At a glance
| App | Best for | Runs on | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Allume | Thinking and planning | Mac, iPad, iPhone | Free tier; $99.99 a year |
| Milanote | Moodboards | Web, Mac, Windows, phones | Free for 100 cards; $9.99 a month |
| Freeform | Quick boards, for free | Mac, iPad, iPhone | Free |
| Heptabase | Research and reading | Everywhere | From $8.99 a month |
| tldraw | Sketching together | Any browser | Free |
| Tabula | Live websites on a canvas | Mac | Free; $9.99 a month for more zones |
What Kosmik did that’s hard to replace
Kosmik was two things at once. One was a visual canvas: images, videos, PDFs and notes you could arrange freely, with AI that tagged and searched them for you. The other was a browser built into that canvas, so web pages sat beside the things you’d collected from them. Plenty of apps do the first half well. Almost none do the second — and nobody does both. So the useful question isn’t “what replaces Kosmik” but “which half did I use?”
01
AllumeClosest for thinking on a canvas
Allume is Muse under a new name: a canvas for thinking, where boards nest inside other boards and anything — handwriting, images, PDFs you can mark up, web links — goes anywhere. It keeps your data on your device and syncs it, and collaborators see each other’s cursors live. There’s a free tier; unlimited use is $9.99 a month or $99.99 a year.
- Boards inside boards
- Images, video, PDFs, ink and links
- Local-first, with live collaboration
- Apple devices only
- Links are cards, not live pages
02
MilanoteClosest for moodboards
If Kosmik was your moodboard, Milanote is the most direct swap: drag in images, notes, files and links, arrange them into boards, and share them with a link. It runs in any browser and as apps on Mac, Windows and phones. The free plan holds 100 cards; Pro is $9.99 a month billed yearly.
- Built for visual collections
- Web, Mac, Windows and phones
- Easy sharing with clients
- Free plan stops at 100 cards
- Links are previews, not live pages
03
FreeformFree, and already on your Mac
Apple’s Freeform is an infinite board with shapes, sticky notes, images, files and link previews, synced through iCloud and shareable with other Apple users. It does less than Kosmik did, but it costs nothing, it’s already installed, and for quick boards that’s often enough.
- Free and built in
- Mac, iPad and iPhone, synced through iCloud
- Collaborate with other Apple users
- Apple devices only
- Simpler than Kosmik was
- Links are previews, not live pages
04
HeptabaseClosest for research and reading
If you used Kosmik to read and connect sources, Heptabase is built for that: notes as cards on whiteboards, linked to each other, with highlights pulled from PDFs and web pages. Pro is $8.99 a month; working with PDFs takes Premium.
- Whiteboards of linked cards
- Mac, Windows, Linux and phones
- Real-time collaboration
- No free plan
- PDFs need the Premium plan
- Web pages are clipped, not live
05
tldrawA free whiteboard for sketching together
tldraw is a whiteboard that runs in your browser, with shapes, arrows, images and real-time collaboration, and it can embed a handful of sites like YouTube, Figma and Google Maps. It isn’t a place to keep a collection, but for thinking out loud with someone it’s the quickest thing here.
- Free, in any browser
- Fast, clean drawing tools
- Multiplayer rooms
- No PDFs
- A whiteboard, not a library
- Embeds some sites, not all
06
TabulaClosest to Kosmik’s built-in browser
Tabula picks up the half of Kosmik nobody else does: a canvas where web pages are live, not screenshots or link cards. Every site you open is a tile you can place and size, beside sticky notes, and it stays where you left it. It isn’t a moodboard app — if images and files were the point, choose one of the above. If the browser was the point, this is where it lives now. What a spatial browser is.
- Any website as a live tile on the canvas
- Zoom out for everything, in for one
- Ads and trackers blocked by default
- No moodboard tools, file library or AI tagging
- Mac only
- No real-time collaboration
Bringing your work across
No other app reads Kosmik’s boards, so moving means rebuilding them — which is also a chance to keep only what you still use. Images, PDFs and videos from your export drag straight into any app above. For saved links, paste the whole list into open multiple URLs to reopen them all at once, or into the multi-site viewer to see several side by side.
Questions
- What happened to Kosmik?
- Kosmik shut down on May 31, 2026. Its team emailed subscribers on April 24 with instructions for exporting their workspaces and details of refunds, and the service stopped at the end of May.
- What is the closest thing to Kosmik?
- It depends which half of Kosmik you used. For a canvas of images, notes and PDFs, Allume (formerly Muse) and Milanote are closest. For browsing the web on a canvas — Kosmik’s built-in browser — Tabula is the only one here where the pages stay live.
- Is there a free Kosmik alternative?
- Yes. Freeform is free and already on every Mac, iPad and iPhone; tldraw is free in any browser; Allume and Milanote have free tiers with limits; and Tabula is free with two zones.
- Can I bring my Kosmik boards into another app?
- Not as boards — no other app reads Kosmik’s format. The files themselves, like images, PDFs and videos, drag straight into any of these apps. Paste a list of saved links into the open-multiple-URLs tool to reopen them all at once.
- What is an infinite canvas app?
- An app where your work sits on a surface you can pan and zoom without edges, instead of in pages or folders. Whiteboards like tldraw, moodboard apps like Milanote and thinking tools like Allume all work this way; Tabula does it with live websites.