Gregator vs Heptabase
Pick Heptabase if you already have sources, such as papers, PDFs, videos and notes, and want a visual place to read, annotate, connect and think through them over months. Pick Gregator if you are starting from a topic and want the research done for you, delivered as a structured course with citations, quizzes and a tutor.
What Heptabase does well
Heptabase describes itself as "an intelligent, visual knowledge base built for students, researchers, and lifelong learners." It is a workspace for knowledge you collect yourself, and it is good at that job.
- Whiteboards and cards. You place notes, sources and highlights as cards on whiteboards and connect them, so you can see how ideas relate.
- PDF annotation and YouTube transcripts. You can highlight PDFs and work with video transcripts next to your notes.
- Daily journals with a calendar and to-do view.
- AI on your own material. Heptabase says you can "ask AI to explain any sources, take notes, and organize your knowledge base." Premium adds an AI tutor.
- Collaboration. You can invite collaborators, and a paid user's invitation is how the free plan works.
- Every platform. Desktop apps for Mac, Windows and Linux, plus iOS and Android, with offline access to notes and files.
- Publishing. You can publish a whiteboard as a read-only link that anyone with the URL can open.
The core idea is that you build your own understanding by arranging and connecting what you read. If that is how you learn, a tool that hands you a finished course is not a replacement.
How Gregator works differently
Gregator does the gathering and the first draft of the structure for you. You type a topic. Gregator plans a curriculum of 1 to 12 chapters, each with an objective, and researches each chapter on the open web across seven search providers, including arXiv and Wikipedia. It extracts up to 18 sources per chapter, from HTML pages, PDFs and tables, and writes each chapter at about 700 to 1,200 words, ending with key takeaways.
The output is a course, not a canvas:
- Citations. Inline footnotes after the claims they support, and a Sources list at the end of every chapter.
- Source credibility. Every source is classified for type (peer-reviewed, institutional, journalism, community) and evidence quality. You see a trust overview for the course, with the mix of source types, an evidence-quality label and counts of classified sources. Each chapter shows its source and peer-reviewed counts. Individual source scores are not shown.
- Course review. An automatic review checks for redundancy, forward references, difficulty spikes, coherence gaps, and one-sided sources on contested topics. Flagged chapters are revised.
- Quizzes. Up to 5 multiple-choice questions per chapter and a final course quiz, graded on the server. A wrong answer links back to the chapter section.
- Greg, the tutor. Greg reads your course, can search the course and the web, remembers what you tell it, and can offer a deep dive that adds a chapter.
- Narration of every chapter on paid plans, plus progress tracking and recommendations of what to learn next.
Gregator is not a notes app. You cannot upload your own PDFs or files, and there is no whiteboard. It is English-first, runs as an installable web app rather than a native one, and exports to Markdown, not PDF.
Side by side
| Gregator | Heptabase | |
|---|---|---|
| Output | A saved course of 1 to 12 chapters from a topic | Your own cards, whiteboards, journals and annotated sources |
| Sources and citations | Gregator finds open-web sources across seven providers; inline footnotes and a Sources list per chapter | You bring the sources: PDFs, YouTube videos, notes, images |
| Source credibility | Every source classified for type and evidence quality; course trust overview | You judge your own sources |
| Learning features | Server-graded quizzes, Greg tutor, deep dives, narration on paid plans, progress, recommendations | AI agent on your knowledge base; AI tutor on Premium; visual mapping; collaboration |
| Pricing (as of October 2026) | Free: 3 courses in total. Starter: $9.99/month or $99.90/year, 5 courses/month. Pro: $19.99/month or $199.90/year, 20 courses/month | Pro: $11.99/month or $107.88/year, 100 AI credits/month. Premium: $23.99/month or $215.88/year, 1,800 credits. Premium+: $71.99/month or $647.88/year, 8,100 credits. 7-day trial; free plan only by a paid user's invitation |
| Best for | Learning a new topic from scratch with sources found for you | Long-term thinking and research on material you collect |
Heptabase's AI credits cover its AI agent, AI tutor, video transcripts, insight generation and voice notes, and unused credits do not carry over. Its pricing page shows yearly billing as $8.99, $17.99 and $53.99 per month.
When to choose Heptabase
- You already have the reading list, for example for a thesis, a literature review or a long project.
- You think visually and want to arrange and connect ideas on a canvas.
- You want annotation, journaling and notes in one desktop and mobile app, with offline access.
- You want to collaborate on a shared knowledge base.
- You want AI help on your own PDFs and videos, not on the open web.
When to choose Gregator
- You are new to a topic and do not yet know which sources to read.
- You want a structured path, in order, instead of a blank canvas.
- You want to see what kind of sources a course rests on, such as how many are peer-reviewed.
- You want to check what you learned with graded quizzes that link back to the text.
- You want to start free: the Free plan includes 3 courses, with quizzes, Greg, export and sharing.
The two also work in sequence. A learner can use a Gregator course to get oriented and find good sources, export the course to Markdown, and then do the long-term thinking in a notes tool.