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Foam VS Clarus.dev

Compare Foam VS Clarus.dev and see what are their differences

Foam

Personal knowledge management and sharing on VSCode & GitHub

Rating
0 reviews
Pricing
Open source
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Alternatives Is it good?
Clarus.dev

Screenshots, scrolling capture and screen recording for Windows, with a real video timeline and annotation editor. Offline text recognition makes every capture searchable by the words inside it. Free tier is permanent, no account needed.

Rating
0 reviews
Pricing
Freemium Free trial $3.25 / Monthly (Pro, billed annually at $39)
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Alternatives Is it good?
Grapple
Do-It-Yourself Data Analytics & Business Intelligence, Powered by AI sponsored
Note: These products don't have any matching categories. If you think this is a mistake, please edit the details of one of the products and suggest appropriate categories.

Which is more popular?

Based on our record, Foam seems to be more popular. It has been mentioned 49 times since March 2021.

social mentions
49 vs 0
Note Taking popularity
100% vs 0%
alternatives listed
240+ vs 22

Base details

Website, pricing, platforms and company facts side by side.

Foam
Clarus.dev
Website foambubble.github.io getclarus.dev
Pricing
Open source
Freemium Free trial $3.25 / Monthly (Pro, billed annually at $39) Official pricing
Platforms —
Windows
Company Startup from the United States Startup from the United Arab Emirates · 1 - 9 employees · 2026
Listed in
Note Taking Knowledge Base Knowledge Management Task Management +1
Screen Capture Screenshot Screenshots Screenshot Annotation Screenshot Tools / Image Annotation Screenshots App Screen Recording Video Recording Screen Recorder Productivity +7

About Foam and Clarus.dev

In their own words, as submitted to SaaSHub.

Foam
Clarus.dev

No description of Foam yet.

Clarus is a Windows screenshot and screen-recording app built around one idea: a capture should still be useful a month later. Take a shot with Win+Shift+S — Clarus takes over the Snipping Tool's shortcut — and a capture card appears in the corner. Drag it straight into any app, copy it,...

Read more about Clarus.dev

Features and specs

What each product offers, as listed by its team.

Foam 6 features
Clarus.dev 12 features
  • Open Source
    Foam is an open-source tool, which means it is free to use and allows for community-driven development and contributions. Users can modify the source code to fit their specific needs.
  • Markdown Support
    Foam uses Markdown, a lightweight and easy-to-read syntax, making it simple to create and manage notes. This also allows for easy integration with other Markdown-based tools and platforms.
  • Integration with Visual Studio Code
    Foam is designed to work seamlessly with Visual Studio Code (VS Code). This provides users with a powerful and familiar text editor environment, complete with extensions and customization options.
  • Graph View
    Foam includes a graph visualization feature that helps users see and navigate the relationships between their notes, making it easier to understand and manage complex information.
  • Bidirectional Links
    Foam supports bidirectional links, allowing users to create connections between notes in both directions. This enhances the note-taking experience by enabling a more interconnected and dynamic information structure.
  • Community and Documentation
    Foam has a growing community of users and contributors, as well as comprehensive documentation. This support network helps users troubleshoot issues, share tips, and improve their knowledge of the tool.

Possible disadvantages

  • Limited to VS Code
    Foam relies on Visual Studio Code as its primary environment. Users who prefer different text editors or platforms might find this limitation restrictive and less convenient.
  • Learning Curve
    Although Foam leverages Markdown, users may still face a learning curve, especially if they are not familiar with VS Code or the specific features and extensions required to maximize Foam's capabilities.
  • Performance with Large Datasets
    Foam can struggle with performance issues when handling large datasets or a high number of notes. This can lead to slow response times and inefficient workflows.
  • Limited Mobile Support
    Foam is primarily designed for desktop use within VS Code, which means that mobile support is limited. Users looking for a seamless cross-platform experience might find this aspect lacking.
  • Customization Complexity
    While Foam offers a high degree of customization, setting up and configuring the tool to meet personal preferences and workflows can be complex and time-consuming for some users.
  • Capture modes
    Area, window, fullscreen, and scrolling capture for whole pages
  • Screen Recording
    System and microphone audio, webcam, on a real video timeline
  • Search inside captures
    Every capture is indexed by the text in it and findable months later
  • Text Recognition
    Runs entirely on your machine — nothing is sent to a server
  • Annotation editor
    Arrows, shapes, text, step numbers, highlighter, blur and pixelate
  • Video Editing
    Trim, split, move clips, zoom segments, redaction baked into the export
  • Instant Replay
    Rolling buffer — save the last few minutes after something happens
  • Pin on top
    Keep a screenshot floating above every other window
  • Colour picker
    Screen-wide picker with HEX, RGB and HSL
  • Cloud sharing
    Expiring, password-protected links. 250 MB free, 5 GB on Pro
  • Shortcut takeover
    Replaces Win+Shift+S, so it's where your hand already goes
  • Free plan
    Permanent, no account required

Analysis

An editorial look at what each product does well and who it suits.

Foam
Clarus.dev

Overall verdict

  • Yes, Foam is a good tool for those seeking an open-source environment for note-taking and knowledge management, particularly if they appreciate an approach based on markdown files and integration within a powerful text editor like Visual Studio Code. Its flexibility and user-driven customization make it suitable for users who enjoy tweaking and optimizing their workspace according to their workflow.

Why this product is good

  • Foam is a personal knowledge management and sharing system inspired by Roam Research, offering an open-source solution built on top of Visual Studio Code. It provides users with capabilities to create and interlink notes using markdown files, offering flexibility and customization suited to personal preferences. Foam supports features like backlinking, graph visualization of notes, and integration with VS Code extensions, making it a robust tool for managing interconnected information effectively.

Recommended for

  • Individuals preferring markdown-based note-taking systems
  • Developers familiar with Visual Studio Code
  • Users who appreciate open-source software and community-driven projects
  • People interested in managing complex, interconnected knowledge bases

No analysis of Clarus.dev yet.

Videos

Walkthroughs and reviews on video.

Foam 3 videos + Add
Clarus.dev 0 videos + Add

These panels DESTROYED my STUDIO....REVERB? - ArrowZoom Foam Review

More videos

  • - Arrowzoom Foam Review
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No Clarus.dev videos yet. You could help us improve this page by suggesting one.

Category popularity

How often each product is chosen within a category, 0–100% relative to the other.

Score bands 0–20 21–40 41–50 51–60 61–100
Foam
Clarus.dev
100% 100%
Note Taking
0% 0%
0% 0%
Screenshot Tools / Image Annotation
100% 100%
100% 100%
Knowledge Base
0% 0%
0% 0%
Screenshots
100% 100%

Questions & Answers

As answered by people managing Foam and Clarus.dev.

What makes your product unique?

Clarus.dev's answer:

Every capture is indexed by the text inside it. Text recognition runs locally the moment you take a screenshot or finish a recording, so months later you can search for a word you remember seeing and get the picture straight back. Most capture tools leave you with a folder of files named by timestamp; Clarus leaves you with something you can actually search.

It also takes over Win+Shift+S, so it lives where your hand already goes rather than asking you to learn a new shortcut.

Why should a person choose your product over its competitors?

Clarus.dev's answer:

Most Windows users are really choosing against the Snipping Tool, which they already have. Clarus does everything it does, then keeps the capture useful: a searchable history, screen recording on a real editing timeline, annotation for both screenshots and video, and share links you can expire or password-protect. The Snipping Tool captures and forgets.

Against a paid tool like Snagit, the differences are that text recognition runs entirely on your machine rather than in a cloud, the free tier is permanent and needs no account, and nothing leaves your computer unless you explicitly choose to share it.

How would you describe the primary audience of your product?

Clarus.dev's answer:

People on Windows who take a lot of screenshots as part of their work and keep losing them: developers filing bug reports, support and QA teams, designers collecting references, writers and teachers making documentation, and anyone who screenshots a receipt, a booking confirmation or an error message and needs it again weeks later.

It is built for individuals and small teams rather than large IT-managed rollouts.

What's the story behind your product?

Clarus.dev's answer:

It started as a personal annoyance. I took screenshots constantly and never found them again — a folder of thousands of files named by timestamp is not a record of anything. The obvious fix was to make the pictures searchable by what is written in them, which meant running text recognition locally on every capture instead of shipping them off to a server.

Everything else grew out of using it daily: the annotation editor, then screen recording, then a real video timeline, because trimming a recording in something else was slower than building the tool. Clarus is made by one person in the UAE.

Which are the primary technologies used for building your product?

Clarus.dev's answer:

Rust and Tauri 2 for the native Windows layer, React 19 with TypeScript for the interface, and Vite for the build.

Capture uses Windows Graphics Capture and DXGI Desktop Duplication; recording encodes through Media Foundation with hardware H.264 where the GPU supports it. Text recognition is PaddleOCR running locally through tract, a pure-Rust inference engine, with the Windows OCR API as a fast first pass.

The cloud side is Supabase with Cloudflare Pages.

User comments

Share your experience with using Foam and Clarus.dev. For example, how are they different and which one is better?

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Social recommendations and mentions

Recommendations tracked on public social media and blogs since March 2021.

Foam 49 mentions
Clarus.dev 0 mentions
  • AI Coding Tip 020 - Create a Second Brain
    Choose a local Markdown tool like Obsidian, Logseq, Foam, or Tolaria to store all your knowledge as plain .md files you own and control. - Source: dev.to / 6 months ago
  • Migrating from DokuWiki to Obsidian
    I've been using foam instead of obsidian for my personal knowledge base. It works rather well. And it's completely free and ultimately just markdown. While I might wish it was djot, I don't wish hard enough to make that so myself... - Source: Hacker News / about 2 years ago
  • I Use Obsidian
    I gave up on Obsidian and just use Foam (https://foambubble.github.io/foam/) and/or vimwiki. I just can’t get into overwrought, arbitrarily designed organization schemes or proprietary apps (Foam-managed content is just plain Markdown,... - Source: Hacker News / over 2 years ago

View more

Tracking Clarus.dev since Aug 2026.

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