Notesnook vs Evernote

Your notes, encrypted so nobody can read them — not us, not anyone. Unlimited, on every device, free.

Every note you write is encrypted on your device before it goes anywhere, so we couldn’t read it if we wanted to. No AI trained on your writing, no ads, nobody counting your notes. Unlimited notes on every device you own, free — Evernote Free stops at 50 notes on one device, and $99 a year still caps you at 1,000.

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OUR CASE

Where Notesnook is better

Nobody can read your notes. Not even us.

Encrypted on your device with a key only you hold.
We could only ever hand over ciphertext.
Clients and sync server are open source.

No limits on notes or devices.

Unlimited notes on unlimited devices, free.
Evernote Free: 50 notes, one device.
Evernote Starter still caps you at 1,000.

A fifth of the price.

$19.99 a year against Starter's $99.
Pro is $69.99 against Advanced's $249.99.
14-day free trial. Cancel any time.

Your notes stay yours.

Stop paying and nothing is deleted.
Export to Markdown, HTML, PDF or plain text.
A Linux app, which Evernote has never had.

Privacy

	Notesnook	Evernote
Zero-knowledge encryption on every platform
AI reading your notes
Open source clients
Self-hostable sync server
Search inside images and PDFs (OCR)

The limits

	Notesnook	Evernote
Notes on the free plan	Unlimited	50
Synced devices on the free plan	Unlimited	1
Notebooks on the free plan	50	1
Note version history	100 free, unlimited on Pro	Paid plans
Attachment storage on the free plan	50MB/mo, 10MB per file	1GB, 200 attachments

Where it runs

	Notesnook	Evernote
Linux desktop app
Windows, macOS, Android, iOS, web
Works fully offline
Take everything with you

Price, USD per year

	Notesnook	Evernote
Free plan	$0 — unlimited notes	$0 — 50 notes, 1 device
Entry paid plan	$19.99 — Essential	$99 — Starter
Top consumer plan	$69.99 — Pro	$249.99 — Advanced
Free trial	14 days	7 days

Evernote is a trademark of Bending Spoons. This comparison was written from their published pricing, plan-comparison and download pages on 2026-07-30 and is not endorsed by them. Spotted something out of date? Tell us and we’ll fix it.

MOVING OVER

Bringing your notes over

Export, sign up, import. Your attachments and images come with you. Make the account first — the import needs somewhere to land.

Step 1
Export your notebooks as .enex
In Evernote, pick a notebook and export it. Repeat for each one you want to keep.
Step 2
Create your free account
Unlimited notes, every device, no card. Choose a password you won’t lose — it encrypts your notes, and we can’t reset it for you.
Step 3
Import the files
Import from the app. Notes, attachments and images arrive with their notebooks intact, encrypted the moment they land.

THE OTHER SIDE

In fairness to Evernote

Where Evernote is stronger, in our own words. If one of these decides it for you, we would rather you read it here than find out later.

Evernote can read inside your files. We can’t.

Search text in images and PDFs, handwriting recognition, document scanning, PDF annotation. All of that needs a server that can read your content, and ours can’t. If you photograph whiteboards and receipts expecting to search them later, that’s a real reason to stay.

AI on every tier, including free.

An AI assistant, semantic search, transcription, and MCP access from tools like Claude and ChatGPT. We have none of it, and we won’t be adding anything that reads your notes — encrypted means encrypted. If AI is what you want from a note app, we’re the wrong choice.

Integrations, tasks and templates.

Google Calendar, Outlook, Slack, Drive, email-to-note, proper task objects with due dates, templates, real-time collaboration. We don’t have these.

Their free plan holds more files than ours.

Evernote Free gives you 1GB and 200 attachments. Ours gives you 50MB a month with a 10MB file limit. If you attach a lot and don’t want to pay, that one goes to them.

Questions & answers

Can anyone at Notesnook read my notes?

No. Your notes are encrypted on your device with a key derived from your password, and we never see that password. If a court asked us for your notes, we could only hand over ciphertext. That’s not a promise about our behaviour — it’s a property of how the app is built, and the code is open if you want to check.

I have thousands of notes in Evernote. Will they survive the move?

Yes. Export your notebooks as .enex and import them — notes, attachments and images all come across, and there’s no note limit waiting on the other side. Evernote Starter caps you at 1,000, which is the wall most long-time users hit first.

What happens if I stop paying?

Nothing gets deleted. You keep full read and write access to everything you wrote, and you can export the lot to Markdown, HTML, PDF or plain text any time. Only the paid features switch off.

Is there a trial?

Yes — 14 days on every plan, and you can cancel any time. There’s also a free plan that never expires, with unlimited notes on unlimited devices, so you can take as long as you like before deciding.

What do I give up by leaving Evernote?

Search inside images and PDFs, handwriting recognition, document scanning, PDF annotation, the calendar and Slack/Google integrations, email-to-note, proper tasks, templates, real-time collaboration, and all the AI features. If you lean on any of those, Evernote is the better product for you and we’d rather say so.