The Best Note-Taking Apps for 2026

Everyone needs to write things down from time to time. Note-taking apps let you do just that, and they seamlessly sync your memos across all your other devices. However, their real advantage lies in how they help you organize and find information. The best apps offer multiple structuring options, including folders or notebooks, as well as effective tagging and search features. In short, a good note-taking app is like having a personal internet where you can easily look up anything about your life. We’ve been testing note-taking apps for more than a decade, and our top picks include the extremely capable Microsoft OneNote and the open-source Joplin. But these aren’t the only apps worth checking out, so read on for more of our top picks.

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The Best Note-Taking Apps for 2026

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Buying Guide: The Best Note-Taking Apps for 2026

How Much Should You Pay for a Note-Taking App?

Pricing for note-taking apps varies significantly. The best note-taking app overall, OneNote, is free. Customers who pay for Microsoft 365 receive additional storage through OneDrive and select Copilot features. The cheapest paid app we reviewed, UpNote, costs $1.99 per month or $39.99 for a lifetime subscription, though it lacks advanced features. The most expensive app we reviewed is Evernote; its paid plans start at $14.99 per month.

Although we don’t include them in this list, Apple Notes and Google Keep both work fine. If you find them sufficient for your needs, you don’t need to pay for an alternative.

What Is the Best Free and Open-

The open-source Joplin is free to download and does not restrict access to any core features. The only catch is that it stores notes locally rather than in the cloud. Of course, privacy enthusiasts see that as an upside, and you might, too. You can pay Joplin to sync your notes if you want, but support for syncing via Dropbox, NextCloud, and OneDrive means you don’t have to. Joplin has apps for all the major platforms, excellent tools for importing notes from other applications (including Evernote), and a great web clipper.

Which Note-Taking Apps Are Best for Teams?

Teams need to be able to comment on and share notes with each other. Microsoft OneNote is best for this use case. It features excellent collaboration tools that integrate seamlessly with Microsoft Teams. You can share entire notebooks and track who says what.

Other applications with built-in collaboration features include Evernote and Notion, though both are quite expensive compared with OneNote. 

What Features Should You Look for in a Note-Taking App?

The first things you should look for are organizational tools. Do you prefer using folders, tags, or both? Next, you should examine how formatting works. Some applications use rich text, while others require that you learn to use Markdown, a formatting language that uses special characters to apply boldface, hyperlinks, and italics.

Then, consider advanced features. If you have an iPad or another tablet that supports a stylus, you may want to look for one that also supports drawing and writing by hand. If you work with a lot of paper documents, you should seek out an application that supports the bulk scanning of pages. In that case, you’ll want optical character recognition (OCR), which enables scanned documents and other images to be searchable and indexed. Some people also like taking voice notes. 

Finally, it’s worth considering AI features. Some applications, such as Evernote, Notion, and OneNote, offer tools that can automatically summarize meeting notes or pull in action items, among other things.