Billfish vs refern: Free DAM vs Canvas and Graph (2026)

Billfish and refern are local desktop asset managers with an in-place indexing option. Billfish also offers copy and cut modes, while refern can copy through explicit import actions. Billfish is free and covers the Eagle-style folder-and-tag workflow well; refern adds an infinite canvas, relationship graph, Linux support, and richer search for $35 one-time.

Quick verdict: If $0 is a hard requirement and you only need to browse and tag a folder of images, Billfish works. If you want to arrange references spatially, see how your assets connect, or work on Linux, refern is the better fit.

At a glance

Introduction

You are looking for a local desktop organizer for your design references, and Billfish has shown up as a free Eagle alternative. That is a fair comparison to make. Both tools can index an existing folder, but Billfish also offers copy and cut modes and each app stores its own metadata.

The question is whether Billfish's feature set covers your workflow, or whether the missing pieces (canvas, graph, Linux, cross-folder search) are things you actually need.

refern is a desktop reference manager for artists that combines Eagle-style organization with a PureRef-style infinite canvas and an Obsidian-style relationship graph. It costs $35 one time, runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux, and indexes existing folders in place.

What is refern?

refern is a local-first desktop visual reference manager for artists and designers, built on Tauri v2 (Rust) and available on Windows, macOS, and Linux. A workspace can point to an existing folder on disk. Normal workspace indexing leaves originals in place and writes its SQLite index and thumbnail cache alongside them or in a configured workspace-associated location.

Beyond the library, refern includes an infinite canvas where you can drag images from your library, layer and group them, annotate with text and shapes, and draw freehand. A relationship graph maps how folders, images, canvases, and tags connect across the workspace. Full-text search runs across the workspace with 21 user-visible operators. There is a 30-day free trial with no account required, then $35 one-time.

What is Billfish?

Billfish (billfish.cn) is a free desktop asset manager for Windows and macOS. It offers copy, cut, and index library modes. Index mode leaves source paths unchanged, but moving those files outside Billfish can break the reference; copy and cut modes change the storage boundary.

Billfish covers much of Eagle's core organization and search surface according to Chinese-language reviews from 2022. It has folders, hierarchical tags, color labels, ratings, smart folders, color search, and keyword search. It also documents Eagle import, although metadata fidelity has not been independently verified. Its official download is free for individual users as of September 1, 2026.

The gap is in the features it does not have: no canvas, no graph view, no Linux, and a cross-folder global search that was weakened in the v3 redesign.

Organization and search

refern organizes files in folder hierarchies with hierarchical tags, tag groups, linked tags, and tag macros for bulk insertion. Smart folders save filter queries that auto-update. Search defaults to workspace-wide and uses FTS5 full-text matching with 21 user-visible operators: type:, tag:, rating:>=3, color:, in:, is:duplicate, derived:, linked:, sort:, and more. Color search and visual similarity run locally without a search API. Hidden folders and content roots remain indexed but drop out of search, grids, pickers, and counts until restored.

Billfish has a comparable folder-and-tag foundation. Tags support hierarchical nesting. Smart folders exist. Color search is built in, though a 2022 Sspai review noted the color algorithm has stricter tolerance than Eagle's, meaning it returns fewer results for a given color. Keyword search completes within 0.1 seconds according to the developer. A meaningful limitation: the v3 redesign removed or weakened the cross-folder "all files" global view. Reviewers from a March 2023 Tencent Cloud comparison flagged this as a significant regression. Filtering in v3 works per-folder rather than across the whole workspace.

Verdict: For pure organization, Billfish covers the basics well. For search, refern's workspace-wide scope and typed operators are a functional advantage; compare performance with a representative copy of your own library.

Canvas and moodboard

refern has a full infinite canvas built in. You can drag images from your library onto any canvas, arrange them with layers and groups, add text and shapes (nine shape types), draw freehand, apply non-destructive image filters and crops, and add color swatches. Canvases save as .refern-canvas files alongside your other assets. A pin-window-on-top mode with transparency and mouse clickthrough replicates the PureRef overlay workflow inside the same app. There is no separate tool required for reference composition.

Billfish has no canvas or moodboard feature. It is a grid browser only. Users who want to compose references spatially must export to PureRef, Figma, or another tool and switch contexts. This is not a criticism of Billfish's core scope, but it is a real workflow boundary.

Verdict: If spatial reference composition is part of your workflow at all, refern is the only option here.

Relationship graph view

refern includes a relationship graph view that maps your entire workspace as a navigable network. Nodes represent images, folders, canvases, groups, and tags. Edges represent typed entity links: derived-from (cropped from a source), placed-in-canvas (image appears on a canvas), cross-reference (manually linked images), and member-of (grouped images). A Linked References sidebar surfaces the same connections when you view any individual image. Searching with derived: or linked: targets these relationships directly. Users who described refern during alpha called it "what if Obsidian had pictures instead of notes."

Billfish has no relationship or graph feature of any kind. There is no way to see which images are related, which were cropped from others, or how assets connect across the library.

Verdict: refern is alone in this category. If the way your references connect to each other matters to you (concept art stages, mood board to final, sources to crops), refern's graph view is a meaningful differentiator.

Pricing

Billfish's pricing is its single strongest card. Zero dollars is a hard number to argue against. The tradeoff is that Billfish's long-term sustainability is uncertain. A November 2021 forum post from the developer said personal use would stay free and that value-added services and a possible team version might be paid later, with no specifics on timing. As of mid-2026, no paid tier has shipped. The last changelog entry on the official site is from May 2024 (v3.1.15.2), and forum users have noted that updates appear to have slowed. Whether Billfish continues to be actively maintained is an open question.

refern charges $35 up front. That is a real barrier for some users, and it is worth saying plainly. The license covers up to three devices, commercial use is included, and updates are included under current terms.

Full feature comparison

Who should choose refern

Choose refern if:

• You want to arrange references spatially on an infinite canvas. Billfish cannot do this at all, and adding PureRef alongside Billfish means juggling two separate apps.
• You work on Linux. Billfish has no Linux build.
• You want to see how your images relate to each other. The relationship graph view and typed entity links have no Billfish equivalent.
• You use advanced search regularly. Workspace-wide search with 21 user-visible operators gives you more expressive queries than Billfish's per-folder approach.
• You use Safari and want an official browser extension that works there. Billfish's official extension is Chrome and Chromium only; Safari support was listed as "pending App Store review" in a 2022 article and remains unconfirmed as of mid-2026.
• You prefer a product with recent public development evidence. Billfish's posted changelog ended at May 2024 when checked, but that alone does not prove development stopped.

Who should choose Billfish

Choose Billfish if:

• $35 is a genuine barrier right now and free is a hard requirement. Billfish covers the core Eagle-style workflow at no cost.
• You are a Chinese-language user comfortable with Billfish's community forum and documentation. The vast majority of Billfish's support resources and active community are in Chinese.
• You need only folder-based organization and tag-based search, with no canvas or graph requirements.
• You already have a large Billfish library you are not ready to migrate.

Billfish is a genuinely capable free tool that covers real ground. The honest case for refern is not that Billfish is bad, but that refern does things Billfish structurally cannot.

Switching from Billfish to refern

Both tools have an in-place indexing path. Billfish can also copy or cut files, and refern's explicit import actions can copy. Keep a backup while testing any migration.

The main transition considerations:

What carries over easily. Your folder structure already exists on disk. Point refern at the same root folder and it will index everything in place, preserving your original folder hierarchy exactly.

Tags and metadata. Billfish stores metadata in its own database. refern does not read Billfish metadata directly, and a full cross-app export/import fidelity path has not been verified. You may need to re-apply tags manually. Do not assume routing through Eagle preserves that metadata.

What gets better immediately. Once indexed, you get workspace-wide search, 21 user-visible operators, visual similarity search, and the canvas and graph view. The browser extension works in Firefox and Safari. EXIF, IPTC, and XMP metadata from your existing images are read on first index and may recover some organization for photos and assets with embedded metadata.

Both tools can index existing files in place, but each keeps application metadata and can perform file-changing actions. Keep a backup and verify exported metadata before changing tools.

For a broader look at your options, see the best Eagle alternatives for artists guide or compare refern vs Eagle directly.

The verdict

Billfish and refern are aimed at the same core problem (organizing a local image library without the disk overhead of Eagle's library system) but they diverge sharply on scope.

Billfish is the right choice if free is a hard requirement and the folder-plus-tag workflow covers everything you do. It genuinely delivers on its promise for that use case, with a large Chinese-language community and no cost at all.

refern is the right choice if you want to compose references on a canvas, see your library as a connected graph, work on Linux, or search across your whole workspace with precision. Those are features Billfish does not have, and they reflect a different idea of what a reference manager is for.

The $35 difference is a real consideration. refern offers a 30-day free trial with no account required, which is enough time to bring your actual library in and see whether the canvas and graph view change how you work.