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The best note taking apps in 2026, by what you need

The best note taking app is the one that matches where you want your notes to live. If that is files on your own disk, it is Obsidian. If it is “free, simple, already on my phone”, it is Apple Notes, Google Keep or Simplenote. If your notes are really everything you read online plus what you think about it, it is Dexi. If it is a team’s documents, it is Notion. Below: ten note taking apps by use case, with the trade-offs and prices verified in September 2026. (Disclosure: Dexi is our product — it gets one clearly-labelled slot, and we’ll say when it’s the wrong choice.)

How to choose a note taking app

Four questions settle most of it. Where should notes live? As files you control (Obsidian, Logseq, Joplin), in a vendor’s cloud you can export from (everything else), or on the platform you already pay for (Apple, Google, Microsoft). How do you think? In documents, in bullets and outlines, or in typed things. What do you capture? Typed notes only, or also web pages, newsletters and feeds — the difference between a notes app and a reading-and-notes system. What will you pay? Several of the best apps here are entirely free; the paid ones cost $3–$20 a month, and the number should buy something you’ll use.

Best free note taking apps

“Free” means different things, so here is the honest ladder. Obsidian is free in the strongest sense: the whole app, no note limits, commercial use included — you only pay for optional sync or publishing. Logseq and Joplin are free and open source (Logseq is an outliner mid-way through its database-version rewrite; Joplin a Markdown notebook with a web clipper and sync through Dropbox, OneDrive or its own cloud). Simplenote is free with nothing to upgrade to — plain text, tags, every platform including the web. Apple Notes and Google Keep are free with accounts you already have and only cost money through storage. Dexi’s free plan is 1,000 notes with search, tags and web capture included. If you want the best free note taking app and own your files matters, Obsidian; if simplest wins, Simplenote or the one already on your phone.

Best for notes you own as files: Obsidian

Obsidian stores every note as a plain Markdown file in a folder on your device — readable by any editor, backed up however you like, yours in twenty years. On top of the files it layers [[wiki links]] with backlinks, a graph view, Canvas whiteboards and Bases (native database views over your notes, with a kanban layout since version 1.14.0 on September 2, 2026), plus roughly two thousand community plugins. The trade-offs are honest ones: no web app, multi-device sync is $4/month billed annually ($5 monthly) or a DIY setup, built-in search is literal keyword matching, and the power comes from configuring it yourself.

Price: free; Sync $4/mo; Publish $8/mo (annual billing). Runners-up: Logseq if you think in bullets and want open source (see Logseq vs Obsidian); Joplin if you want an open-source notebook with a clipper and your choice of sync. See Dexi vs Obsidian for the files-vs-web trade in full.

Best for connected notes and everything you read: Dexi

Our product — the one first-party entry on this list.

Most note taking apps assume your knowledge starts as something you type. Dexi assumes a lot of it arrives from the web: articles you save with the web clipper or bookmarklet, newsletters you forward in, RSS feeds you subscribe to. All of it becomes a note in one workspace, and structure comes from writing — #tags, @mentions and [[wiki links]] typed inline, no folders or filing — so one search (full-text and semantic, by meaning) covers your whole reading life alongside your own notes. Inline key:: value properties turn any set of notes into a base: a saved table, card, list or map view with filters and sorts. A built-in MCP server lets Claude and other AI assistants search and write your notes with per-connection boundaries, and notes you tag for review enroll in spaced repetition.

It is the wrong choice if you need an offline desktop app or notes as local files — Dexi is web-first and cloud-based, with no native mobile apps (iPhone capture goes through the share sheet). It is a document editor with outline editing, not a block-reference outliner.

Price: free up to 1,000 notes; Solo $5/mo ($50/yr); Team $10/member/mo. Choose it if: your notes are really research — saved pages, highlights, newsletters and the thinking around them — and you want it searchable rather than organized. See all the ways to save into Dexi.

Best simple note taking app: Apple Notes, Google Keep, Simplenote

For most people the best note taking app is the one that opens in under a second and is already synced. Apple Notes is now a serious app on iPhone, iPad and Mac — tags and smart folders, note-to-note links, shared notes with real-time editing, and PDF and Markdown export — free, with iCloud storage from $0.99/month for 50 GB once you pass the 5 GB included. Google Keep is the Android-and-web equivalent: cards, up to 50 labels, sharing, reminders, and a Takeout export; storage counts against your Google account (100 GB is $1.99/month). Neither has backlinks or a knowledge graph, and neither means to.

Simplenote is the cross-platform answer — iOS, Android, Mac, Windows, Linux and web — with plain text, Markdown preview, tags, publishing and sync, all free with no paid tier. It is deliberately minimal; if that word made you relax, it is your app.

Best Markdown note taking app on Apple: Bear

Bear is the writer’s Markdown app for iPhone, iPad and Mac: a beautiful editor, nested tags, [[note links]], and a Pro tier that unlocks iCloud sync across devices, export to PDF, HTML, DOCX and images, note encryption, and OCR search inside images and PDFs. The free tier is the full editor on one device. Windows and Android users get a web app in public beta rather than native apps.

Price: free; Pro $2.99/mo or $29.99/yr. Runner-up: Craft — a document-shaped notes app with a native feel on Mac, iOS, Windows, web and (since November 2025) Android; free for 1,500 blocks and 1 GB, Plus at $8/month ($6.40 billed yearly) for unlimited content.

Best for teams and docs: Notion

When notes are really a team’s documents, wiki and trackers, Notion is still the default: pages that become databases, real-time collaboration, comments and permissions, on web, desktop and mobile, with an offline mode in the apps. Its free plan is genuinely usable for personal notes; teams pay per seat — Plus $10/user/month and Business $20/user/month (annual billing; AI lives on Business) as of September 2026. The cost is complexity: a workspace you maintain, and speed that degrades as it grows. If you only used the notes slice, our Notion alternatives guide is the next read. Runner-up: Craft, for teams who want documents more than databases (Team plan $50/month for up to ten accounts).

What app is replacing OneNote and Evernote?

Two apps people search for leaving. OneNote is not going anywhere — free with a Microsoft account, actively developed — but its freeform-canvas model has fallen out of step with linked, Markdown-based notes, and its refugees usually land on Notion (if they want structure and teams), Obsidian (if they want files) or Apple Notes (if they moved platforms). Evernote’s case is starker: as of September 2026 its free plan is one notebook, fifty notes, one device and 1 GB of storage, with paid Starter and Advanced tiers above it (Evernote shows the prices in-app rather than on the plans page, so check there). Everything on this page imports Evernote’s ENEX export in some form — Joplin and Obsidian most directly.

Notebook app vs note taking app

People searching for a “notebook app” usually mean one of two things. Either a digital notebook for handwriting and drawing on a tablet — which is a different category (GoodNotes, Notability, OneNote with a pen) that nothing on this page replaces — or an app whose notes are organized into notebooks: Evernote, Joplin, Apple Notes with folders, Bear with nested tags. If your mental model is notebooks, Joplin (free, open source) and Apple Notes are the closest fits here; if it is a pile of connected notes, Obsidian, Logseq and Dexi are. The one thing every app on this page shares is typed text, so if you write by hand, look elsewhere first.

Free plans and prices compared

Annual-billing rates unless noted, verified September 2026:

Pricing as of September 2026 — check each product’s site for current details. Evernote’s and OneNote’s paid prices are not shown on their public plan pages and are omitted rather than guessed.

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