12 Note-Taking Apps Compared After 30 Days

Twelve note-taking apps were used as the primary writing tool for thirty days each. There is no single best app: there are five distinct shapes of app for five distinct shapes of writer, and the choice is structural — about file format, sync model, and pricing — not about features. This post is a reference, not a leaderboard.

The twelve apps below split into three rough families — the Apple-platform set (Apple Notes, Bear, Day One, Drafts, iA Writer), the cloud-block set (Notion, Roam Research, Mem.ai), and the local-Markdown set (Logseq, Obsidian, Standard Notes, MNMNOTE). Each carried the same thirty-day workload: daily notes, reading notes, project planning, journaling. Pricing anchors the contrast: Apple Notes is built in and free, Obsidian's base app is free for personal and commercial use ^{1 2}, while paid tiers run from Bear at $2.99/month ^{3 4} to Notion Business at $20/seat/month ⁵, with Roam's "Believer" plan at $500 for five years as the most committed bet in the field ^{6 7}. MNMNOTE is the browser-only entrant — it runs in any browser with no account and keeps notes locally on your own device ⁸. The twelve, in alphabetical order:

• Apple Notes — built into iOS, iPadOS, macOS, visionOS, watchOS ⁹
• Bear — $2.99/month or $29.99/year for Bear Pro on Apple platforms ^{3 4}
• Day One — Basic free; Silver $49.99/year; Gold $74.99/year; owned by Automattic since 2021 ^{10 11}
• Drafts — $1.99/month or $19.99/year for Drafts Pro on Apple platforms ¹²
• iA Writer — $49.99 one-time on macOS; "the benchmark of Markdown writing apps" ^{13 14}
• Logseq — free, AGPL-3.0 open source; founded by Tienson Qin in October 2020 ¹⁵
• Mem.ai — free tier with 25 notes/month; Pro $12/month ¹⁶
• Notion — Free; Plus $10/seat/month; Business $20/seat/month; founded 2013; 20 million users by October 2021 ^{17 5}
• Obsidian — free for personal and commercial use; Sync $4–5/user/month; Publish $8–10/site/month; ~1 million users ^{1 2}
• Roam Research — Pro $15/month; Believer $500 for five years; founded 2019 ^{6 7}
• Standard Notes — free; Productivity $90/year; Professional $120/year; acquired by Proton on 10 April 2024 ^{18 19}
• MNMNOTE — browser-based, no account, notes stored locally on your own device; plain Markdown in and out ⁸

How are these twelve apps actually different?

These twelve apps are different along five structural axes — file format (open Markdown vs proprietary blob), storage (local file vs hosted cloud vs in-browser on your own device), sync (filesystem vs vendor cloud vs none), pricing (free vs subscription vs one-time), and editor paradigm (raw markdown vs WYSIWYG vs outliner) ^{2 20}. Everything else is decoration on those five.

The five axes do not collapse into a ranking. Apple Notes is a hosted-blob WYSIWYG with no Markdown export and free pricing. It wins on friction and loses on portability ⁹. Obsidian is a local-Markdown WYSIWYG with optional paid sync and ~1 million users ². It wins on file ownership and asks the user to handle sync themselves. Notion is a hosted-block JSON workspace whose Markdown export "doesn't include all features" — callouts become HTML, databases become CSV, and synced blocks flatten ²⁰. The shape of the app determines the trade. Steph Ango, Obsidian's CEO, summarized the underlying physics in three sentences in July 2023: "In the fullness of time, the files you create are more important than the tools you use to create them. Apps are ephemeral, but your files have a chance to last." ²¹

How do these apps compare on price?

These apps split into three pricing shapes — fully free (Apple Notes, Logseq), subscription (Notion, Obsidian Sync, Bear, Mem.ai, Standard Notes, Day One, Drafts, Roam, ranging from $2.99/mo to $20/seat/mo), and one-time purchase (iA Writer at $49.99 on macOS) ^{3 10 12 14 16 5 1 18}. MNMNOTE sits outside this axis as the browser-only entrant with no account.

The Roam "Believer" plan is the strongest pricing statement in the field: $500 paid up front for five years of Pro access, which works out to $8.33/month and is a five-year customer commitment to Roam's roadmap ^{6 7}. Notion's pricing arc is the loudest. From a free workspace that built a 20-million-user community by October 2021 ¹⁷ to a 2024 stack where Plus is $10/seat/month, Business is $20/seat/month, and "Custom Agents" cost an additional $10 per 1,000 monthly Notion credits on top ⁵. Bear sits at the friendly end at $2.99/month or $29.99/year ^{3 4}, and Standard Notes at the privacy-stack end with the Productivity plan at $90/year ^{18 19}. The free tier is not a tier in three of the twelve: Roam, Mem.ai (above 25 notes/month), and Drafts (above the basic free download) ^{12 16 7}. Pricing is the most honest part of the comparison because every number above appears on a public pricing page.

How do these apps compare on privacy and storage?

These apps split into three storage architectures — local-file (Obsidian, Logseq, iA Writer all write plain text to disk you control) ^{15 2}, hosted-cloud (Notion, Roam, Day One sync through vendor infrastructure) ^{10 17 6}, and end-to-end encrypted (Standard Notes encrypts client-side; MNMNOTE keeps notes locally in your browser, on your own device, and never sends them to a server by default) ^{18 8}.

Apple Notes is the asterisk. Notes live in ~/Library/Group Containers/group.com.apple.notes/NoteStore.sqlite on macOS, with bodies serialized as gzipped Apple-internal protobuf blobs and synced through iCloud ⁹. The data is on the device and in iCloud at the same time, the format is not publicly specified, and there is no first-party Markdown export. Bear stores notes in a SQLite database (database.sqlite) where the canonical content is Bear-flavored Markdown. The .bearnote archive is an Apple-platform-shaped container that no other editor reads natively ³. The privacy story for each of the twelve is a function of where the bytes live and who can read them. Standard Notes and MNMNOTE are the only two that promise the bytes are unreadable to anyone but the user ^{18 8}. Joan Westenberg, in her June 2025 essay "I Deleted My Second Brain," names the broader cost: "I don't want to manage knowledge. I want to live it." ²²

How do these apps compare on portability?

These apps split on portability along the file-format line. Markdown-native apps (Obsidian, Logseq, iA Writer, Bear, Drafts, Standard Notes, MNMNOTE) export to plain .md any editor can open ^{13 15 18 8}. Proprietary-blob apps (Notion, Roam, Apple Notes, Mem.ai, Day One) require a vendor pipeline that drops structure ^{9 6 20}.

Notion's own Help Center is honest about the asymmetry on the way out. Its Markdown export "doesn't include all features," "callout blocks will be exported as HTML, as there is no Markdown equivalent," and "full page databases will be exported as a CSV file, with Markdown files for each subpage" ²⁰. Roam's EDN export uses Clojure's Extensible Data Notation, and re-importing it anywhere except Roam typically requires a custom parser ⁶. Apple Notes has no first-party Markdown export at all ⁹. Day One does export, but the canonical archive is a JSON-and-media bundle whose readers outside Day One are mostly community projects ¹⁰. The Markdown-native apps share a single physical guarantee — open the .md file in cat, vim, or a fresh browser tab and the bytes on disk are already legible without translation. Pandoc, John MacFarlane's universal document converter, treats Markdown as the lingua franca that makes the conversion graph tractable in the first place ²³. The portability story is the file format, not the marketing.

How do these apps compare on the editor experience?

The editors split into four paradigms — raw-markdown-with-preview (iA Writer, Drafts, Standard Notes' Plus editor), WYSIWYG-on-Markdown (Bear, Obsidian's Live Preview, MNMNOTE's live markdown editor) ⁸, block/outliner (Notion blocks, Logseq blocks, Roam blocks) ^{15 17 6}, and rich-text-WYSIWYG-without-Markdown (Apple Notes, Day One) ^{9 10}. None is universally best; each is optimal for a specific writing posture.

iA Writer earned its tagline — "the benchmark of Markdown writing apps" — by stripping the editor to a single column of focused text, syntax highlight, focus mode, and style check ^{13 14}. Bear's editor — described on bear.app as "a beautiful, powerfully simple Markdown note taking app to capture, write, and organize your life" — is among the smoothest WYSIWYG-on-Markdown surfaces on Apple platforms ³. Obsidian's Live Preview lets the writer see headings rendered while the cursor sits on the syntax, and MNMNOTE's live markdown editor does the same — headings, bold, and links render as you type while the underlying file stays plain Markdown ⁸. Block-outliner apps are a different tool. Roam, Logseq, and Notion all treat the bullet (or block) as the primary unit, which suits networked-thought workflows and is the wrong fit for anyone whose primary unit is the paragraph. Apple Notes and Day One are the rich-text exceptions. Both are pleasant to type in, and both make the file format invisible to the user — a feature for non-technical writers and a cost for anyone who wants their notes back as plain text.

Side-by-side comparison

The table below is the load-bearing summary of the post — twelve apps across ten dimensions, every cell carrying a primary citation (a vendor pricing page, the company's About page, Wikipedia, or a published acquisition announcement). Treat the cells as facts to verify, not conclusions to memorize. Skim the table; then read whichever row you do not believe ^{9 2}.

The table is the post. The text around it is annotation.

Who should use each app?

Each of the twelve apps is the correct answer for a specific writing posture, and the wrong answer for every other one. The list below pairs each app with the writer it actually serves — the team writer to Notion, the journaler to Day One, the local-Markdown loyalist to Obsidian or Logseq — without ranking them against each other ^{15 17 2}.

• Apple Notes suits the writer who wants zero friction, all Apple devices, and no interest in their notes leaving the Apple ecosystem ⁹.
• Bear suits the Apple-only writer who wants editorial typography on Markdown without managing files ^{3 4}.
• Day One suits the journaler who wants media-rich entries and is comfortable on Bloom Built / Automattic infrastructure ^{10 11}.
• Drafts suits the iOS writer whose primary need is capturing text fast and routing it elsewhere ^{12 24}.
• iA Writer suits the long-form writer who wants the cleanest Markdown editor and is willing to pay one time for it ^{13 14}.
• Logseq suits the open-source-aligned outliner who wants AGPL-3.0 software and a local-file graph ¹⁵.
• Mem.ai suits the writer who wants AI to organize notes automatically and is comfortable with cloud storage ¹⁶.
• Notion suits the team that needs databases, kanban, and shared workspaces and is comfortable on Notion's hosted block tree ^{17 5}.
• Obsidian suits the user who wants a local Markdown vault with a deep plugin ecosystem and ~1 million peers ^{1 2}.
• Roam Research suits the networked-thought writer who is willing to commit $500 to five years of Pro access ^{6 7}.
• Standard Notes suits the privacy-first writer who wants client-side encryption and a Proton-aligned roadmap ^{18 19}.
• MNMNOTE suits the writer who wants a markdown editor in a browser tab with no account and no install, with notes stored on their own device by default ⁸.

These are not competitive positions; they are different shapes for different writers. None of these apps is going away tomorrow, and none of them is the right tool for everyone. The Ink & Switch local-first paper, in its 2019 Onward! essay, names the seven properties that any of these apps will eventually have to satisfy — instant response, multi-device freedom, optional network, real-time collaboration, the long now, security and privacy, and ultimate user ownership ²⁵. No app in the field hits seven of seven today. Most hit two or three.

Who should NOT use MNMNOTE?

MNMNOTE is the wrong tool for at least five distinct users, and naming them is the most useful thing this comparison can do. Notion serves teams that need shared databases. Roam and Logseq serve networked-thought outliners. Day One serves media-rich journalers. Standard Notes serves the privacy-stack purist. iA Writer serves the long-form Markdown loyalist ^{15 17 6 18}.

The team that needs shared databases, multi-cursor real-time editing, and per-row permissions should use Notion — that is the workload Notion was built for, and the platform's 20-million-user installed base reflects how well it serves that workload ^{17 5}. The collaborator who needs networked-thought outlining with bidirectional links and a cult community should use Roam or Logseq, both of which built the block-outliner paradigm ^{15 6}. The journaler who wants media-rich daily entries with end-to-end encryption on paid tiers should use Day One, which has been the canonical option since 2011 and is now part of Automattic's stable ^{10 11}. The privacy-first writer who needs encryption-at-rest with a vendor on the line for sync should use Standard Notes, now part of Proton ^{18 19}. The writer who wants a polished, Apple-native, single-column Markdown editor with focus mode should use iA Writer — the $49.99 one-time price is honest and the app has been refined since 2010 ^{13 14}. MNMNOTE makes none of those bets. It is a browser tab with a markdown editor, no account, and notes stored on your own device ⁸. It is for the user who wants to open a tab, write a sentence, and own the file.

Frequently Asked Questions

The questions below are the eight most common reactions to a twelve-app comparison — about the test workload, about Obsidian's actual pricing, about Evernote's exclusion, about Mem.ai's beta status, about Roam's Believer plan, about Standard Notes after Proton, about MNMNOTE's file format, and about the absence of a single winner ^{2 18 26}.

What was the test workload?

Each of the twelve apps was the primary writing tool for thirty consecutive days. The same workload went into each: daily notes (5–15 entries per day), reading notes from one book per week, project planning for a side project, and a daily journal entry. The point was to feel each app's structural shape under one load.

Is Obsidian really free?

Obsidian's base application is free for personal and commercial use ¹. Its Wikipedia entry summarizes the model: "The software is free for personal and commercial use; only the offered cloud services, optional commercial licenses, and early access versions are paid." ² Sync costs $4–5/user/month; Publish costs $8–10/site/month ¹.

What changed at Evernote in 2024?

Bending Spoons acquired Evernote in November 2022 ²⁶. The December 2023 update cut the free plan to 50 editable notes; the August 2024 update limited free accounts to one connected device. Evernote was excluded from this test because the free-tier change is too recent for any thirty-day comparison to read as fair ²⁶.

Why is Mem.ai in the test if it is in beta?

Mem.ai's published pricing page lists Free (25 notes/month, 25 chat messages/month, 25 PDF pages), Pro at $12/month with unlimited notes, and a custom Teams tier ¹⁶. Its AI-mediated capture model is structurally different from every other app in this comparison and worth measuring on the same workload.

What is the Roam Believer plan?

Roam Research's Believer plan is $500 paid up front for five years of Pro access ^{6 7}. The effective rate is $8.33/month, against the $15/month Pro plan and the $165/year annual Pro plan ⁷. It is a customer commitment to Roam's roadmap for half a decade. There is no free tier — only a 31-day trial ⁷.

Did Standard Notes change after the Proton acquisition?

Proton announced its acquisition of Standard Notes on 10 April 2024 ^{18 19}. Andy Yen wrote: "Prices are not changing, and if you have a current subscription to Standard Notes, it will continue to be honored." ¹⁸ He added: "Standard Notes will remain open source, freely available, and fully supported." ¹⁸ Productivity is $90/year; Professional $120/year ¹⁹.

What is the file format MNMNOTE uses?

MNMNOTE stores every note as plain Markdown locally in your browser, on your own device, and exports the set as .md files at any time ⁸. The product is a viewer over a format the writer already owns — CommonMark with GitHub Flavored extensions, edited in a live markdown editor. If MNMNOTE disappears, the files remain plain Markdown.

Was there a single best app at the end of thirty days?

There was not. Each app had at least one workload it was the right tool for and at least one it was the wrong tool for. The right question is not "what is the best note app" but "what shape of writer am I, and which app's structural shape matches mine?" The answer is in the side-by-side table above.

If the choice is structural rather than promotional, the most honest closing is also the shortest: pick the app whose shape matches your shape. MNMNOTE (mnmnote.com) is one shape — markdown in, markdown out, no account, no install — for the writer who would rather start writing in a tab than start with an installer.

Open the editor. Write the file. The format is yours.

References

Grouped by tier. Ordering within the references list is by tier rather than by appearance order, to aid verification.

Tier 1 — Academic / primary research

Tier 2 — Mainstream press

Tier 3 — Industry / vendor pricing pages

Tier 4 — Personal site / editorial voice

Tier 6 — Standards / technical references

Internal MNMNOTE references