Yes | No · cloud nodes |
| Local-first (works offline, you own the files) | Yes | No |
| Open source | Yes · Apache-2.0 | No |
| AI reads & writes your files (MCP) | Yes | No · closed AI |
| Per-file permissions | Yes | Partial |
| Self-hostable | Yes | No |
| Price | Free + Team plan | Free + paid |

## Where Tana wins

- Supertags and a structured, queryable outline model.
- Meeting capture and agentic features in its 2026 direction.
- A strong outliner experience for power users.

## Where Baalda wins

- Local-first plain markdown you own, versus cloud nodes in Tana's store.
- Open source and self-hostable.
- AI over MCP writing to your real files, and a simple markdown model instead of a bespoke structure.

## Moving over

Export your Tana content to markdown and copy the files into a Baalda vault. From there it's plain files on disk your whole team can edit live.

## FAQ

### Is Baalda a good Tana alternative?

Yes, especially if you want ownership and openness: Baalda is local-first, open source, and markdown-based, whereas Tana keeps your content in the cloud in a proprietary node structure.

### Did Tana stop being a second brain app?

In 2026 Tana pivoted toward an agentic meeting platform, with its outliner continuing separately. Teams wanting a dedicated, owned second brain increasingly look for alternatives like Baalda.