Tana
Outliner + database with AI for knowledge graphs
Overview
Tana combines outlining, structured fields (databases) and AI into a unified workspace. Particularly strong for building living personal knowledge graphs — every note is a node, schemas are emergent. AI features include summarization, structured-data extraction, and chat with your workspace.
Use cases
What you can produce with Tana
- Turn any bullet point into a structured object by adding a supertag — for example #meeting or #task — which instantly attaches fields like date, attendees and status.
- Build a live search that automatically gathers every open task assigned to a person across your entire workspace into one always-current view.
- Let the meeting agent record and transcribe a call, then produce structured notes with action items filed against the right people and projects.
- Capture a voice memo on the go and have Tana transcribe it and convert it into tagged, structured nodes.
- Ask the built-in AI to summarise a long research note or extract structured data fields from pasted raw text.
- Design a lightweight CRM or project tracker from supertags and views without leaving your notes tool.
- Publish a set of nodes as a shareable page for colleagues who do not use Tana.
ASEAN Perspective
Tana in Southeast Asia
ASEAN-region availability and pricing notes coming soon. Drop the editorial team a note via /contact/ if you can supply local context (Singapore/Malaysia/Indonesia/Thailand/Vietnam).
Tana is an ambitious, AI-native note and knowledge tool that fuses outlining with structured data through its supertags and node-graph model, letting power users build personal databases, daily notes, and AI-assisted workflows in one fluid space. For people who think in networks and want structure without rigid databases, it's genuinely powerful and distinctive.
The flexibility comes with a steep learning curve; casual note-takers will find it overwhelming compared to Notion or Obsidian, and it's been pricier and more invite-gated than mainstream rivals. English-centric with no SEA-specific provisions. Best for serious knowledge workers, researchers, and productivity enthusiasts willing to invest time to master it; not a quick pick-up-and-go notes app.
What people say
Tana, built by an Oslo-based team of ex-Google product people, came out of a 160,000-person waitlist to general availability in late 2024 and raised a $14M Series A in February 2025 (about $25M total, at a reported $100M valuation). The product keeps evolving: in April 2026 the company put a new agentic meeting product front and centre at tana.inc, with the original outliner living on at outliner.tana.inc — a signal of where it thinks the commercial value sits.
Power users are evangelical. Supertags — tags that turn any bullet into a structured object with fields, views and workflows — are routinely called revolutionary, and many long-time Notion and Obsidian users report Tana replaced both. The meeting agent and voice capture draw particular praise for clear time savings, with reviewers noting it recoups 30–45 minutes per call once configured. Live searches that assemble dynamic views across the whole graph are the other standout: notes stop being static documents and become queryable data.
The complaints are equally consistent. The learning curve is real — users commonly describe needing several hours and multiple tutorials before supertags click, and onboarding is bluntly called brutal in community threads. The mobile app is the weakest link, rated very poorly on Google Play (around 2 stars in 2026), usable for quick capture but not real work. Tana is also cloud-only: no offline mode, no local files, no self-hosting, which is a hard stop for some of exactly the PKM audience it courts.
Tana fits structured thinkers — consultants, founders, researchers, product managers — who will invest a weekend learning the system and want their notes to behave like a database with an AI layer. People who want a simple, pretty, offline-capable notes app should not start here.
Summary of public user & expert reviews, compiled by RECATOOLS.
About this listing
This entry was compiled from publicly available data including Tana's official website, press releases, documentation, and reputable third-party publications. RECATOOLS is not affiliated with Tana unless explicitly stated.
Third-party AI tools update their pricing, features, availability, and policies frequently. Information here may be outdated by the time you read this — we make reasonable efforts to keep listings current, but cannot guarantee absolute accuracy.
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