Oyma vs Tana

Tana and Oyma both address the intersection of personal knowledge and live meetings, but they do so from radically different architectural and philosophical positions.

Tana began as one of the most innovative outliners in computing history. By inventing “supertags”—which allow any bullet point to act simultaneously as an outliner node and a structured database record with custom fields—Tana captivated power users seeking a unified operating system for their minds. In 2026, Tana expanded this vision by repositioning itself as an “agentic meeting platform.” Its focus shifted toward team meetings: deploying cloud meeting agents that listen to Zoom and Google Meet calls, extract action items, and automatically create issues in Linear, Jira, and GitHub.

Oyma, by contrast, is built for people who value privacy, digital longevity, and local control. It rejects cloud lock-in and steep per-seat SaaS subscriptions in favor of plain Markdown files stored directly on your computer’s filesystem. Instead of cloud agents analyzing corporate discussions on remote servers, Oyma captures audio silently on macOS, transcribes spoken speech 100% on-device using Whisper, and saves actionable meeting summaries directly into your local, Obsidian-compatible vault.

Understanding the difference between an ambitious cloud meeting outliner and a sovereign local-first Markdown workspace is key to choosing the right tool.

Data architecture: Proprietary cloud graph vs plain Markdown files

The core technical contrast between Tana and Oyma lies in how your thoughts are stored:

In Tana:

• Knowledge is modeled as an interconnected graph of Nodes. Every bullet point is an atomic node with unique identifiers and schema properties.
• Supertags turn bullets into typed database entries (such as #meeting, #person, or #project), complete with inherited fields, date calculations, and relation lookups.
• However, your entire workspace resides inside Tana’s proprietary cloud infrastructure. A fully offline desktop application has no estimated delivery date.
• While you can export content via Markdown or JSON, your everyday notes do not exist as readable text files on your hard drive. If you lose internet access or cancel your account, your access to your structured knowledge graph is immediately disrupted.

In Oyma:

• Knowledge is modeled as Plain Text Files. Every note is an ordinary .md file stored directly in a local directory you choose on your Mac.
• Metadata is managed through universal YAML frontmatter blocks, ensuring complete interoperability with Obsidian, Git, VS Code, and terminal utilities.
• Links use standard [[WikiLinks]] that remain permanently human-readable and durable across decades.
• You have complete data sovereignty: if Oyma is deleted tomorrow, every note, heading, table, and embedded image remains intact on your disk without requiring a migration or database export.

If your workflow demands the complex relational power of supertags, dynamic search nodes, and automated field inheritance, Tana’s cloud graph is uniquely capable. If you prioritize absolute file custody, offline resilience, and the permanence of plain text, Oyma‘s file-first model is superior.

Meeting capture: Cloud team agents vs private on-device Whisper

Both platforms have made meetings a centerpiece of their feature sets, but their execution represents opposite poles of privacy and architecture:

In Tana:

• Tana positions itself around “meetings that ship.” It features a desktop botless meeting agent for Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams.
• During calls, Tana’s cloud agents process audio and transcriptions on remote servers, using AI to draft documents, summarize discussions, and push tickets directly to project management tools like Linear, GitHub, and Jira.
• Meeting capabilities are targeted at collaborative product teams, with commercial pricing starting at $20 to $30 per user monthly on the Pro tier.
• Audio and transcripts are transmitted to and stored within Tana’s cloud infrastructure, making it unsuitable for highly regulated environments or strictly confidential consultations.

In Oyma:

• Meeting recording operates locally on macOS 14.2+ using native CoreAudio tap APIs. System sound and microphone audio are mixed directly on your hardware without dispatching an external meeting bot to your call.
• Transcription executes 100% on-device using quantized Whisper models running on the Apple Silicon Neural Engine. Spoken audio never touches the cloud.
• Oyma supports 13 languages out of the box with zero internet connectivity required.
• Meeting summaries, decision logs, and action items land directly inside your local vault as standard Markdown files, linked to your daily notes and project documents.
• There are no per-seat subscriptions, minute limits, or AI credit paywalls.

For executives, lawyers, doctors, researchers, and engineers who participate in confidential discussions, Oyma guarantees that sensitive audio and transcripts remain strictly on their Mac.

AI integration: Cloud agentic workflows vs sovereign local models

How artificial intelligence is integrated reflects each platform’s infrastructure:

In Tana:

• AI is autonomous, cloud-hosted, and deeply integrated into supertags and meeting workflows. Tana’s AI can populate custom fields, summarize discussions, and interact with external developer tools via MCP (Model Context Protocol).
• AI usage is metered according to your subscription tier (50 queries on the free plan, with expanded allocations on Pro and Max).
• All prompts, meeting transcripts, and node context are processed by third-party language models on cloud infrastructure.

In Oyma:

• AI in Oyma is sovereign, transparent, and user-directed.
• You can run open-weight language models (such as Llama 3.2, Mistral, or Qwen 2.5) locally on your Mac using native Ollama integration. Processing runs entirely on your local GPU and Neural Engine with zero data leaving your machine.
• If you prefer frontier reasoning models, you can supply your own API keys (Bring Your Own Key) for Anthropic or OpenAI. Requests travel directly over TLS 1.3 socket connections from your Mac to the model provider, completely bypassing intermediary proxies.
• A built-in egress log provides an auditable real-time record of all network activity, proving that your private notes and meeting transcripts remain strictly on your device.

Target audience, ecosystem, and day-to-day workflow

The intended audience for each application highlights different operational needs:

Where Tana wins:

• Agile product teams: Tana is engineered for teams that want meetings to automatically generate sprint issues in Linear or Jira, linking discussions directly to engineering workflows.
• Relational data modeling: Supertags provide unrivaled power for modeling complex schemas, research taxonomies, and multi-layered personal knowledge bases.
• Cross-platform desktop access: Available across macOS, Windows, Linux, and modern web browsers.

Where Oyma wins:

• Instant native responsiveness: Built specifically for Apple Silicon, Oyma launches in milliseconds, handles massive text files without lag, and conserves battery life.
• Direct Obsidian vault compatibility: Point Oyma at an existing Obsidian vault, and both applications work harmoniously on the exact same files without friction or export routines.
• Spreadsheet-style tables: Inline Markdown tables feature column sorting, keyboard navigation, and alignment controls while remaining standard GitHub Flavored Markdown on disk.
• Zero subscription overhead: Free during private beta for Apple Silicon Macs, with no per-user pricing ($20–$30/user/mo in Tana).

Pricing and long-term ownership

Tana operates on an escalating SaaS subscription:

• Free tier: 5 hosted meetings per month with AI transcripts, 50 AI queries.
• Pro: $20 per user per month billed annually ($240/year) or $30 monthly, unlocking unlimited meeting agents and expanded AI.
• Max: $80 per user per month billed annually ($960/year) or $120 monthly for high-volume enterprise teams.
• Tana Outliner Plus: $8 per month billed annually for personal outliner users who do not need meeting agents.

Oyma operates on a sovereign hardware model:

• Free during beta: Full access to all features, including meeting recording, Whisper transcription, and local AI.
• Zero server costs: Audio transcription and local AI run on your Mac’s hardware.
• Wholesale cloud AI: If you use cloud models, you pay token costs directly to the model provider with zero markup.
• Permanent files: If you discontinue using Oyma, your notes remain as standard .md files in your Finder folders.

The verdict

Choose Tana if:

• You want an outliner-first workspace with supertags, dynamic search nodes, and structured database fields attached to bullet points.
• You work in a collaborative team and want live meetings to automatically create tickets in Linear, Jira, or GitHub.
• You are comfortable with your notes and meeting audio residing in a cloud database and are willing to pay $20 to $30 per user monthly.
• You need access across Windows, Linux, and web browsers alongside macOS.

Choose Oyma if:

• You insist that your notes remain plain Markdown files stored on your local disk with zero vendor lock-in.
• You conduct confidential meetings and require private, on-device Whisper transcription that never uploads audio to the cloud.
• You already use or plan to use Obsidian, and want meeting notes and daily records to land directly inside your existing vault.
• You want unlimited offline AI via Ollama or transparent BYOK cloud inference without expensive monthly seat licenses.

Where Tana is better

• Meeting agents that create documents and issues during the call, with team workflows.
• Integrations with HubSpot, Jira, Linear and GitHub.
• Powerful supertags and structured knowledge graph (Tana Outliner).
• Runs on Windows and Linux as well as Mac.

Thinking of moving? Your notes in Oyma are plain Markdown, so you can always take them with you. Start withgetting started, or read what leaves your Mac.

Looking at other options too? Read our guide to the best Tana alternatives.