Pando vs Roam Research, if the price is why you are leaving
by Andreas Tissen · · updated
Roam Research costs $165 a year, or $15 a month, and has no free plan. Its pricing section shows two cards, Pro and Believer, and the 31-day trial is "only valid if you've never had a plan". If that price is why you are looking around, this page is for you.
It compares Roam with Pando, an outliner I build, and it starts with what you would lose, because for many Roam users that ends the question. Roam's facts come from its own landing page, its MCP server and Claude's connector directory, read on 14 November 2026.
What you would give up first
Pando has no block references, no query blocks and no graph view. Pando is one tree: bullets inside bullets, and any bullet can be opened as a page. A bullet can link to another, and its menu has "What links here", but there is no Linked References section under every page and nothing like Roam's Datalog queries. If you live in Linked References, Pando is a step back.
The rest of Roam's own list goes with it: Daily Notes as the page the app opens on, several graphs under one plan, and Roam's native apps for macOS, Windows, Linux, iOS and Android, all of which its download section lists. Pando is a web app, installable on a phone, with one outline per account.
The move itself has a cost too. Pando reads Roam's Markdown export, one page per file, and it does not open zips or take several files at once. A graph of 600 pages is 600 imports, unless you join the files into one first; Moving into Pando has a short script for that.
The price, line by line
Roam's pricing section, read on 14 November 2026, next to Pando's:
| Roam | Pando | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Pro $15 a month, or $165 a year ($13.75 a month); Believer $500 for five years | free up to 5,000 bullets; Pro has no limit and costs 3 EUR a month |
| Free way in | a 31-day trial, once, charged after 31 days | the free plan, no card |
| What the plan includes | unlimited graphs, unlimited collaborators, API access | everything, agents included; the limit is the number of bullets |
Each Roam block arrives as one Pando bullet, so a graph of more than 5,000 blocks needs Pro from the first day. On Roam's side, paying yearly instead of monthly saves $15, and Believer works out at $100 a year if you can pay $500 at once. A Pando account that reaches 5,000 bullets on the free plan keeps everything it has and only stops making new ones.
For Claude, Roam's connection is the finer one
If your agent is part of the reason, the comparison does not favour Pando. Roam runs its own hosted MCP server, listed in Claude's connector directory since June 2026. Its address is https://mcp.roamresearch.com/mcp, and the listing names 20 tools, among them Datalog queries, backlinks, comments and an append to the daily note. You choose which graphs Claude may use and give each graph its own access level, and every change Claude makes carries an "(AI)" author, so you can find it later. Before it works in a graph, Claude loads that graph's guidelines.
Pando's server is at https://pando.ink/mcp and has 12 tools. It is not in the directory, so you add it as a custom connector. On the consent page you choose read and write or read only for the whole outline. After that, one press under "Agents and API keys" holds the agent to a single branch. Pando also gives the agent a bullet of its own to remember in, which you read and correct like any other bullet.
Give your agent a memory shows the memory side of Pando, and Which notes can Claude reach from your phone? has Roam's row next to 20 other note apps.
What a Roam page looks like in Pando
Roam's "Export All" asks for a format. Obsidian's import guide uses Roam's JSON, and Craft's uses its Markdown, which arrives as a zip of one file per page. Pando reads the Markdown. It does not read Roam's JSON: a JSON file comes in as one bullet holding the raw text, so pick Markdown.
To see what survives, I wrote a small Markdown page myself in Roam's syntax; it is a test file, not an export from a real graph. The nesting came across, and so did the words, but Roam's own syntax arrived as plain characters.
A [[Page]] link stays as those characters, and a ((block reference)) stays as its id. Roam's TODO marker stays text, while a Markdown [ ] becomes a real checkbox, so replace the markers in the file before you import if you want boxes. A one-word #tag becomes a Pando tag.
When to keep paying Roam
Keep Roam if you use block references, Linked References or queries every day, or if your day starts on the Daily Notes page. Keep it, too, if other people work in your graph with you, if you want native apps or more than one graph, or if your agent should only ever see one graph of several, chosen when you connect it.
Move if you use Roam as a plain outliner and never use queries or references. Before you decide, import the one Roam page you open most and work in it for a day.
Pages read for this on 14 November 2026: Roam's landing page with its pricing and download sections (roamresearch.com), the page at mcp.roamresearch.com, the Roam Research entry in Claude's connector directory, and the Roam import guides of Craft and Obsidian.
If you want to try it, create a free Pando account and connect Claude.