Pragma vs Notion
Notion will let you build a plan. Pragma already is one.
Pragma ships the structure: eleven item types with real lifecycles, workflows that block invalid moves, and a graph you can query for critical path and impact. Notion is flexible enough that you could build a version of that yourself — which is why teams outgrow their own setups, because the schema stays yours to design, maintain and re-teach every time someone joins.
Where Pragma wins
- Structure you don't maintain. Eleven item types with real lifecycles, shipped and kept working — not a database you designed in March that nobody understands in September.
- Rules that hold. Workflow conditions block invalid moves, including when an agent asks.
- A scheduling engine. Critical path, impact of a slip, bottlenecks and orphans — computed, not formula-built.
- Flat pricing with free puppets. €0, €29 or €149 per organization, and clients and contractors are assignable and time-tracked without a paid seat each.
- European by construction. Application, database and files in eu-west-1, a French operator, a signed DPA — or on-premise, on Enterprise.
What Notion does better
- Documents and wiki. Long-form documents, nested pages and a company wiki in one surface — the thing Notion was built for.
- Flexibility. Databases, views and relations you define yourself, in an afternoon, with no engineer involved.
- One surface for everything. Meeting notes, specs, a CRM and a roadmap can genuinely live side by side.
Side by side
Notion data last checked on September 26th, 2026. Sources: pricing, data residency.
| Pragma | Notion | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | Flat, per organization. €0 Starter, €29 Team, €149 Business, whoever joins. | Per member, per month on every paid plan. |
| Free plan | 5 members, 5 puppets, 3 projects, 200 work items, unlimited connected agents. | Unlimited for individuals but block-limited for 2+ members, 5 MB file uploads, 7 days of page history, up to 10 guests. |
| What a work item is | A typed entity with its own lifecycle — eleven kinds, from requirement to risk to decision — enforced by the system. | A database row with whatever properties you defined. Powerful, and entirely yours to design and maintain. |
| Why work exists | Typed links: task answers requirement answers deliverable, with orphan and gap detection built in. | Relation properties between databases. The meaning of a relation lives in your team’s convention. |
| Analysis on the plan | Critical path, impact analysis, bottlenecks and plan validation, computed from dependency edges. | Rollups, filters and formulas over your own schema; no scheduling engine. |
| Workflow enforcement | Conditions block invalid transitions — a requirement cannot close while open work answers it — for people and agents alike. | Status properties and database automations; rules are conventions rather than guarantees. |
| AI agents | 80+ MCP tools behind OAuth 2.1, including the analysis layer. Unlimited on every plan, agent activity never billed per call. | Official hosted MCP server over OAuth for pages, databases, search and comments, plus Notion AI on Business and Enterprise. |
| Documents | Documents attach to the work they govern, and carry the same traceability as everything else. | Docs, wiki and databases in one place is the whole point of Notion. |
| Hosting | EU only: AWS eu-west-1 (Ireland) for application, database and files; EU-region analytics and email. On-premise on Enterprise. | Hosted on AWS. A choice of US, EU, Japan or South Korea data region on Enterprise. |
Choose Pragma if…
…you have already rebuilt your project database twice, or you need to answer "what does this task serve, and what breaks if it slips?" without writing a formula. Many teams keep both: Notion for what people write, Pragma for what the team owes.
Stay on Notion if your centre of gravity is documents and project tracking is something you want beside them. A small team with one person who enjoys maintaining the schema can run a long way on it, and should.
Stop maintaining the schema.
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