Best Note Taking Software

Amplenote combines note-taking, task management, and calendar scheduling into a single workspace built around what it calls the Idea Execution Funnel: Jots, Notes, Tasks, and Calendar. Tasks live inside notes but can be viewed independently, and a scoring system helps surface the most urgent and important items automatically. Pro and higher plans add a visual graph view, calendar sync with Google, Outlook, or Apple, and a sidebar Peek Viewer for working across multiple notes at once.

The free Personal plan is unusually complete, offering unlimited device sync and access to all four core modes. Every new account starts with a 14-day free trial of Pro features. Higher tiers unlock encrypted Vault Notes, public note publishing, an MCP server for AI assistants, and additional color themes.

Google Keep is a lightweight note-taking app for capturing quick notes, checklists, and reminders. Notes can include text, images, voice recordings that get transcribed, and drawings, and Keep uses optical character recognition to pull text out of images so it can be searched later. Notes can be color-coded and organized with labels, pinned to the top, or set with time- or location-based reminders, and everything syncs instantly across devices tied to the same Google account.

Keep is entirely free with any Google account and includes Gemini AI integration to summarize notes, generate ideas, and draft content from existing notes. It is available as a web app and on Android and iOS, and it integrates closely with other Google Workspace apps like Docs and Calendar. Because it lacks folders and advanced formatting, Keep works best for short-lived notes and lists rather than long-form documents.

Joplin is an open-source note-taking and to-do app that stores notes in Markdown format and organizes them into notebooks with tags. It includes OCR-powered search that finds text inside PDFs and images, supports code blocks, tables, and math expressions, and offers both a Markdown editor and a Rich Text editor. Joplin is offline-first, meaning all data is stored locally and remains fully accessible without an internet connection, with end-to-end encrypted sync available through Joplin Cloud, Nextcloud, Dropbox, OneDrive, or a self-hosted server.

The core app is completely free across Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, and Android, and its source code is publicly available on GitHub. Joplin Cloud is an optional paid hosting service that adds features like notebook sharing, publishing notes to the web, a web app, and email-to-note, with plans ranging from a low-cost Basic tier up to Teams and self-hosted Business options. A browser extension for web clipping and a large plugin library round out the ecosystem.

Logseq is an open-source, privacy-first note-taking application built around a block-based outliner rather than pages of free-flowing text. Every note lives locally on the user's device as plain Markdown or Org-mode files, and bidirectional links between blocks let users build a personal knowledge graph that can be explored visually. It ships with flashcards for spaced repetition, whiteboards, PDF annotation, and a Datalog-style query engine for surfacing structured information across notes.

The core desktop, web, and mobile apps are free forever for personal use, with over 150 community plugins and 30 themes for customization. An in-beta Logseq Sync feature adds encrypted cross-device syncing, currently funded through voluntary monthly contributions rather than a fixed subscription tier.

RemNote combines hierarchical outline note-taking with a built-in spaced-repetition flashcard system, aimed primarily at students and lifelong learners. Notes can be written as nested bullet points, PDFs can be annotated directly inside the app, and any line can be turned into a flashcard reviewed using either the classic Anki SM-2 algorithm or the newer FSRS algorithm. AI features can auto-generate flashcards, quizzes, and summaries from notes or PDFs.

RemNote offers a genuinely usable free plan with unlimited notes and flashcards, while paid Pro and Pro with AI plans unlock unlimited PDF annotation, image occlusion, an exam scheduler, handwritten notes, and larger AI credit allowances. Educational discounts are available for verified students, faculty, and staff.

Standard Notes is an end-to-end encrypted note-taking app that encrypts notes, tags, and other data using XChaCha20-Poly1305 before it ever leaves the device. The app is open source and independently audited, and the free Standard plan already includes unlimited device sync, offline access, two-factor authentication, and daily encrypted email backups. Now operated under Proton, it is positioned around long-term data ownership and exportability rather than a locked-in proprietary format.

Paid Productivity and Professional plans unlock richer note types called Super notes (markdown, rich text, checklists, code), spreadsheets, daily journaling notebooks, folders, and a web clipper. The Professional plan adds 100GB of encrypted file storage and family subscription sharing. Both paid plans include a full refund guarantee and no long-term contract.

Zoho Notebook is a cross-platform note-taking app organized around visual notecards, including text, checklist, audio, photo, sketch, and file cards. Notes are encrypted at rest and in transit, and the app supports document scanning, a web clipper for Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge, and dedicated migration tools from Evernote, Google Keep, and OneNote. Zoho Notebook AI can transcribe audio, generate mind maps, summarize content, and draft notes.

The Essential plan is free with 2GB of cloud storage and basic sharing. The Pro plan adds OCR-searchable content, noteboards, advanced search, and priority support, while the Business plan adds team workspaces, whiteboards, admin controls, and higher storage limits. Pricing shown reflects the vendor's India-region storefront; figures may vary by billing country.

Bear is a note-taking app built exclusively for Apple's ecosystem, covering iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and watchOS. Notes are written in Markdown and can be organized with hashtags, including nested tags, rather than traditional folders. Users can insert sketches inline with text using Apple Pencil or a finger, and WikiLinks let notes connect to each other to form a personal wiki. Bear works fully offline on Mac and iPhone and keeps notes private, stating that the company cannot see users' notes or tags.

The free version works on a single device with basic editing and limited export formats. Bear Pro adds iCloud sync across devices, OCR search inside photos and PDFs, over 28 themes, additional app icons, and export to PDF, HTML, DOCX, and other formats. Because Bear has no Windows, Android, or web version, it is best suited to people who work entirely within Apple hardware.

Roam Research is a note-taking application built around an outliner interface, where every page is composed of nested, hierarchical blocks of text. Its defining feature is bidirectional linking: typing double brackets creates a link to another page and automatically adds a backlink, while a block reference lets users connect to any individual block anywhere in the graph. This lets users build a dense, interconnected web of notes rather than a folder hierarchy, with a graph view for visualizing how pages relate to each other.

Roam supports Daily Notes for journaling, boolean-style queries embedded in the outline, and a lightweight task manager using TODO and DONE tags. It can be extended with custom CSS themes and third-party plugins, and supports real-time collaboration. Roam Research has no permanent free tier beyond a trial; it is a paid subscription product aimed at researchers, writers, and knowledge workers who want a flexible, non-linear way to organize thoughts.

Craft is a documents and notes app focused on clean visual design, letting users build pages with rich formatting, images, tables, and nested sub-pages. Collections turn documents into flexible databases with custom properties and views, while Daily Notes provide a dedicated space for journaling, planning, and quick capture. Tasks can be embedded directly inside documents so plans and to-dos stay connected, and an AI Assistant can chat about a document's content, including OCR on images and PDFs.

Craft syncs across iPhone, iPad, Mac, and the web, and works offline. Documents can be shared or published with a public link, with custom branding and visit tracking on paid plans. The free plan supports up to 1,500 content blocks and 1GB of storage, while paid Plus, Family, and Team plans remove those limits and add real-time collaboration, shared Spaces, and more AI credits.