Filmina vs Notion
Notion is where you organize what you write. Filmina starts one step earlier: it takes the lecture slides, explains them and makes your notes. Both are useful in college, just not for the same job.
Notion is where a huge number of students keep their entire college life: notes for every course, the list of exams, the reading backlog and a color-coded dashboard that took an afternoon to set up. It is flexible, it looks good and, with a school email, the Plus plan is free.
But Notion stores what you write. The lecture is still sitting in your professor's PDF, and understanding it is still on you.
Notion is the tidiest notebook you will ever own. Filmina takes the lecture slides, explains them out loud and makes the notes, the summary and the practice for you.
What Notion does well
- It does almost anything. Pages, databases, tables, calendars and boards: with some patience you can build exactly the system you want.
- It's free for students. With a university email, the Plus plan for one person costs nothing: unlimited uploads, guests and thirty days of page history.
- Templates for everything. There is a huge gallery, many made by other students: course trackers, semester planners, reading lists.
- It's built for group work. Several people edit the same page at once, which is exactly what a group project needs.
- It's not just for college. The same place holds your job, your side projects and your grocery list.
- Writing in it feels good. Blocks, the / menu and the shortcuts make fast note-taking easy.
If your semester already lives in Notion and it works for you, there is no reason to tear it down.
Where it stops being enough
It stores the lecture, it doesn't explain it
In Notion you can upload the lecture PDF, embed it in a page and write underneath. What it won't do is sit down with you in front of those ninety slides and explain them. You read them alone and in silence, same as before, just on a neater page.
That is exactly where Filmina starts. You upload the slides, a PDF, a book, the lecture recording or a YouTube video, and the deck gets explained out loud, slide by slide, with a frame around the part being discussed. Whether every block was covered is checked in code.
You write the notes yourself
Notion is only as good as what you put into it. If you missed the lecture, or went and couldn't keep up, the page stays empty. And a good summary of a course takes hours, all of them before you have even started studying.
In Filmina the notes come from the lecture. Record class transcribes while your professor talks, tells speakers apart and writes formulas down as formulas; when it ends, you get a summary by topic. Every course has a summary and a mind map that stay saved and can be updated when you add material. And the notebook works like Notion, with / to pick each block: anything you paste from Notion keeps its formatting.
On the student plan, the AI is a trial
Notion AI writes, summarizes, answers questions about your pages and takes meeting notes. Since May 2025 the full version comes with the Business plan, at US$20 per member per month, and new Free or Plus users can no longer buy it as an add-on. On those two plans, the ones students use, the AI shows up as a limited trial.
And even in full, it is AI for a workspace: it doesn't know which course that page belongs to, when your exam is or which slide you didn't get. Filmina's chat lives inside the course: it answers from every lecture, your notes and your material, tells you which slides each answer comes from and, if you ask it to quiz you on what you got wrong, it builds the practice session.
It doesn't make you practice
You can build flashcards in Notion with toggles or a template, but you write them yourself, one by one, and nobody quizzes you. Rereading tidy notes three times feels like knowing, which is not the same as knowing.
Practice asks you questions from your own lecture, in eight formats: flashcards, multiple choice, matching, fill in the blank, cases, in your own words, mixed and a timed mock exam. It adapts to how you are doing, and what you missed comes back the next day. Review asks you to remember before it shows you the answer.
You build the plan, and you keep it up
An exam tracker in Notion works as long as you keep it updated. Filmina asks when your exam is and what it covers, and builds a study plan per course up to that date, with a calendar showing what you studied, what is due today and how much is left. Connect your calendar and it warns you when a study block clashes with a class.
Filmina vs Notion, point by point
| What matters | Filmina | Notion |
|---|---|---|
| What it is for | Studying your courses | Organizing anything: notes, projects, work |
| Starting point | The lecture's slides, PDFs, books, audio and YouTube videos | A blank page or a template |
| Explaining the lecture | Out loud, slide by slide, with a frame around what is being explained | Not available |
| Notes | One notebook per course, written like Notion and used in the explanation | Pages and databases, very flexible |
| Transcribing the lecture | Live, with a final pass and a summary by topic | AI Meeting Notes, on the Business plan |
| Summary and mind map | Per course, saved and kept up to date with your material | Notion AI summarizes a page, if your plan includes it |
| Asking questions | A chat per course that tells you which slides each answer comes from | Notion AI, across your workspace |
| Practice | Eight formats that adapt to how you are doing | Whatever flashcards you build by hand |
| Study plan | Per course, up to the exam date, with a calendar | Whatever tracker you build by hand |
| Group work | Share a file, summary, mind map or note with a read-only link | Real-time editing, comments and permissions |
| Where it runs | In the browser: computer, tablet or phone | In the browser, plus desktop and mobile apps |
| Price | Free with no card, and Pro monthly: US$8 (see pricing) | Free, and Plus free with a school email. Full AI on Business: US$20 per member per month |
One place to store, one place to understand
The honest comparison is not which one is better, but which part of the work each one does.
Notion, for your system
You like having everything set up your way, you work in groups or you use the same space for college, work and everything else.
Filmina, for the course
You have ninety slides and a midterm in two weeks, and what you need is to understand them, have the notes done and practice before the date.
Using both works: Notion to organize your life, Filmina to study each course. And whatever you already wrote in Notion pastes into Filmina's notebook with its formatting.
My take
Ignacio Prados
@ignaprados
For five years I took all my notes in Notion, from my first day of college. It worked really well, and for organizing everything that isn't a course I still recommend it.
But a good chunk of the time I spent in it wasn't studying: it was organizing. And the slide I didn't understand stayed just as confusing, however neat it looked in its database row.
Filmina ended up being what that Notion was missing: my courses in one place, but with someone explaining the lecture, a plan up to the exam and practice along the way.
What Notion has and Filmina doesn't
- It's for everything, not just studying. Filmina is for your courses, and nothing else.
- Group editing. Several people write on the same page at once. In Filmina, what you share is a read-only link.
- Databases and templates. If you enjoy building your own system, Notion lets you do it any way you like. Filmina comes with its way of studying already built.
- More use without paying. With a school email, your pages have no cap. Filmina's free plan comes with 60 minutes of explanation to start with, then 20 a month.
Frequently asked questions
What's the difference between Filmina and Notion?
Notion is a space to organize and write: pages, databases and notes you make yourself. Filmina is a place to study your courses: it takes the lecture's slides, PDFs, audio and videos, explains them out loud and makes the notes, the summary, the mind map, the practice and a plan up to the exam for you.
Does Filmina replace Notion?
For studying a course, it can. For organizing the rest of your life, working in groups or building your own system, no: Notion does things Filmina doesn't, and the two get along fine.
Is Notion AI free for students?
With a school email you get Notion Plus for free, but on Plus the AI is a limited trial. The full Notion AI is on the Business plan, at US$20 per member per month according to their pricing page in October 2026.
Can I move my notes from Notion to Filmina?
Yes: anything you copy from Notion and paste into Filmina's notebook keeps its formatting. And every note in the notebook can be used in the explanation, so what you wrote down in class makes it into how the slides are explained.
Does Filmina take notes during the lecture?
Yes. Record class transcribes while your professor talks and, when it ends, builds a summary by topic. Transcribing uses hours from your plan: one a month on Free and ten on Pro.
How much does Filmina cost?
There is a Free plan, with no card, that comes with 60 minutes of explanation to start with and then 20 a month. Pro costs US$8 a month and comes with 15 hours of explanation a month.
Keep comparing
- Filmina vs NotebookLMGoogle's two-host podcast, against the explained slide.
- Filmina vs QuizletMemorizing flashcards, against understanding the lecture first.
- Filmina vs ChatGPTWhat happens when you upload a sixty-slide PDF to the chat.
- I used Notion for taking notes for five years. Here's why I stoppedWhat it does brilliantly, where it turned into busywork, and what I study with now.
- Why I made FilminaWhere it came from: an exam, a hundred slides and no tool that did the job.