The 7 Best Evernote Alternatives in 2026

Best Evernote alternatives at a glance

The best Evernote alternatives in 2026 are UpNote (the closest single-pane Evernote-style experience), Joplin (free, open source, with a clipper that mirrors Evernote's), Notion (all-in-one workspace for teams), Apple Notes (built into every Apple device, with Apple Intelligence), Obsidian (local-first Markdown for power users), Bear (beautiful native Mac writing), and Leo (a notepad that captures alongside YouTube, articles, and podcasts on macOS). Each of these Evernote competitors solves a different piece of the puzzle for people looking to replace Evernote — here's how they compare.

• UpNote (free, Premium $1.99/mo, $40 lifetime) — Closest single-pane Evernote-style experience
• Joplin (free, open source) — Best for ENEX migration with free encrypted sync
• Notion (free, Plus €9.50/mo) — Best all-in-one workspace for teams
• Apple Notes (free) — Best for Apple users who want zero setup
• Obsidian (free) — Best for power users who want local Markdown files
• Bear (free, Pro $2.99/mo) — Best native Mac writing experience
• Leo (free, Pro $14.99/mo) — Best for taking notes alongside YouTube, articles, and podcasts

Full disclosure: we make Leo, one of the apps on this list. We evaluated it on the same criteria as every other app.

Why people switch from Evernote

If you're searching for apps like Evernote — something similar to Evernote but better, or a free replacement for Evernote that doesn't cap you at 50 notes — you're not alone. The pattern is the same on every Evernote subreddit and review site, and it usually starts with one of these:

• The 50-note free tier. If you used to live on the free plan, you can't anymore. Fifty notes in one notebook is a demo, not a tool.
• Price hikes. $14.99/mo for Personal, $17.99/mo for Professional, $24.99/user/mo for Teams. The pricing model that used to give you a generous free tier now asks you to pay near-Notion prices for a product that was free for over a decade.
• The product team turned over. The engineers and designers who built the Evernote you remember were laid off in 2018 and again in 2023. The current team is rebuilding from Europe — that may be fine in the long run, but it's a different team from the one that wrote your notes.
• Sync that doesn't always sync. The user forum has running threads about notes not appearing across devices, version conflicts, and the missing force-sync button. Sync is the feature Evernote built the category on — when it's unreliable, that's a serious break of trust.
• Lossy export. The way out — ENEX — drops notebook structure, breaks note links, flattens tag hierarchy, and discards version history. Getting your data back out cleanly is harder than you'd expect for a product whose whole pitch was "remember everything."
• No end-to-end encryption. If your notes include anything sensitive — health, finances, journal entries, drafts — Bending Spoons servers can read them.
• AI is paywalled. The new AI Assistant, Semantic Search, and AI Meeting Notes only exist on the Professional plan. Free and Personal users don't get them at all.

None of this means Evernote is a bad product. It means the deal has changed. The alternatives below each address at least one of the friction points above, and several address all of them at once.

The best Evernote alternatives

We start with the closest match to the Evernote experience and work outward.

UpNote — Closest single-pane Evernote-style experience

UpNote was built by a small indie team that wanted the feel of classic Evernote without the corporate baggage. It's a single-pane notes-and-notebooks app with tags, web clipping, sync across every platform, and a clean rich-text editor — the bones of Evernote, polished and re-shipped by people who use the app themselves. It also brings back something Evernote stopped offering long ago: a $40 one-time lifetime price alongside the $1.99/month subscription. If your goal is to move from Evernote and keep working roughly the same way you always have, UpNote is the smallest jump on this list.

Choose UpNote over Evernote if you want the Evernote workflow — notebooks, tags, web clipping, sync — without the price hikes or the 50-note free cap. You like the idea of a small indie team that ships fast and listens. And you'd rather pay $40 once than $14.99 every month forever.

Stick with Evernote if you depend on Evernote's specific OCR engine on receipts and whiteboards, you have years of internal note links you don't want to lose, or you want the new AI features that only ship in Evernote Professional.

	Evernote	UpNote
Free tier	50 notes / 1 notebook	50 notes
Paid entry	$14.99/mo	$1.99/mo
Lifetime option	—	✓ $40 one-time
Notebooks & tags	✓	✓
Web clipper	✓	✓
OCR on images	✓	—
AI features	Pro plan only	—
Platforms	All	All

Free (50 notes). Premium: $1.99/mo or $19.99/yr. Lifetime: $40 one-time.

Joplin — Best for ENEX migration with free encrypted sync

Joplin was built because its creator couldn't find a note-taking app that let him actually own and export his data. Most commercial apps have little incentive to provide good export options, because they don't want you to go elsewhere. Joplin's answer: open source everything (AGPL-3.0, 54K GitHub stars), encrypt notes on-device before they touch the cloud, and let you sync via whatever backend you already have — Dropbox, OneDrive, Nextcloud, WebDAV, or S3. You pay nothing for sync. It also has the best ENEX importer on this list and ships a browser web clipper that mirrors Evernote's. If you're after an open-source Evernote alternative and you want out cleanly, Joplin is the smoothest exit.

Choose Joplin over Evernote if free encrypted sync is the feature you care about most. You want open source you can audit. You're moving years of notes out of Evernote and need an importer that handles ENEX cleanly. Or you live across Linux, mobile, and a terminal CLI and need a tool that runs everywhere.

Stick with Evernote if you want a polished, marketed product over a utilitarian one. Joplin's UI is functional, not beautiful. You depend on Evernote's OCR or its specific tag and notebook structures. Or you prefer paying for a single team's product over running open source.

	Evernote	Joplin
Open source	—	✓ AGPL-3.0
End-to-end encrypted sync	—	✓ Free
ENEX import	—	✓ Best in class
Web clipper	✓	✓
Markdown native	—	✓
Local files	—	✓ SQLite
Plugins	—	~266
Platforms	All	All + CLI

Free (open source + free sync). Joplin Cloud: from €2.99/mo.

Notion — Best all-in-one workspace for teams

Notion is what happens when a team takes the "remember everything" promise and re-frames it as "build everything." It's a cloud workspace that combines notes, databases, project management, and wikis in one app, built for teams from the ground up — real-time collaboration, commenting, permissions, shared spaces. Where Evernote organizes notes into notebooks and tags, Notion organizes them into databases with views, properties, and relations. The trade-off is fundamental: your data lives on Notion's servers in a proprietary block format, exports are lossy, and there's no end-to-end encryption. But if your notes are really team docs, project trackers, and shared wikis, Notion does what Evernote was never designed to do.

Choose Notion over Evernote if your "notes" are really team documents and you need real-time collaboration, databases, and one app for notes, projects, and wikis. You want the strongest free individual tier of any tool on this list (unlimited pages and blocks, no 50-note cap).

Stick with Evernote if you want a notes app that is just a notes app. Notion's flexibility is its strength and its cost — there's a real "what should I put in Notion" learning curve that Evernote doesn't have. Or you need OCR, the web clipper Evernote built the category on, or an offline-first workflow.

	Evernote	Notion
Free individual tier	50 notes	Unlimited pages
Real-time collaboration	—	✓
Relational databases	—	✓
Web clipper	✓ (category-defining)	✓
OCR on images	✓	—
Offline	✓ (paid)	Limited (cache)
AI features	Pro plan only	✓ (add-on)
Platforms	All	All

Free (individuals). Plus: €9.50/member/mo. Business: €19.50/member/mo. AI add-on: €10/mo.

Apple Notes — Best for Apple users who want zero setup

Apple Notes is the Evernote alternative for Mac users that most people underestimate. It's already on every Apple device, it costs nothing, it syncs through iCloud, and over the past five years Apple has quietly closed almost every gap that used to make people pay for Evernote. It now supports tags, smart folders, shared folders for collaboration, locked notes, scanned documents with OCR (called Live Text), the Share sheet for clipping web pages, and — as of Apple Intelligence — built-in AI summarization and writing tools on supported devices. None of this is exciting. All of it is free, fast, and built into the operating system you already use.

Choose Apple Notes over Evernote if all your devices are Apple, you want zero setup and zero cost, and you'd rather use a built-in app that Apple has invested in than a third-party subscription. You want Apple Intelligence summaries on supported hardware. And you trust iCloud with your data.

Stick with Evernote if you use Windows or Android, you depend on Evernote's specific notebook structure, or you want a more powerful web clipper than the system Share sheet offers. Apple Notes also doesn't have a real desktop web app outside iCloud.com.

	Evernote	Apple Notes
Cost	$14.99/mo	Free
Notebooks & tags	✓	✓ (Folders & tags)
Web clipping	✓ (extension)	Share sheet
OCR on images	✓	✓ (Live Text)
Handwriting / Pencil	Limited	✓ (Apple Pencil)
Real-time collaboration	—	✓ (shared folders)
AI features	Pro plan only	✓ (Apple Intelligence)
Platforms	All	Apple only

Free, bundled with every Apple device. iCloud+ (optional): from $0.99/mo for 50 GB.

Obsidian — Best for power users who want local Markdown files

Obsidian is the opposite end of the spectrum from Evernote. Where Evernote stores everything on its servers in a proprietary format and asks you to pay monthly, Obsidian stores everything as plain Markdown files in a folder on your machine and is now completely free for personal and commercial use. There's no vendor lock-in: if Obsidian disappeared tomorrow, your notes are still readable in any text editor. The catch is that Obsidian asks you to bring your own structure. It's a power-user tool that rewards setup — backlinks, tags, plugins, templates — and assumes you want the control. With 8 staff, no VC, and an ecosystem of 2,754 community plugins, it's also the closest thing to the "100-year app" Phil Libin once described, but built by a tiny team rather than a unicorn.

Choose Obsidian over Evernote if you want to own your data — plain text files in a folder you control, with no vendor in between. You like building your own workflow with plugins. And you want a tool whose business model isn't dependent on charging you more every year. Obsidian even has an official Evernote importer that handles ENEX.

Stick with Evernote if you don't want to think about Markdown, plugins, or folder structure. Obsidian's blank vault is intimidating if you just want to take notes. You want included sync (Obsidian Sync is $5/mo extra). Or you need built-in collaboration — Obsidian is single-player.

	Evernote	Obsidian
Cost	$14.99/mo	Free
Local files	— Cloud	✓ Plain .md
Vendor lock-in	Proprietary + lossy ENEX	None (text files)
Plugins	—	2,754
Backlinks & graph	—	✓
Sync included	✓	$5/mo (Sync)
ENEX importer	—	✓ Official
Platforms	All	All (no web)

Free (personal and commercial). Sync: $5/mo. Publish: $10/mo.

Bear — Best native Mac writing experience

Bear is what you reach for when you want to write, not configure. It's a focused Markdown writing app built natively for Apple platforms — fast, beautiful, and deliberately simple. Bear 2 added wiki-links and backlinks, and notes are stored in a SQLite database that's easy to back up and export. It's not trying to be a PKM tool or an Evernote replacement; it's trying to be the best place on macOS to open and write. If Evernote's appeal was the archive, Bear's appeal is that opening it never feels like work.

Choose Bear over Evernote if you only use Apple devices and you mostly want to write — not file, tag, and OCR. You value a beautiful, distraction-free editor that launches instantly. And $2.99/mo for sync sounds easier than $14.99/mo for the full Evernote Personal plan.

Stick with Evernote if you have non-Apple devices, you depend on web clipping or OCR, or you want a true cross-platform archive. Bear is Apple-only and there's no built-in browser clipper — you use the system Share sheet instead.

	Evernote	Bear
Cost	$14.99/mo	$2.99/mo
Native Apple app	Mac port	✓ AppKit/UIKit
Markdown	—	✓ CommonMark
Backlinks	—	✓ (Bear 2)
Web clipper	✓	Share sheet
OCR on images	✓	—
Setup required	Some	None
Platforms	All	Apple only

Free (no sync). Pro: $2.99/mo or $29.99/yr.

Leo — Best for notes alongside YouTube, articles, and podcasts

Leo was built around a simple idea: the best notes are the ones you actually capture. It's a notepad optimized to remove friction from that moment — a single hotkey opens it as a popover anywhere on your Mac, over whatever you're working, reading, or watching, and files your notes automatically alongside the source. Think of it as a digital commonplace book, built for how people consume media today: a place for quotes, half-formed thoughts, aphorisms, and fragments you'll come back to. Leo's AI then helps you surface what you've captured, find connections across notes, and pull material into whatever you're writing or building next. Where Evernote's pitch was an archive of everything you saved, Leo's pitch is to make the saving so frictionless that you actually do it.

Choose Leo over Evernote if you want an Evernote alternative for Mac that you can open anywhere with a hotkey to capture anything — quotes, thoughts, fragments — without worrying about where it belongs. The thing you mostly do is take notes alongside videos, podcasts, and articles, and you want the source attached automatically. And you want AI-powered recall on every plan, not gated to the most expensive one.

Stick with Evernote if you're not on a Mac — Leo is Mac-only. You have years of structured notebooks and tags you don't want to leave behind. You depend on OCR or the Evernote web clipper. Or you want plain text files on disk — Leo is cloud-based (E2E encrypted and exportable) and deliberately formatting-free.

	Evernote	Leo
Free tier	50 notes / 1 notebook	5 notepads + AI
Opens anywhere via hotkey	—	✓
Automatic source capture	Manual	✓ Built-in
AI on free plan	—	✓
End-to-end encryption	—	✓
OCR on images	✓	—
Web clipper	✓	Pop Over captures from any app
Platforms	All	Mac only

Free (5 notepads + AI). Pro: $14.99/mo. Max: $59.99/mo.

How to migrate from Evernote

The good news: every paid Evernote plan can export notes as ENEX or HTML (the free 50-note plan can too, one notebook at a time). The bad news: ENEX is lossy. Notebook structure flattens into a single file, internal note links break, tag hierarchy collapses into a flat list, and version history is dropped. To preserve as much structure as possible, export each notebook to its own ENEX file, then import notebook by notebook into the destination app.

Here's the path and what to expect for each alternative:

• UpNote — Has a built-in Evernote importer that reads ENEX, preserves tags, and recreates each notebook on the way in. The closest 1:1 migration on this list.
• Joplin — Joplin's ENEX importer is the most battle-tested in the open-source world. File > Import > ENEX (as Markdown) gives you the cleanest result; "as HTML" preserves more visual fidelity but is harder to maintain. Tags transfer; the lost things are still lost (note links, version history).
• Notion — Notion's official Evernote importer connects via OAuth and pulls notebooks directly into a workspace. It's the most hands-off path, but you trade some structure: tags become inline text and the database conversion is opinionated.
• Apple Notes — On a Mac, File > Import to Notes reads ENEX directly. Each notebook becomes an Apple Notes folder. Plain text, attachments, and basic formatting transfer. Tags need a manual pass.
• Obsidian — The official Importer plugin reads ENEX and converts notes to Markdown with attachments. Tags and timestamps come through. Internal note links don't.
• Bear — Bear's importer (File > Import Notes) reads ENEX, converts to Markdown, and preserves tags. Each notebook becomes a tag in Bear since Bear doesn't have notebooks.
• Leo — No direct Evernote import. Leo is designed for capturing fresh notes as they come, not for migrating an existing archive. If your goal is to bring years of Evernote notes with you, pair Leo with one of the apps above.

What always transfers: note text, attachments, images, basic formatting (bold, italic, lists, links), and creation/modification timestamps.

What never transfers: internal Evernote note links, full tag hierarchy, version history, and any reminders or saved searches. Plan to rebuild these in your new tool — or accept the flattened version.

Frequently asked questions

What is the best free Evernote alternative?

Joplin is the best fully free Evernote alternative. It's open source, includes free end-to-end encrypted sync via your own cloud (Dropbox, OneDrive, Nextcloud, WebDAV, or S3), and has a built-in web clipper that mirrors Evernote's. Apple Notes is the best free option if you only use Apple devices — it's already installed, syncs via iCloud, and now includes Apple Intelligence summaries. Obsidian is also fully free for personal and commercial use as of February 2026 if you want plain Markdown files.

Can I import my Evernote notes into another app?

Yes. Evernote can export notes as ENEX files, which Joplin, Apple Notes, Notion, UpNote, and Obsidian (via the official Importer plugin) can all read. The catch is that ENEX is lossy: notebook structure is flattened into a single file, internal note links break, tag hierarchy collapses to a flat list, and version history is dropped. Plain text, attachments, images, and basic formatting transfer cleanly. Joplin and Obsidian's importers handle ENEX best in our experience. See our migration section for app-by-app details.

Which Evernote alternative has the best web clipper?

No alternative fully matches the original Evernote Web Clipper, which is still excellent. Joplin ships the closest replacement — a browser extension that captures full pages, simplified articles, screenshots, and selections directly to your notebook. Notion's web clipper is solid for capturing entire pages but less flexible. Obsidian has an official Web Clipper extension. UpNote and Bear rely on the system share sheet rather than a dedicated clipper.

What apps are similar to Evernote?

The apps most similar to Evernote — single-pane notes-and-notebooks tools with tags, web clipping, and sync — are UpNote, Joplin, and Apple Notes. UpNote is the closest in feel: a single-pane notes-and-notebooks app built by a small indie team, with a $40 one-time lifetime price that's exactly the kind of pricing Evernote used to offer. Joplin is the closest if you also want open source and free encrypted sync. Apple Notes is the closest if you only use Apple devices and want zero setup. Programs like Evernote that take a different shape — Notion (workspace), Obsidian (Markdown PKM), Bear (writing app), Leo (capture alongside media) — solve problems Evernote was never designed for.

Is there an open source Evernote alternative?

Yes. Joplin is the leading open source Evernote alternative — released under AGPL-3.0, with a battle-tested ENEX importer, free end-to-end encrypted sync via your own cloud (Dropbox, OneDrive, Nextcloud, WebDAV, or S3), and a web clipper that mirrors Evernote's. It runs on macOS, Windows, Linux, iOS, Android, and as a terminal CLI. If you want an open source replacement for Evernote that doesn't lock you into anyone else's servers, Joplin is the answer.

Why are people leaving Evernote in 2026?

Three things compounded. The free plan was crippled in December 2023 from 100,000 notes / 250 notebooks down to just 50 notes and 1 notebook. The Personal plan now costs $14.99/mo and the Professional plan $17.99/mo — well above where Evernote was a few years ago. And after Bending Spoons acquired Evernote in November 2022, all remaining US and Chile staff were laid off by July 2023, with operations relocated to Europe. Long-time users who watched the leadership exodus of 2018 and the layoffs of 2023 are looking for a tool that's actually being built by a stable team.

Does Evernote have AI features now?

Yes. Evernote v11 launched on January 19, 2026 with AI Assistant, Semantic Search, and AI Meeting Notes, developed in collaboration with OpenAI. AI Assistant lets you chat with your notes, summarize, and extract tasks. Semantic Search finds notes by meaning instead of keywords. AI Meeting Notes records and transcribes meetings. The catch: AI features are gated to the Professional/Advanced plan at $17.99/mo. Free and Personal users do not get them.

Can I export everything out of Evernote?

Yes — Evernote exports notes as ENEX or HTML on every paid plan. ENEX preserves note titles, content, attachments, images, tags, and timestamps, but flattens notebook structure, breaks internal note links, drops tag hierarchy, and discards version history. For a full backup, export each notebook separately to ENEX so you preserve which notes belonged where. The free 50-note plan can also export, just one notebook at a time.

Is Evernote still worth using in 2026?

If you have years of archived notes you depend on and the new AI features in v11 are appealing, paying for the Professional plan keeps everything intact and adds modern AI on top. If you're a free or light user, the 50-note limit makes it impractical, and any of the alternatives on this list will serve you better. The web clipper and OCR remain category-defining, but every alternative below addresses at least one of Evernote's biggest friction points — and several of them cost less or nothing.

The verdict

Seven apps, seven different answers to the question every Evernote refugee is asking: where do my notes live now? The best replacement for Evernote depends on what you actually do with your notes — here's how to choose.

Your situation	Best pick
Want the closest single-pane Evernote-style experience	UpNote
Migrating years of notes and want free encrypted sync	Joplin
Need an all-in-one workspace for your team	Notion
Use only Apple devices and want zero setup	Apple Notes
Want plain Markdown files you control	Obsidian
Want a beautiful, fast writing app on Apple	Bear
Take notes alongside YouTube, articles, and podcasts	Leo

The best Evernote alternative is the one that fits the job you're actually trying to do. Evernote is still doing real work — v11 added genuine AI features, the web clipper and OCR remain category-defining, and millions of people still rely on it. But the deal has changed, and the tools above each rebuild a piece of what Evernote used to give you for free.