A Notion alternative that knows what is still true.
Notion holds everything: docs, databases, projects. Verde holds what your team knows, in markdown, and makes sure the version your AI reads is the current one. You pay for the people who write, not the people who read.
- Import your Notion markdown
- Read-only seats are free
- Free forever, no card
Works with the AI tools you already use
Starting honestly
Notion has its own MCP server. That is not what is wrong.
Notion ships an official hosted MCP server, and it works. Connect it and your AI can read and write your pages. Anyone telling you your AI cannot reach Notion is selling you something.
The problem is what it finds. A workspace that has been running for two years holds the pricing page from before the change, three overlapping onboarding docs, and a decision that was quietly reversed in a meeting. All of it reads as equally true to a model, because nothing in the workspace says otherwise.
Verde is built around that one problem: knowledge with a lifecycle, so the answer your AI gives is the one that is still true.
Side by side
Where each one is actually better.
Four of these rows go to Notion and three are honest ties. If we only listed the ones we win, you would be right not to believe any of them.
| Capability | Verde | Notion |
|---|---|---|
| AI access over MCP | An official hosted MCP server, authorized with OAuth 2.1 or a bearer token | An official remote MCP server, hosted by Notion, authorized with OAuth |
| What your AI finds when it gets there | Published documents, ranked current-first, with replaced ones clearly marked as superseded | Every page you can see, the current and the long-outdated alike |
| Keeping knowledge current | Supersede a document and the replacement wins retrieval, while the old one stays queryable and labeled | Page history: 7 days on Free, 30 on Plus, 90 on Business |
| Seeing what your AI could not find | Every search that returns nothing is captured and ranked as a knowledge gap | Not available |
| Document format | Markdown, stored the way you wrote it | Blocks, exportable as Markdown, HTML, PDF, or CSV |
| What a seat costs | $15/seat on Team, $28 on Business, and only write or publish seats count | $10 per member per month on Plus, $20 per member per month on Business |
| People who only read | Read-only seats are free: unlimited on paid plans, 5 on Free | Guests are free: unlimited on paid plans, 10 on Free |
| The free plan, for a small team | 3 write seats, 5 read-only seats, unlimited documents, 30-day activity log | Unlimited for one person, a limited block count for 2+ members, 7-day history |
| Databases, views, relations, rollups | None at all | Extensive, and the reason a lot of teams are there at all |
| Real-time collaborative editing | No. Verde raises a banner when a document has changed underneath you. | Yes, several people editing one page at once |
| Working offline | No. It is a hosted service, so it needs a connection. | Yes, desktop and mobile apps, on every plan |
| Publishing to the web | Free on every plan, up to 10 live pages on Free, unlimited on paid | Unlimited published pages on Free, with one notion.site domain |
| Getting everything back out | Export a whole vault as one JSON file, markdown bodies and links intact | Export as Markdown, HTML, PDF, or CSV |
Swipe the table sideways to see Notion’s column.
Notion plans, seat prices, guest limits, and history retention read from notion.com in August 2026.
The rows we win are the ones you feel six months in. Free plan, no card.
Start freeWhat you gain
Knowledge with a lifecycle.
Not another place to put pages. A layer that has an opinion about which page is the answer.
One current answer, not a pile of pages
Supersede a document and the replacement is what retrieval returns. The old version stays readable and clearly labeled, so your AI stops quoting a decision you reversed two quarters ago.
The questions nobody wrote down
Every search your AI runs that comes back empty is captured and ranked. Each one is a gap in what your team has written, and one click turns it into a document.
Private means private
Public, company, and private scopes, enforced in SQL on every query rather than in the client. A private document is invisible to everyone else, including owners and admins.
You pay for authors, not for readers
Only write and publish seats are billable. Read-only members and the AI tools consulting the knowledge base are free on every plan, unlimited on paid.
Bringing your pages over
One-time import- 01
Export from Notion as Markdown
Notion exports pages as Markdown, alongside HTML, PDF, and CSV. Markdown is the one you want, and it comes down as a zip you unpack.
- 02
Upload the .md files
Verde takes .md, .markdown, and .txt, 50 files at a time, as many rounds as you need. Pick the bucket and the visibility once for the batch.
- 03
Sort out what is still true
This is the part worth doing by hand. Publish what is current, supersede what replaced something, and leave the rest as drafts.
One caveat worth knowing before you start: Notion exports databases as CSV, and Verde does not import CSV. Pages come over, database rows do not. If a database is load-bearing for your team, that is a reason to keep Notion for it.
Start with one messy corner of the wiki. That is enough to tell whether this helps.
Start freeConnect in minutes
One endpoint, and the same permissions you have.
Generate a token, paste one command, and your AI client searches, drafts, and updates with exactly your access and no more. Every call is re-checked server-side, so a misbehaving client still cannot read what its owner could not.
claude mcp add --transport http verde \
https://getverde.ai/api/mcp \
--header "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_TOKEN"Works the same in Cursor, Codex, and any client that reads .mcp.json. OAuth 2.1 supported for Claude.ai connectors.
AI drafts, a person approves
A public document never goes live as a side effect of being written. Publishing needs publish permission plus a separate call the agent has to confirm on purpose.
Tokens you can revoke
Each token is shown once, stored only as a hash, and acts with exactly its owner's permissions. Revoke any connection in one click.
A public KB, free on every plan
Any document can become a published page on your public knowledge base. No separate product and no second subscription for it.
Markdown you can take with you
Documents are markdown, and a vault export hands back every one of them with links intact. Leaving should be boring.
Where Notion still wins
Four reasons to keep it.
Verde is one focused tool, and focus means the things it does not do are not coming later. If any of these is your requirement, stay.
Databases are the whole point for you
Views, relations, rollups, and formulas are Notion's core, and Verde has no equivalent to any of it. If your team runs projects, roadmaps, or CRMs in Notion databases, none of that has a home here.
You want everyone in one page at once
Notion does real-time multiplayer editing. Verde does not: it warns you when a document changed underneath you and keeps the versions straight, which is a different and smaller promise.
You work offline
Notion's desktop and mobile apps work offline on every plan. Verde is hosted and needs a connection, which is the trade for being one URL that every tool and device already reaches.
You live in the ecosystem
Templates, integrations, forms, calendars, and years of accumulated setup. Verde is one focused tool with no plugin system, and switching means leaving that behind.
Plenty of teams run both: Notion for the databases and the project work, Verde for the knowledge their AI reads from. That is a perfectly good answer, and cheaper than it sounds when read-only seats cost nothing.
FAQ
Questions teams ask before moving.
Notion already has an MCP server. Why would I add Verde?
Because the two answer different questions. Notion's MCP server gives an AI client access to your pages, which is genuinely useful. What it hands back is your workspace as it stands: the current page and the one somebody wrote eighteen months ago, with nothing marking which is which. Verde is built around that problem. Documents have a lifecycle (draft, published, superseded), retrieval favors the current version, replaced documents are labeled rather than deleted, and the searches that found nothing are recorded so you can close the gap. If your Notion workspace is tidy and small, its own MCP server may be all you need.
Is Verde a replacement for Notion?
Not for all of it, and we would rather say so plainly. Verde has no databases, no views, no relations, no project boards, and no calendars. If you use those, keep Notion. Verde replaces the part a lot of teams actually mean when they say their Notion is a mess: the wiki, the docs, the decisions, the accumulated knowledge that your AI tools now read from and that nobody is sure is still true.
Can I bring my Notion content over?
Yes, for pages. Notion exports as Markdown, and Verde imports .md, .markdown, and .txt files, 50 at a time, as many times as you need. Frontmatter titles and tags carry over and the original filename is kept as the source. One honest caveat: Notion exports databases as CSV, and Verde does not import CSV, so database content has to be recreated or left in Notion.
Do I have to pay for everyone on the team?
No. Only members at the write or publish level are billable. Read-only members are free on every plan, whether that is a person browsing or their AI tools consulting the knowledge base. Free includes 3 write seats and 5 free readers; Team and Business have unlimited free read-only seats. Notion's guests are free too, but a full member is $10 per member per month on Plus and $20 per member per month on Business.
Do I need an AI subscription, credits, or an API key?
No. Search is weighted Postgres full-text search, so there is no AI bill attached to finding things and nothing metered per query. Your AI client brings its own model and its own subscription; Verde just answers its questions. Notion's AI features are included on Business, with custom agents metered as credits on top.
Can an admin read my private documents?
No. A private document belongs to one member and is invisible to everyone else, owners and admins included. The rule is enforced in SQL on every query, not in the interface, and our end-to-end suite checks it on every release.
Does Verde work offline?
No. Notion is better than us here: its desktop and mobile apps work offline on every plan. Verde is a hosted service and needs a connection, which is the honest cost of being a single URL that every device and every AI client can reach without installing anything.
What happens when knowledge changes?
You supersede the old document with the new one. Both stay, the link between them is explicit, and normal retrieval returns only the current version. Tools can ask for the history when they need it. That is the difference from page history, which keeps versions of one page but has no opinion about which page is the answer.
Is the free plan a trial?
No, it is a plan. No clock, no card, no expiring workspace. It covers unlimited documents, 3 write seats, 5 free read-only seats, 1 vault, 2,000 AI calls a month, and a public knowledge base of up to 10 live pages.
Give your AI one version of the truth.
Import the wiki, publish what is current, connect your first tool. Free forever, no card, and readers never cost a thing.