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

Billfish and refern are both local-first desktop asset managers that index your files in place without copying them. The key difference: Billfish is free and covers the Eagle-style folder-and-tag workflow well, while refern adds an infinite canvas, a relationship graph view, Linux support, and richer search operators, for $30 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 let you point them at a folder of images, tag and filter assets, and never worry about a proprietary library eating your disk space.

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 $30 one time, runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux, and does not copy your files.

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 is your existing folder on disk. refern writes a SQLite index and a thumbnails cache alongside your originals and never moves or copies them.

Beyond the library, refern includes a full 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 view maps how folders, images, canvases, and tags connect to each other across your whole workspace. Full-text search runs across the workspace with 14-plus inline operators. There is a 30-day free trial with no account required, then $30 one-time (launch pricing, going to $35 about two months after launch).

What is Billfish?

Billfish (billfish.cn) is a free desktop asset manager developed by a Chinese software company based in Suzhou. It supports Windows (XP through 11) and macOS (10.13 and later). Like refern, it indexes files in place rather than copying them into a proprietary library, which is a meaningful advantage over Eagle.

Billfish covers roughly 80 to 90 percent of Eagle's core organization and search features, according to multiple Chinese-language reviews from 2022. It has folders, hierarchical tags, color labels, ratings, smart folders, color search, and a keyword search that reviewers describe as fast. It also imports Eagle libraries, so migrating from Eagle is possible without losing organization. It is, for individual users, completely free.

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 a rich tag system: 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 14-plus inline operators: type:, tag:, rating:>=3, color:, in:, is:duplicate, derived:, linked:, sort:, and more. Color search works by hex input. Visual similarity search runs locally using a 512-byte feature descriptor (HSV histogram, dominant colors, edge histogram) with no internet calls.

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 practical advantage, especially in large libraries.

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 $30 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 lifetime. The business model is straightforward.

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 14-plus 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 want to know your tool will still receive updates in two years. refern is actively developed with weekly releases; Billfish's last logged update is May 2024.

Who should choose Billfish

Choose Billfish if:

• $30 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

Neither tool copies your files, which makes switching low-risk. Your originals stay exactly where they are on disk.

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 alongside your files. refern does not read Billfish metadata directly. You would need to re-apply tags in refern manually, or export your Billfish tags first. If you came to Billfish from Eagle, refern's Eagle importer reads Eagle folders, tags, ratings, source URLs, and notes, which may offer a two-step path.

What gets better immediately. Once indexed, you get workspace-wide search, 14-plus search 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 applied as tags automatically, which may recover some organization for photos and assets with embedded metadata.

There is no lock-in on either side. Both tools index your originals in place. Walking away from either means simply stopping use of the app; your files are untouched.

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