10 Best Evernote Alternatives of 2026

Obsidian takes the opposite approach to Evernote: instead of a cloud database, your notes are plain Markdown files in a folder on your own computer or phone. Obsidian says the app is free without limits and needs no sign-up, and its help center documents an Importer plugin that converts Evernote's .enex export into Markdown, so a full archive can move over in one pass. Linking between notes, a graph view and the Canvas whiteboard make it strong for research and long-term reference notes. The costs start when you want Obsidian to sync for you. Sync Standard is $4 per user per month billed annually or $5 monthly, with 1 synced vault, 1 GB of storage, a 5 MB file limit and 1 month of version history; Sync Plus is $8 billed annually. Sync is end-to-end encrypted. Publish, for turning notes into a public site, is $8 per site per month billed annually. The tradeoff is setup time: plugins and folder structures are flexible, but new users have to decide how they want to organize.

OneNote is the closest match to Evernote's notebook model at no cost. The app is listed as free on the US App Store, and its in-app purchases are Microsoft 365 subscriptions rather than a separate OneNote plan. Notes live in notebooks and pages, and Microsoft's listing describes to-do lists, follow-up items, importance marks and custom labels for organizing them. Handwriting is a strength: digital ink lets you write and sketch on a page, which suits tablets and stylus users. The app also scans documents and pictures to extract text, records voice notes with dictation in 27 languages, and clips content from the web. Newer Copilot Notebooks summarize meetings and classes from your notes and can produce audio overviews. Microsoft's OneNote page also lists sharing and collaboration. On the pages we checked, Microsoft does not describe an Evernote importer or end-to-end encryption, so people moving a large archive or sensitive records should plan for that.

Apple Notes has grown into a capable Evernote replacement for anyone who only uses Apple devices. It is free, preinstalled and synced through iCloud. Apple's App Store listing describes attachments for PDFs, photos, maps and web links, audio recording with transcription, a built-in document scanner, checklists, tables, collapsible sections and locked notes for private data. Organization goes beyond folders: there are subfolders, tags typed directly into a note, links between notes and Smart Folders built from rules such as date created or attachments. Search covers typed text, handwriting and text inside scanned documents and photos, which covers much of what Evernote users relied on for receipts and paperwork. Shared folders, mentions and an Activity view handle family or small team use. Apple's Notes User Guide for Mac also includes Math Notes and a section on importing and exporting notes. The limit is platform reach: the apps are built for iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Vision and Apple Watch.

Notion is the pick for Evernote users whose notes have turned into projects. Instead of notebooks, everything is a page built from blocks, and pages can sit inside databases with properties, subtasks, dependencies and different views. Notion's App Store listing says personal use is free, with as many notes and docs as you want, thousands of templates and more than 50 content types. It also highlights AI Meeting Notes, which records and summarizes meetings, and imports for Google Docs, PDFs and other content. Notion's pricing page lists basic forms, basic sites for publishing pages to the web and Notion Calendar on the Free plan, with 7 days of page history. Through the US App Store, Plus costs $11.99 a month or $119.99 a year; the web pricing page only showed euro prices from our location. Notion AI is a trial on Free and Plus, and Custom Agents cost $10 per 1,000 Notion credits. The block system is more flexible than Evernote's but takes longer to learn for quick capture.

Bear is a polished writing app for people who found Evernote's editor cluttered. Notes use Markdown, so headings, lists and links are typed rather than clicked, and a single note can mix text, photos, tables, to-do lists and sketches drawn with Apple Pencil. Organization runs on tags rather than notebooks, with over 250 icons to make tags stand out and options to pin the important ones. The free version works fully on one device with document scanning and export to TXT, Markdown, TextBundle, RTF, PDF, JPG, HTML, DOCX and ePub. Bear Pro is where Evernote users will land, because iCloud sync across devices and search inside photos and PDFs are Pro features. Bear's site lists Pro at $2.99 a month after a 7 day free trial or $29.99 a year. Bear says your notes are between you and iCloud, offers encryption for individual notes and supports Apple's Advanced Data Protection. The limits are platform and structure: there are apps only for Mac, iPhone and iPad.

Joplin is the most direct path out of Evernote for people who care about privacy. Its documentation says it can import complete Evernote notebooks from ENEX files, including notes, tags, attachments and metadata such as author and location. The app is open source and stores notes in an open format, and end-to-end encryption protects synced notes. You can sync for free through services you already use, such as Dropbox or OneDrive, or pay for Joplin Cloud, which adds note publishing, notebook sharing, collaboration and Email to Note. Joplin Cloud Basic includes 2 GB of storage with a 10 MB limit per note or attachment, and Pro raises that to 30 GB and 200 MB. From our location the plans page showed prices only in euros, so the USD price is pending. Joplin runs on Windows, macOS, Linux, Android and iOS, has a terminal app, and a web clipper for Chrome and Firefox. The interface is more utilitarian than Bear or Notion, and plugins do much of the heavy lifting.

UpNote is the simplest answer for Evernote users who mostly want notebooks, a web clipper and sync, without a big monthly bill. Its site lists hashtags, nested notebooks, pinned notes, templates and separate Spaces for keeping work and personal notes apart. Web clipper extensions are available for Chrome, Safari and Firefox, and the app works offline. UpNote says it backs up notes automatically and keeps version history, and you can lock individual notes or notebooks. The free version syncs across devices but allows up to 50 notes, so anyone with a real archive will need Premium. Premium costs $1.99 a month or $39.99 once for a lifetime license, bought through the iOS, Android or Mac app and then shared to the Windows app by signing in. Premium unlocks unlimited notes, lock, themes and export to text, PDF, HTML and Markdown. UpNote's home page does not describe an Evernote importer, so check the help center before you commit a large archive.

Google Keep is a free, fast replacement for the quick-capture side of Evernote rather than its filing cabinet. Google's App Store listing describes notes, lists, photos and audio, with organization by labels and colors instead of notebooks. Reminders can be set for a time or a place, so a grocery list can pop up when you arrive at the store. Voice memos are transcribed automatically, and text inside images becomes searchable, which helps with photographed whiteboards or receipts. Shared lists update in real time as people check items off, which suits households. Keep runs on phones, tablets and the web at keep.google.com, with a Chrome extension for saving pages. The limits show with larger archives: there are no notebooks, the listing does not mention rich formatting for long documents, and Google does not describe an Evernote import in the listing. Most Evernote users would pair Keep with another app for long-term reference notes.

Simplenote strips note-taking down to text. Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, says the apps, backups, syncing and sharing are all completely free, with apps for iOS, Android, Mac, Windows, Linux and the browser. Notes sync automatically in real time, and every change is backed up, so you can go back to what a note said last week or last month. Organization uses tags and pinned notes, and instant search highlights matching keywords. You can write in Markdown and preview it, share a note with a collaborator, publish a note to the web with a link or post it straight to a WordPress site. The mobile app supports a passcode lock. For Evernote users, the gap is clear: Simplenote's feature list covers text only, with no image or file attachments, no web clipper and no document scanner. It is a good home for checklists, drafts and reference text, and a poor fit for scanned paperwork.

Standard Notes is built for people who keep sensitive records in their notes, such as ID documents, contracts or account numbers. Every plan, including the free one, uses end-to-end encryption; the plans page names XChaCha20-Poly1305. The free Standard plan gives unlimited device sync on web, desktop and mobile, offline access, tags, password-protected notes, two-factor authentication and daily encrypted email backups, but only plain text notes. Productivity, at $90 a year, unlocks the Super note type for Markdown, rich text, checklists and code, plus spreadsheets with formulas, Daily Notebooks, folders, a web clipper and 1 year of revision history. Professional, at $120 a year, adds 100 GB of encrypted file storage, sharing with up to 5 accounts and hardware security key support. When we checked, the plans page also advertised 50% off annual plans for Black Friday. The weak spots for Evernote users are that folders and rich text sit behind the paywall and only annual prices are shown.