Blinko
by Blinko · Open-source AI card notes with RAG search, self-hosted
BenchRank score
Screenshots of Blinko
Homepage
Overview
Blinko is an open-source card-based note-taking app for capturing and organising notes in plain text and Markdown. It uses RAG to answer natural language searches over your notes, and is designed to run in a self-hosted environment so notes stay under your control. Paid memberships add a browser extension, a Telegram bot and monthly AI credits.
- Best for
- People who want a self-hosted, open-source note app with AI search over their own notes
- Pricing
- Core features are open source and free; Membership is $5/month and Pro Membership $9.9/month, with an annual option advertised as saving 16%
- Runs on
- Self-hosted
Strengths and trade-offs
Strengths
- Open-source core, free for all main note features
- Notes stay in your own self-hosted environment
- RAG-based natural language search across notes
- Plain text and Markdown capture
Trade-offs
- Browser extension and Telegram bot need a paid membership
- AI use is metered: 500 credits/month, 3000 on Pro
- Stated data control depends on you running the self-hosted deployment
- Free trial is 7 days with limited AI credits
How Blinko markets itself
A structured read of the promise, proof and page design on Blinko’s captured homepage.
Homepage capture
“Bring Your Ideas to Life with AI”
- Angle: AI-native
- Hero: Product video demo
Pricing
Published plans and prices from Blinko’s own pricing page.
How this score is made up
Each dimension is scored out of 100 and combined into the headline score using fixed weights.
MCP support
Whether an agent can drive the product through the Model Context Protocol, and how much setup that takes.
API quality
Public API surface: machine-readable spec, official SDKs, documented auth, errors, rate limits and versioning.
Documentation
Publicly reachable docs — coverage, freshness, code samples and machine readability.
Agent friendliness
How readable the site is to an automated client: llms.txt, structured data, server-rendered content, crawler access.
Pricing transparency
Whether real prices are published, self-serve signup exists, and usage costs are knowable without a sales call.
Changelog
A public, dated record of what shipped and when — the clearest signal that a product is still alive.
Marketing site structure
Whether the site answers a buyer's questions: clear positioning, the pages that matter, and accessibility.
Page speed
How fast the site loads for real visitors: Chrome UX Report 75th-percentile LCP, INP and CLS, with a Lighthouse mobile run standing in where a site has too little traffic for field data.
Operational trust
Status page and incident history, security disclosure, compliance and data-processing documentation.
Measured, but not part of the score
Useful to know, but not a mark for or against the product — so these do not affect the ranking.
Openness
Source availability, self-hosting, data export and open standards. Scored and shown, but not part of the composite — paid SaaS is not worse for being paid SaaS.
Maintenance
Release cadence and repository activity. Scored and shown, but not part of the composite — it is only measurable for open repositories.
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Where this comes from
The Blinko pages BenchRank reads when it scores the product — its documentation, release notes, status and security pages, and its repository where there is one.
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Is this your product?
Claim Blinko to manage its profile. Claiming lets you suggest edits to the descriptive fields — it never changes scores or rankings.