Nov 24
Explore visual alternatives to Scrintal for brainstorming and notes in 2024. Enhance your creativity with these visual notes apps like Scrintal.
Scrintal is one of the newer research and visual note-taking applications on the market, but it might not be for you.
You might be looking at other visual note-taking applications with a canvas and a way to bring your notes together in a PKM style, so we’ve put together some of the best alternatives on the market to help you see whether these types of apps are right for you.
If not, feel free to explore all of our applications to find a range of them:
Here's some of the reasonings behind us picking these Scrintal alternatives:
What's Important? | Why? |
---|---|
Flexible canvas | These note-taking tools need to have canvases that mould to ideas |
Reliable & supported | These tools are either open-sourced or come with a good reputation |
Mobile friendly | The majority of these support mobile access and make for good iPad use |
Let's explore the tools themselves:
Here's all the ones we've picked in no particular order.
Heptabase is one of the closest alternatives and is really popular with learning academics and researchers for planning ideas and bringing them together in one location.
It's slightly more complex than Scrintal, in our opinion, allowing you to bring together multiple ideas, connecting them up, and making more freeform notes, and allowing you to use much more connected backlinks across the application.
One of the things is that it resembles the likes of Notion combined with a PDF annotation application, and there's also a layer of project management allowing you to structure your notes as Kanban and whiteboards, which is something that a lot of people like.
It has offline access, is speedy, and a lot of people call this one the closest alternative on the market. It's relatively priced but slightly higher pricing than others; substantial as an overall experience but comes with a more wide range of features and has been a little bit longer on the market.
AFFiNE Pro is an interesting combination between documents, whiteboards, and databases allowing you and your team to coordinate the document and bring together a whiteboard in one location.
A lot of people like the theme because it's open-source and privacy-first, allowing you to use it local-first. A lot of people like it because they're bringing together multiple applications in one and more recently you can buy it using artificial intelligence to help you pre-create content and manage it as a team.
You can collaborate with team members, and it comes at a fairly reasonable $7.99 pricing, and so far millions of people have checked out AFFiNE Pro. But as an alternative, it's more of a Craft alternative collectively but mixes for a good whiteboarding experience if you're looking to get away from the more canvas-based that Scrintal has.
A studio for your mind | A place to make sense of the world and create amazing things.
Best For
It's free. No credit card required.
mymind is another alternative that combines notes, bookmarks, articles, and images in one location. It’s a very privacy-focused application and has no ads, tracking, or collaboration abilities, allowing you to add all of your ideas into one location.
It’s great for bringing together everything that is very visual, and people tend to refer to it as the Pinterest for bookmarking so that you can get all of your ideas, files, and notes in one location. It also does have a nice layer of AI.
Why would we bring this in as a Scrintal alternative? Well, maybe you are looking at applications or visual applications and can’t make your mind up between the two, and mymind is an interesting option because it allows you to bring together visual notes without the pressure of organizing them in a canvas.
Walling is an interesting option because it is sort of like a combination between Notion and Scrintal, allowing you to be very visual using Notion-like databases and planning ideas together, but you can also use it as a wall to plan ideas and bring images, videos, files, and sources all in one location.
A lot of designers tend to use it to bring together briefs and concepts, and many other teams are using it as a way to collaborate on knowledge bases so everything is in one location.
They are also giving you more structure than the likes of Scrintal if you’re looking for something a little bit more fixed. They will have a range of devices as well, with no real limitations to accessing it outside of desktop, web, and mobile.
Milanote is another great alternative and has a way to bring ideas together like a project with boards, to-dos, comments, and columns, allowing you to coordinate your work. This is really popular with designers who are looking for a visual space to organize projects that you can share and publish to other people as well.
This probably aligns more with project management than a personal tool, but a lot of people tend to use it for both of those situations and as a personal tool as well.
A studio for your mind | A place to make sense of the world and create amazing things.
Best For
It's free. No credit card required.
Miro is an interesting alternative, but probably more suitable for teams to coordinate all of their ideas. A lot of people like it for the collaborative nature, allowing team members to collaborate, and it also has a range of integrations.
Apparently, it has over 60 million users worldwide, so if you’re looking for an alternative that is more for teams, this is probably your best bet. Miro is probably more suitable for smaller teams that are in the design world.
Apple Freeform is downloadable for free as part of your Mac experience and allows you to sketch out ideas, but one of the things a lot of people like is not just the mood board and brainstorming abilities of the flexible canvas but actually that you can collaborate with each other using FaceTime.
This makes for a great way to see wherever everyone is on the call and coordinate links, images, and files all in one location. This probably is much more suitable if you’re wanting something low-cost and a way to collaborate with other people in a canvas-like experience, in comparison with the likes of Scrintal.
Here's all the best selections for your type of situation and need:
A studio for your mind | A place to make sense of the world and create amazing things.
Best For
It's free. No credit card required.
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