Tinderbox
expensive, perpetual, and unmatched for notes that have to do work
Paid upgrades
The licence is perpetual, but only twelve months of upgrades come with it: after that you either stay on the version you own, pay the $98 upgrade when a release you want ships, or subscribe to the annual updates plan. Sale prices are temporary and should never be treated as the price. The learning curve is real and the tutorials are not optional. Mac only, and the document format is proprietary, though it exports text, HTML and OPML.
Cost over five years
$289 once = 72 months of Obsidian Sync. Over five years that is $240 rented against $289 owned, so buying does not pay for itself inside five years on price alone — it breaks even after about 6 years. Buy it because you want to own it, not to save money quickly.
Obsidian Sync priced at $48 a year — Obsidian's sync add-on at $4 per month billed annually. Checked 2026-09-22.
Tinderbox is a note environment for projects that outlive the software you started them in: a dissertation, a multi-year investigation, a case file that keeps growing. You write notes, give them attributes, and let agents gather and re-sort them by rule while you carry on writing. The same notes can be read as a map, an outline, a timeline or a chart, and export templates can turn the whole structure into a finished document or a website.
It is not a casual purchase. $289 buys the current version and a year of upgrades. After that you either stay where you are, pay $98 when a release you actually want ships, or keep the $83-a-year updates plan running. Eastgate has shipped on that basis since 2002, which is the real argument for the price: the app you buy today will still open your files in a decade, without a card on file anywhere.
The learning curve is the other cost, and it is steep. Tinderbox assumes you will read the tutorials and think about how your material is structured. If your notes are somewhere to dump things and search later, Obsidian or Apple Notes already does that and you should not spend $289 to find it out. Buy this when you have hit the ceiling of an outliner and can name the wall you hit.
What it looks like
What it does
- Map, outline, timeline and chart views of the same notes
- Agents that collect and re-sort notes automatically by rule
- User-defined attributes, prototypes and inheritance
- Export templates that generate whole documents or websites
- Continuously maintained since 2002
Cancel instead
Also bought outright in writing
The facts
- Price
- $289
- What you get
- One payment, and the developer charges for major versions on a stated cadence.
- Details
- $289 for a new licence, including a year of free upgrades and support. Moving to a later major version afterwards is $98 from any previous version, or you can keep an optional annual updates plan running at $83 for the first year, cancellable. A five-person household pack is $325 and a ten-user licence is $645. Eastgate runs periodic sales (SummerFest pricing was $217 new and $88 upgrade when this page was last checked), so look before you pay list.
- Free trial
- Yes
- On Setapp
- No
- Minimum macOS
- not stated
- Developer
- Eastgate Systems
- Price checked
- 2026-09-22
Check it yourself - Price band
- $120 and up