Claude Projects is Anthropic's cloud workspace for organizing your Claude.ai conversations. Keepance is a local-first desktop alternative where every Claude conversation becomes a Markdown file on your machine. Same Claude model under the hood. The split: who owns the conversation history and where it lives.
| Feature | Claude Projects | Keepance |
|---|---|---|
| Where conversations live | Anthropic's servers | Your hard drive (Markdown files) |
| AI provider | Claude only | Claude + OpenAI + Gemini + local Ollama |
| Pricing | $20/mo Claude.ai Pro subscription | $49 once + your Anthropic API costs (~$5-15/mo) |
| Custom instructions per project | Yes | Yes (per workspace + per chat) |
| Project knowledge (file uploads) | Yes | Yes (any folder, any size) |
| Image attachments in chat | Yes, native | Paste, drag, paperclip per provider |
| PDF chat with native vision | Yes | Drop in, Claude reads it natively |
| PDFs as searchable workspace context | Per-project only | Toggle in Memory settings, indexed in LanceDB |
| Long-context [Compress] when you overflow | Hard fail | Auto-trigger or manual button |
| Read aloud (TTS), local | No | Local Piper sidecar |
| Plugin / extension model | No | Sandboxed Web Worker plugins |
| Searchable across conversations | Within a single project | Full-text across the entire workspace |
| Wiki-links between conversations | No | Yes ([[wiki-link]] syntax) |
| Workflow templates | No | 15 built in + community marketplace |
| UI languages | Many (web) | English, Espanol, Deutsch |
| Try before you install | claude.ai web | Free web demo at keepance.com/try |
| Offline editing | No | Yes (AI calls need network) |
| Multi-device sync | Built-in | BYO via Dropbox / iCloud / Syncthing |
| Mobile | Native apps | Read via cloud sync; native app post-v2.0 |
| Real-time multi-user | No | No |
| Data export | JSON dump | Already in standard files |
| Vendor lock-in | High | Low |
Claude Projects only works with Claude. Keepance supports Claude, OpenAI, and Gemini side-by-side, plus local Ollama for the most sensitive content. You pick the model per conversation. If Claude is having an outage, you switch to GPT in one click without losing your workspace.
Every conversation in Keepance is a real Markdown file on your hard drive. You can grep across years of conversations. You can back them up with Time Machine. You can move them to a different tool. You can read them in 20 years. With Claude Projects, that history is in Anthropic's database, exportable as a JSON dump but not as a usable archive.
Keepance ships with 15 templates designed specifically for indie-founder work: pitch deck, customer interview, financial projections, MVP scope, go-to-market, investor update, board prep, first hire. Each runs as a structured interview that produces a real document. Claude Projects has custom instructions but no templated workflows.
Claude.ai Pro is $20/mo flat. Keepance is $49 once plus typical $5-15/mo in API tokens via BYOK. Over 3 years that's ~$229 vs $720. Heavy users may pay similar or more on BYOK; most indie founders pay less.
Keepance treats each conversation as a Markdown note that can be wiki-linked from other notes (`[[Customer Interview - Acme Corp]]`). Backlinks panel shows every conversation that referenced this one. Claude Projects has no equivalent; conversations within a project are siblings without explicit links.
If you draft on your phone during a commute and edit on your laptop later, Claude Projects' native mobile apps and built-in sync are genuinely better. Keepance is desktop-only; mobile sync is BYO via Dropbox or iCloud, which works but isn't real-time.
Claude Projects: sign up at claude.ai, click new project. Keepance: download desktop app, sign up at console.anthropic.com, generate API key, paste it. Both take ~5 minutes; the Claude.ai path is more familiar for someone new to AI tools.
Claude.ai gets new Anthropic features (Artifacts, Computer Use, Skills, etc.) at the moment Anthropic ships them. Keepance supports Anthropic's API capabilities and adds support for new ones over time, but there's a small lag.
| Claude.ai Pro | Keepance + BYOK | |
|---|---|---|
| Year 1 | $240 | $49 once + $60-180 BYOK = $109-229 |
| Year 2 | $240 | $60-180 BYOK = $60-180 |
| Year 3 | $240 | $60-180 BYOK = $60-180 |
| 3-year total | $720 | $229-589 |
Note: Keepance Lifetime ($99) gets the same long-term discount with explicit lifetime updates. Founder's tier ($29 lifetime, first 100 buyers) is the cheapest of all.
Most founders don't need to migrate everything. The 5-10 strategically important conversations make sense to bring over; the rest can stay in claude.ai or be discarded.
No. Both work with Claude, but they have different shapes. Claude Projects is a cloud-based workspace inside claude.ai where conversations live on Anthropic's servers. Keepance is a local-first desktop app where every conversation lives on your hard drive as a Markdown file, and you bring your own Claude API key.
No. Keepance uses the Anthropic API tier (BYOK), which is separate from claude.ai. You sign up at console.anthropic.com, generate an API key, paste it into Keepance. You pay Anthropic per token used, typically $5-15/month for indie founder usage.
Anthropic sees the specific text you send for inference, the same way they would with any API call. They do not see your full conversation history across files; that lives on your machine. Their commercial API does not train on inputs by default.
You can export conversations from claude.ai using the export feature, then convert the JSON to Markdown and drop into your Keepance workspace folder. Keepance reads any folder of Markdown files you point it at.
For API-based features (new models, longer context, tool use), yes. For features that are Claude.ai-specific UI (like the in-product Artifacts panel), Keepance has its own equivalent that ships independently. Both keep up with Anthropic's model releases.
Yes. Many users do. Claude Projects for the chats they want on mobile or shared with a teammate; Keepance for the ones they want as a permanent archive on their machine.
Free download. Pro is $49 one-time. Lifetime is $99. The first 100 buyers get Lifetime at $29.
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