Fabric vs. Tana

Last updated April 2026

Tana is a powerful outliner that becomes a personal database if you invest the hours to learn it. Fabric is an AI workspace that understands your content without you building the system first. Tana asks you to design Supertags, write queries, and structure your own knowledge graph. Fabric asks you to save things. Both aim to help you think. One requires manual architecture. The other just requires content and wires itself up – like your brain does.

Comparison table

What is Tana?

Tana is an outliner that doubles as a personal database. Its core concept is Supertags: you tag a node, and the tag defines its structure (fields, views, behaviours). A note tagged #meeting automatically gets fields for date, attendees, and action items. A note tagged #project gets status, deadline, and linked tasks. Live search nodes query your graph dynamically, creating views that update in real time. AI agents can process meeting transcripts and generate outputs. Command nodes automate workflows. It's flexible and powerful. It's also complex. Users consistently report a steep learning curve, with hours of tutorials needed before the system starts paying off. Free plan gives you 500 AI credits and 0.5GB. Plus is $8/month. Pro is $9/month. Credits don't roll over. There's no API, the mobile app is capture-only, and the platform is cloud-only with no offline option.

What is Fabric?

Fabric is an AI workspace that combines file storage, note-taking, search, tasks, collaboration, and publishing. The Fabric Memory Engine automatically extracts, enriches, and maps relationships between everything you save. Where Tana asks you to build a structured system, Fabric builds understanding for you. You save content. Fabric does the rest.

Key differences

Building a system vs using one

Tana is a construction kit for knowledge management. You design Supertags, define fields, write queries, build views. The result can be incredibly personalised. But the result requires you to build it first, then maintain it. If you don't tag something correctly, it doesn't appear in your queries. If you don't define a Supertag, the structure doesn't exist. The system is exactly as good as the effort you put into designing it.

Fabric requires no design. You save content. The Memory Engine extracts it, enriches it, indexes it, and maps relationships automatically. There are no tags to define, no queries to write, no schemas to maintain. The system understands your content without being told how to structure it. Tana rewards system-builders. Fabric rewards people who'd rather spend their time on the work itself.

The learning curve

Tana users consistently describe a steep learning curve. Hours of YouTube tutorials. Weeks of experimentation. The community treats this as a badge of honour, and for people who enjoy building systems, it is. But for people who want to start working immediately, the investment is a barrier.

Fabric has no learning curve to speak of. Save something. Search for it. Ask the AI about it. The spatial canvas, collaboration tools, and publishing features are there when you need them. You don't need to understand a schema architecture before you can find your files.

AI

Both products have AI. The access models differ.

Tana's AI runs on credits. 500/month on Free, 2,000 on Plus, 5,000 on Pro. Credits don't roll over. Meeting transcription, AI chat, and command nodes all consume credits. Heavy users burn through their allocation and buy top-ups. The AI is powerful within the system: meeting agents can generate structured outputs, and command nodes automate multi-step workflows.

Fabric's AI is included at every tier with no credit system. It works across your entire content library, answers questions, summarises documents, transcribes audio and video, and takes actions. No metering, no top-ups, no monthly resets.

Content types

Tana is text-first. Everything is a node in an outliner. You can attach images, PDFs, and audio, but they're attachments to nodes, not first-class content the system understands. You can't search inside a PDF or find a moment in a video by its transcript.

Fabric handles all content types natively. PDFs, images, video, audio, documents, slides, spreadsheets, ePubs, links, emails. Everything is extracted, enriched, and searchable. In-document search finds the page in a PDF, the slide in a deck, the timestamp in a video. If your knowledge lives in more than text nodes, Fabric covers it.

Search

Tana's live search nodes are powerful. You define queries that dynamically pull matching nodes from across your graph. Want to see all #meetings with #client-x from the last month? Write a search node. It updates in real time. This is flexible and useful once you've structured your data correctly.

Fabric searches by meaning. Semantic search finds content even when you describe it differently. Visual search finds similar images. Colour search finds assets by palette. In-document search goes to the page, slide, or timestamp. Cross-platform search pulls from Google Drive, Notion, and Dropbox alongside your Fabric library. Tana's queries require structure. Fabric's search works on any content, structured or not.

Collaboration

Tana has shared workspaces on paid plans. No annotations on media, no chat, no shared drives. Offline collaboration isn't supported (cloud-only).

Fabric supports real-time co-editing on documents and canvases, pinned annotations on any content type, threaded comments, in-context chat, and shared drives.

Mobile

Tana's mobile app is capture-only. You can add nodes and voice memos. You can't work with your graph, run queries, or do anything substantive on your phone.

Fabric has full iOS and Android apps.

Data portability

Tana exports to JSON and Markdown. Reviews describe the export as a technical data dump rather than something you can easily import elsewhere. If you leave Tana, your structured Supertag system doesn't come with you in a usable form.

Fabric stores content in standard file formats. Your content is your content.

Publishing

Tana has page publishing with password protection on Pro. No viewing analytics.

Fabric lets you publish or share anything with one click. Built-in analytics show who viewed, when, and how long. Password protection. Stakeholder-specific links.

When to use each

Use Fabric if you want a system that works without being built. You save content, it's understood and searchable immediately. You work with diverse file types. You want AI without credit limits. You need full mobile apps, collaboration tools, publishing with analytics, and cross-platform search. You want to do the work, not build the infrastructure for doing the work.

Use Tana if you enjoy designing structured personal knowledge systems. You think in outlines. You want Supertags that turn text into typed, queryable data. You're willing to invest hours learning the system because the payoff of a custom-built graph justifies the setup cost. And you can work within the constraints: credit-based AI, capture-only mobile, cloud-only, limited integrations, and technical exports.

Why people move from Tana to Fabric

The system took more time than the work. Designing Supertags, maintaining queries, restructuring when workflows changed. Some people found they spent more time building their Tana setup than using it. Fabric eliminates that overhead.

AI credits ran out. 500 credits on Free, 5,000 on Pro. Credits don't roll over. Heavy meeting transcription and AI chat usage exhausts them. Fabric includes AI at every tier without metering.

They had more than text. PDFs, images, video, meeting recordings, slide decks. Tana treats these as attachments. Fabric treats them as content it can search inside, understand, and reference in AI conversations.

The mobile app wasn't enough. Capture-only on mobile means you can add things but not work with them. Fabric's mobile apps are fully functional.

They wanted automatic connections. Tana's connections require manual Supertags and queries. Fabric's Memory Engine maps relationships without being told. For people who wanted the benefit of connected knowledge without the maintenance work, Fabric delivered.

FAQs

Does Fabric have Supertags like Tana?

No. Fabric doesn't use a manual tagging schema. The Memory Engine understands and connects your content automatically. You can use tags, folders, and Spaces for organisation, but the AI-driven relationship mapping doesn't require you to define structure first.

Does Fabric have live queries like Tana's search nodes?

Fabric's semantic search works across your entire library by meaning, not by structured query. It's less configurable than Tana's search nodes but requires no setup and works on all content types, including content you never tagged or structured.

Is Fabric free?

Fabric has a free tier with limited storage and AI. Tana's free plan gives 500 AI credits and 0.5GB storage.

Does Tana have an API?

No.

Which has a steeper learning curve?

Tana. Users consistently report needing hours of tutorials and weeks of experimentation to understand Supertags, queries, and the graph architecture. Fabric works out of the box.

Can I use Tana on mobile?

Tana has a capture-only mobile app. You can add nodes and voice memos but can't work with your graph or run queries. Fabric has full mobile apps on iOS and Android.