Is Vellum free?
Yes. There is no account, subscription or payment, and no ads.
A private place to think.
Write, keep files and photos, find anything, and ask your notes for answers with sources. Everything stays on your device, works offline, and needs no account.
- Garden journal
- Thesis research
- Budget 2027
- Family recipes
- Renovation plan
- Sales analysis
- Trip to Lisbon
- Lecture notes
Write
Keep everything in one calm place.
Notes that link to each other, notebooks, files and photos, and a search that finds words inside PDFs and, when you turn it on, inside scans and pictures.
Ask
Ask your notes.
An assistant that runs on your device answers from what you wrote, and shows where it found it.
Private
Private by design.
No account and no tracking: everything stays on this device, and you can sync it, encrypted, through a folder you already use.
Go further
Go further when you want to.
Run code in 25 languages right inside a note, or let the assistant write and run it for you, with your approval.
- JavaScript
- TypeScript
- Python
- SQL
- Lua
- Shell (emulated)
- Ruby
- PHP
- R
- Perl
- Go
- Rust
- C
- C++
- OCaml
- Haskell
- Zig
- C#
- F#
- Java
- Clojure
- Elixir
- Erlang
- Scheme
- Prolog
Questions
Asked often.
Where are my notes stored?
On your device, in your browser's private storage, with your files and photos beside them. Vellum's servers only deliver the app; they never receive your notes. Clearing the browser's site data deletes them, so keep a backup or set up sync.
Does it work offline?
Yes. After your first visit Vellum opens without a connection, and you can install it like an app from your browser's menu.
Can I use it on my phone?
Yes. Vellum works in your phone's browser and can be added to the home screen. Notes stay on that phone; to move them between devices, use a backup or sync from a computer.
Does the AI send my notes anywhere?
No. The assistant is off until you turn it on. Then its model downloads once and runs in your browser, on the GPU with WebGPU or as a smaller model on the CPU. Questions, answers and the search index stay on the device.
How do I move between devices?
Choose a folder that iCloud Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive or Syncthing already syncs, and a passphrase. Vellum encrypts each change with AES-256-GCM before writing it there, so the provider only sees opaque files. Sync needs Chrome or Edge on a computer; anywhere else, download a backup and restore it.
Can it find text in photos and scans?
Yes, once you turn on text recognition in Settings. It downloads about 15 MB once, from Vellum, and reads scanned PDFs and pictures on your device. Text in ordinary PDFs, Word documents and slides is searchable straight away.
Which languages can code run in?
JavaScript, TypeScript, Python, SQL, Lua, Shell (emulated), Ruby, PHP, R, Perl, Go, Rust, C, C++, OCaml, Haskell, Zig, C#, F#, Java, Clojure, Elixir, Erlang, Scheme, Prolog. Code runs in a sandbox on your device; each language downloads the first time you use it, then works offline, and code has no network access unless you allow it for that note.
Can I import Jupyter notebooks, Markdown files or an Obsidian vault?
Yes. Notes are plain Markdown. Import Markdown files, Obsidian vaults and Jupyter notebooks; export a note as Markdown, HTML or a Jupyter notebook, everything as an Obsidian-compatible .zip, or a full backup. A note can also be saved as one .html page that anyone can open and run.
Which browsers does it work in?
Vellum needs a current browser with the Origin Private File System: Chrome, Edge, Firefox or Safari. It is developed and tested in Chrome. Sync needs Chrome or Edge on a computer, and the assistant is fastest with WebGPU.