Qiqqa is a free research and reference manager. Search for, read and annotate your PDFs. Then review your work, write up and create bibliographies instantly.




The best Research Manager alternative to DEVONthink is Qiqqa, which is both free and Open Source. If that doesn't suit you, our users have ranked more than 100 alternatives to DEVONthink and seven of them are Research Managers so hopefully you can find a suitable replacement. Other interesting Research Manager alternatives to DEVONthink are MyInfo, Paperpile, synapsen and Fluster.
Qiqqa is a free research and reference manager. Search for, read and annotate your PDFs. Then review your work, write up and create bibliographies instantly.




MyInfo is a personal information manager for Windows. It will help you capture, organize, edit and share ideas, documents, tasks, and web pages.

Organize your research papers in a Gmail-like web app, sync your PDFs to Google Drive and cite your references in Google Docs.



Synapsen is a hypertextual card index or reference organizer, which is to say a storage system on the basis of an electronic literature database that enables the management of bibliographies and notes.


The ultimate note-taking app for students & academics, featuring AI-powered RAG, vector databases, bibliography management, and seamless integration with your academic workflow.


AI-powered PDF toolkit for macOS. Chat with documents, organize research with Smart Folders, and compress files—all 100% private and on-device.




A lightweight, elegant reference manager. Organize your library, extract annotations from PDFs, auto-enrich metadata, and export BibTeX or RIS — your data stays locally.



