The Best Free Note-Taking Apps in 2026

The best free note-taking apps in 2026 are Obsidian, Apple Notes, Google Keep, Standard Notes, Logseq, Joplin, Anytype, and the free tiers of Notion, Bear, and Drafts — plus MNMNOTE, the local-first browser entrant reviewed alongside them.^{1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11} Each is a different bet on what a free note app even is.

This post is a primary-source review of ten free apps and one new browser-only entrant, with prices, licenses, encryption claims, and export limits pulled verbatim from each vendor's own pages on 16 May 2026. Obsidian's app is "free without limits. No sign-up required. No strings attached," with optional Sync at $4 per user per month billed annually.¹ Standard Notes is "used by over 300,000 people" and AGPL-3.0 licensed.^{5 12} Steph Ango's "file over app" essay frames the throughline: "the files you create are more important than the tools you use to create them."¹³ The eleven apps below resolve that thesis in eleven different ways — from Obsidian's local Markdown vault to MNMNOTE's no-install browser tab that stores notes locally on your own device.¹⁴ This post tells you which row of the asterisk applies to which app.

What is the best free note-taking app overall?

There is no single best free note-taking app. There is a best app for a workload: Obsidian for a serious local Markdown vault, Apple Notes for the Apple-only household, Google Keep for cross-device capture, Standard Notes for end-to-end encrypted plain text, Logseq or Joplin for open-source PKM, and MNMNOTE for a no-install browser tab.^{1 3 4 5 6 7 14}

The honest framing is that "free" hides three different commercial postures. Obsidian, Logseq, Joplin, Standard Notes, and Anytype are whole apps that are free, with optional paid sync or membership tiers that are not required to write a single note.^{1 6 7 12 8} Apple Notes and Google Keep are free with the device or account; you pay with the platform you bought and the data you give Apple or Google.^{3 4} Notion, Bear, and Drafts are freemium: a usable Free plan with documented caps and a paid tier that unlocks the parts most professionals end up wanting.^{9 10 11} MNMNOTE sits outside this axis entirely — it is the browser-based, local-first entrant that opens in any browser with no account, no install, and notes that stay on your own device.¹⁴ A reader who reads "free" as "free forever, all features, no asterisk" has a shorter list than the listicles suggest.

How does Obsidian work as a free app?

Obsidian is a desktop and mobile application that stores notes as plain .md files in a vault on disk, and the company's pricing page reads, verbatim: "Free without limits. No sign-up required. No strings attached."^{1 15} The app is free for personal, commercial, and non-profit use; only Sync, Publish, and the optional Commercial License cost money.^{15 16}

Obsidian's manifesto names five planks — Yours, Durable, Private, Malleable, Independent — and the homepage tagline is "Sharpen your thinking" with the subtitle "The free and flexible app for your private thoughts."¹⁷ The app launched on 30 March 2020 from Shida Li and Erica Xu, two University of Waterloo graduates; Steph Ango took over as chief executive on 6 February 2023.¹⁸ Obsidian Sync costs $4 per user per month billed annually, $5 monthly. The documentation reads: "the data is encrypted from the moment it leaves your device, and can only be decrypted using your encryption key."^{1 19} Free users can sync vaults themselves through iCloud, Dropbox, Syncthing, or Git for $0. The Discord community exceeds 110,000 members.¹⁸ Obsidian is the deepest free Markdown app in this list, and the one with the largest plugin ecosystem.

How does Apple Notes work as a free app?

Apple Notes is a default Apple application that ships free on every iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, and Vision Pro and syncs through iCloud; the cost of admission is the hardware.^{3 20} iCloud's free tier provides 5 GB shared across Notes, Photos, iCloud Drive, and device backups, after which iCloud+ pricing starts at $0.99 per month for 50 GB.²¹

Apple Notes' free posture is the most bundled of the eleven apps. It is "available on iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, macOS, and visionOS" and through iCloud.com.²⁰ With Advanced Data Protection enabled — available "Starting with iOS 16.2, iPadOS 16.2 and macOS 13.1" — Notes joins the list of 25 iCloud data categories where "your trusted devices retain sole access to the encryption keys for the majority of your iCloud data."²² The catch is portability. Wikipedia is direct about the gap: the app "lacks a mechanism to export the text of all notes to a text file, a Rich Text File, or other commonly used data file formats as a bulk data transfer."²⁰ AppleScript and Shortcuts are the documented workarounds. For a household already inside Apple's hardware envelope, Apple Notes is the free default that costs nothing extra. For a writer who wants a clean exit path, the bulk-export gap is the line.

How does Google Keep work as a free app?

Google Keep is "a note-taking service included as part of the free, web-based Google Docs Editors suite offered by Google," released 20 March 2013, and accessed at keep.google.com or via Android, iOS, Wear OS, and watchOS apps.⁴ It is free at the cost of a Google account, and notes count toward the same 15 GB shared with Gmail and Drive.

Keep's design is the most compact of the eleven apps. Notes are short cards on a Pinterest-style board: text, lists, photos, drawings, voice memos. "Text from images can be extracted using optical character recognition and voice recordings can be transcribed."⁴ There is no Markdown, no wiki-links, no graph view, no end-to-end encryption, and no documented bulk export to Markdown — Google Takeout returns Keep notes as HTML and JSON, not as Markdown files. Keep is the right answer for capture: a passing thought, a grocery list, a screenshot to look at later. It is not the right answer for a serious note vault. Google has discontinued products with smaller user bases — Inbox, Reader, Hangouts — often enough that "free, by Google" has a documented half-life.

How does Standard Notes work as a free app?

Standard Notes is "an end-to-end encrypted note-taking app for digitalists and professionals," AGPL-3.0 licensed, available on Web, macOS, Windows, Linux, iOS, and Android, and "used by over 300,000 people" per the Proton acquisition announcement of 10 April 2024.^{12 5} The free plan includes unlimited notes, unlimited devices, end-to-end encrypted sync, and offline access at no cost.²³

Proton announced the acquisition with the framing that "personal notes often contain some of our most intimate and sensitive data," and committed that Standard Notes "will remain open source, freely available, and fully supported" with existing pricing honored.⁵ Free users get plain text notes only. Productivity ($90/year) and Professional ($120/year) plans unlock rich text, Markdown, spreadsheets, tasks, file storage, and extended revision history.²³ Encryption-first means servers cannot read the notes, which is also why server-side AI features do not exist. Standard Notes is the right answer for a writer whose threat model includes "the company that hosts my notes."

How does Logseq work as a free app?

Logseq is "a privacy-first, open-source platform for knowledge management and collaboration," AGPL-3.0 licensed, with 42.9 thousand GitHub stars, that "supports both Markdown and org-mode syntax" and "can store data locally."^{6 24} The full app is free; only the official Logseq Sync service is paid, currently in public beta with access through a $5/month Open Collective Backer tier.²⁵

Logseq founder Tienson Qin built the project as a platform for "storing interconnected information on infinite graphs," and Logseq Inc raised over $4.1M including backing from Stripe's Patrick Collison, Shopify's Tobias Lütke, and ex-GitHub CEO Nat Friedman.²⁴ Notable users named on the Wikipedia entry include "Google Brain, IDEO, Meta, Tesla, MIT, Stanford and Harvard."²⁴ The official Sync documentation states that "Logseq Sync does NOT support collaboration (i.e. multiple people using the same graph at once)" and limits backers to "10 remote graphs per user, up to 10 gigabytes per graph, maximum 100 megabytes per individual asset."²⁵ Free users can sync via iCloud, Dropbox, or Git instead. Logseq is the closest cousin to Obsidian on the free-app axis, with bullet-outliner ergonomics rather than long-form documents.

How does Joplin work as a free app?

Joplin is "a free, open source note taking and to-do application, which can handle a large number of notes organised into notebooks," AGPL-licensed, with 54.8 thousand GitHub stars, started by Laurent Cozic in 2016 and released as a CLI on 12 July 2017.^{7 26} The application runs on "Linux, macOS, Microsoft Windows, Android, iOS" and a terminal interface.²⁶

Joplin's free posture is the cleanest in the list. The whole app is free and open source forever. The only paid product is Joplin Cloud, starting at €2.99/month for Basic (2 GB), €5.99/month for Pro (30 GB), and €7.99 per user per month for Teams (50 GB, two-user minimum).²⁷ Free users can sync through Nextcloud, Dropbox, OneDrive, WebDAV, or a self-hosted Joplin Server, and Joplin Cloud "provides strong end-to-end encryption so that not even us have access to your data."⁷ The current release is 3.6.13 (12 May 2026), Electron on desktop and React Native on mobile.²⁶ Joplin is the right answer for an Evernote refugee who wants an offline-first Markdown app with a working web clipper and sync they actually own.

How does Anytype work as a free app?

Anytype is a "Local-first, peer-to-peer & end-to-end-encrypted knowledge OS for macOS, Windows & Linux," with documentation stating that "Anytype puts the control of encryption keys firmly in your hands."^{8 28} The free Explorer plan includes 1 GB of network space and three shared spaces; Builder is $99/year and Co-Creator is $299/year.²⁹

Anytype is the most architecturally ambitious app in this list. It uses the AnySync protocol — "an open-source protocol that supports high-performant collaboration over encrypted data" — and is licensed under "Any Source Available License 1.0," sitting at 7.5 thousand GitHub stars.^{28 8} The free Explorer tier covers 128 GB of local storage and unlimited objects, with the 1 GB cap applied only to network sync.²⁹ Educators and students get a 50% discount on paid memberships; an early-stage Startup Program offers nine months free.²⁹ The trade-off is conceptual: Anytype's "object" model — types, relations, sets, collections — has a longer learning curve than a folder of .md files. For a user who wants the structural power of Notion with the privacy of local-first encryption, Anytype is the closest match in the free-app world.

How does Notion work as a free app?

Notion is a hosted block-tree workspace where, in the company's words, "Everything in Notion is a block — from a line of type (or paragraph) to an image or embed," with "Over 100M users worldwide" and "62% of Fortune 100" customers in 2026.^{2 9 30} The Free plan is generous on collaborators but capped on file size and page history.

The Notion Free plan, pulled verbatim on 16 May 2026, includes "Trial AI capabilities," basic Notion Calendar and Mail integration, database functionality, and "Up to 10 external guests."⁹ The caps that bite are a "5 MB" file-upload limit and "7 days" of page history.⁹ Plus is $10 per member per month, Business is $20, Enterprise is custom.⁹ Notion's documentation is honest about export limits: "Any non-database Notion page can be exported as a Markdown file"; databases "exports as a CSV file, with Markdown files for each subpage"; callouts "will be exported as HTML, as there is no Markdown equivalent."³¹ The free tier is a real productivity tool; it is also a sales funnel into the paid tiers, and the block model means the exported file is not the same document you wrote.

How does Bear work as a free app?

Bear is "a beautiful, powerfully simple Markdown note taking app to capture, write, and organize your life," available on Mac, iPhone, and iPad, with the free version giving "Local access to your notes" but no iCloud sync.¹⁰ Bear Pro is $2.99 per month or $29.99 per year, and adds iCloud sync, 28+ themes, and search inside PDFs and images.¹⁰

Bear's free tier is the narrowest of the freemium apps. The free download includes document scanning, the full editor, three themes, and export to TXT, Markdown, TextBundle, RTF, PDF, JPG, HTML, DOCX, and ePub.¹⁰ But the moment you want the same note on your phone, you are paying $29.99/year. For an Apple-only single-device writer who likes Bear's typography, the free tier is usable. For anyone with two Apple devices, "free Bear" is closer to a feature-limited demo of "$2.99/month Bear."

How does Drafts work as a free app?

Drafts is described on its homepage as "FREE DOWNLOAD" with the tagline "Where Text Starts."^{32 11} The free tier provides "Unlimited ability to create, edit and sync drafts, and run actions installed with the app"; Drafts Pro is $19.99/year or $1.99/month and unlocks custom action editing, themes, workspaces, Mail Drop, and advanced widgets.¹¹

Drafts' free posture is a study in restraint. The whole capture-and-text experience works without paying — you can write, sync to iCloud across Apple devices, and use any pre-installed action. The Pro paywall is set at the customization line, not the use line: write your own action, build a workspace, switch theme. For a user who wants a fast Apple-only inbox for text — a paragraph that becomes a tweet, a thought that becomes an email — Drafts free is one of the most useful free apps in this list. It is also iOS-and-Apple-only; Windows, Linux, and Android users are not invited.

Side-by-side comparison

The table below pulls eleven dimensions from the primary sources cited in the footnotes; no marketing language was promoted. Read down a column to understand a product. Read across a row to understand a trade-off.

The table is not the verdict. The verdict depends on which row matters most to you for the next ten years.

Who should use MNMNOTE?

MNMNOTE is for the writer who wants Markdown in a browser tab and has read enough Steph Ango to take "file over app" seriously.¹³ It is the smallest surface on this page — no account, no install, notes that stay on your own device — and the only one that opens in any modern browser without setup.

Concretely, MNMNOTE fits four reader profiles. The journalist who works across a desktop and a borrowed library laptop and does not want to install Joplin or Obsidian on either. The student on Linux for whom Apple Notes and Bear are unavailable. The privacy-curious knowledge worker who wants something simpler than Standard Notes' encryption-first model and lighter than Anytype's object database. The reader who likes the look of this blog post — the same editorial typography is what the editor produces, because the post was written in MNMNOTE.¹⁴ These are not the only audiences. They are the ones MNMNOTE was built for first.

Who should NOT use MNMNOTE?

MNMNOTE is the wrong tool for several legitimate workloads, and it is more useful to be honest about that than to win the comparison post on every row. There are six readers for whom one of the other ten apps is the better answer this year. Pick the tool that matches the workload.

If you want the deepest free Markdown app with thousands of community plugins, the right answer is Obsidian.^{15 17} If you live entirely inside Apple hardware and want a free, encrypted, deeply integrated capture surface with Apple Pencil and locked notes, the right answer is Apple Notes.^{3 22} If you want grocery-list-and-photo capture across every device with one Google account, the right answer is Google Keep.⁴ If your threat model includes the company that hosts your notes and you want end-to-end encryption on the free plan, the right answer is Standard Notes or Joplin Cloud.^{12 7} If you want an open-source PKM with bullet outlines, queries, and a graph view that runs offline, the right answer is Logseq or Joplin.^{6 26} If you want databases, calendars, and team collaboration on a single block tree, the right answer is Notion.² MNMNOTE in v1 is browser-only, has no plugin marketplace, no calendar, no real-time collaboration, and no live cross-device sync. The product is small on purpose. Choose another tool for the workloads above without apology, and come back when the workload is single-author, Markdown-shaped, and meant to outlast the tool.

Frequently asked questions

What is the truly best free note-taking app in 2026?

There is no single best. Obsidian is the deepest free Markdown vault, Apple Notes is the most integrated for Apple users, Google Keep is the best capture inbox, Standard Notes and Joplin lead on free end-to-end encryption, and Logseq is the strongest open-source PKM. MNMNOTE is the smallest browser tab. Pick by workload.^{1 3 4 5 7 14}

Are open-source note apps actually free forever?

Mostly, yes. Obsidian is free but proprietary. Standard Notes, Logseq, and Joplin are AGPL-3.0; Anytype is source-available.^{12 6 26 8} AGPL guarantees the source code stays public and forkable, which is what "free forever" actually means in practice. Cloud sync services on top of these apps are paid; the local app itself remains free even if the company changes hands or closes.

Which free note app has end-to-end encryption?

Standard Notes and Anytype offer default end-to-end encryption on the free tier.^{12 8} Obsidian Sync, Joplin Cloud, and Logseq Sync offer end-to-end encryption on their paid tiers — the local app itself stores notes unencrypted.^{19 7 25} Apple Notes is end-to-end encrypted only when Advanced Data Protection is enabled, available "Starting with iOS 16.2."²²

Can I export my notes from Apple Notes in bulk?

Apple's documentation does not provide a bulk-export command. Per-note export to PDF or Markdown works on macOS, but the Wikipedia entry for Apple Notes is direct: the app "lacks a mechanism to export the text of all notes to a text file" or other formats "as a bulk data transfer," and AppleScript or Shortcuts is the workaround.²⁰

Is Notion's free plan good enough for one person?

For one person, Notion's Free plan is genuinely usable: unlimited blocks, unlimited pages, basic database functionality.⁹ The caps that bite are 5 MB file uploads, 7 days of page history, and 10 external guests.⁹ A single user who mostly writes text can run on the free plan for years. The moment files get large, the paid tier starts at $10/month.⁹

What happened to Standard Notes after Proton acquired it?

Proton announced the Standard Notes acquisition on 10 April 2024, with the public commitment that Standard Notes "will remain open source, freely available, and fully supported" and that existing pricing and subscriptions are honored.⁵ Standard Notes is "used by over 300,000 people" per the announcement, and now operates as part of Proton's privacy-first product suite alongside Mail, Pass, Drive, and VPN.⁵

What makes MNMNOTE different in this list?

MNMNOTE is the only entrant that is browser-based and local-first: you open a tab in any modern browser, with no account and no install, and your notes are stored on your own device rather than on a server.¹⁴ It edits plain Markdown — the file is the document — and adds end-to-end encrypted sharing for any note you choose to send, plus bring-your-own-key AI text styling where your text goes straight to the provider you pick rather than through MNMNOTE.¹⁴ It is positioned by what it does, not by where it sits on a price list.

Why would I use a browser-only note app over a desktop one?

A browser-only app trades the depth of a desktop application for zero install friction. You open a tab, you write, the note is stored locally on your own device, and the same URL works on Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge.^{34 14} For single-author Markdown notes, the trade is favourable. For graph views and 100 MB file attachments, Obsidian, Logseq, or Joplin remain better answers.

The honest summary is that "best" is the wrong question. Eleven free note apps exist because eleven different jobs exist, and each is the right answer for the audience it was designed for. MNMNOTE lives in your browser tab if you want a smaller surface that keeps the file as the document — open mnmnote.com and write the first sentence.

References

All URLs verified live as of 16 May 2026. Tier classifications follow §7 of /kb/blog/blog-writing-guide.md. IDs 13 and 24 are intentionally unassigned; numbering preserved for traceability across review rounds.

Tier 2 — Mainstream press / encyclopedia

Tier 3 — Industry blog / analyst data

Tier 4 — Personal site / editorial voice

Tier 6 — Vendor primary sources (Obsidian)

Tier 6 — Vendor primary sources (Apple)

Tier 6 — Vendor primary sources (Standard Notes / Proton)

Tier 6 — Vendor primary sources (Logseq)

Tier 6 — Vendor primary sources (Joplin)

Tier 6 — Vendor primary sources (Anytype)

Tier 6 — Vendor primary sources (Notion)

Tier 6 — Vendor primary sources (Bear / Drafts)

Tier 6 — Internal / project facts (MNMNOTE)