Notion vs Evernote (2026): Which Notes App Wins?

Notion and Evernote have been rivals for years, but 2026 is the first time the answer really shifted. Evernote rebuilt its entire pricing — new plan names, new limits, much higher prices. Notion folded its AI into paid plans instead of selling it separately. So if your last comparison came from 2023 or 2024, throw it out. Here is where both apps stand in October 2026, with pricing we verified against the companies' current pages.

Side-by-side comparison table

Pricing in 2026: Evernote changed everything

This is the section most "Notion vs Evernote 2026" articles get wrong, so let's be precise. In late 2025, Evernote retired the old Personal ($14.99) and Professional ($17.99) plans and replaced them with three tiers: Free, Starter, and Advanced (plus Enterprise). Many ranking articles still quote the dead prices. Ignore them.

Here is what the plans actually cost in October 2026:

• Evernote Free: $0 — 50 notes, 1 notebook, 20 tags, 200 attachments, 1 synced device, 1 GB of uploads per month. One trap to know: deleted notes still count toward the 50-note cap until you empty the trash.
• Evernote Starter: $99/year (about $8.25/month) billed yearly, or around $14.99/month billed monthly. Caps: 1,000 notes, 20 notebooks, 100 tags, 1,000 attachments, 3 devices, 5 GB uploads/month.
• Evernote Advanced: $249.99/year (about $20.83/month) billed yearly, or around $24.99/month billed monthly. Unlimited notes/notebooks/devices (within fair-use "safeguard limits"), 20 GB uploads/month, and AI features.

The 1,000-note Starter ceiling is the detail that matters most. If you have been using Evernote for years, you probably have more than 1,000 notes. That means the real price for a long-time user is $249.99/year — not $99. Check your note count in settings before paying.

Notion's pricing is simpler and cheaper:

• Notion Free: $0 — unlimited pages and blocks for solo use, 5 MB per-file uploads, 7-day page history, 10 guests, limited AI trial.
• Notion Plus: $10/user/month billed yearly ($12 monthly) — unlimited file uploads, 30-day history, 100 guests.
• Notion Business: $20/user/month billed yearly ($24 monthly) — full Notion AI included, 90-day history, private teamspaces, SSO.
• Notion Enterprise: custom pricing for big companies.

One thing that changed: Notion used to sell AI as a separate $8–10/month add-on. In 2026 that add-on is gone — AI is bundled into Business and Enterprise, with a limited trial on Free and Plus.

Free plans compared

This is where Notion wins by a mile, and it isn't close.

Notion's free plan gives one person unlimited pages and unlimited blocks. You can build a whole personal wiki, a project tracker, and a journal without paying a cent. The limits are modest: 5 MB per file upload (fine for documents, small for video), page history limited to 7 days, and 10 guests for sharing.

Evernote's free plan gives you 50 notes, one notebook, and one synced device. That's a trial, not a home. Fifty notes sounds fine until your grocery lists, meeting notes, and saved articles eat through it in a month — and remember, trashed notes still count until you empty the trash. The one-device limit stings too: phone or computer, pick one.

If your budget is zero, the choice is Notion. No debate.

Notion's strengths: databases and flexibility

Notion isn't really a notes app. It's a workspace that contains notes — and its superpower is databases. A Notion database looks like a table, but each row opens into a full page with its own blocks, files, and sub-pages. You can view the same data as a kanban board, a calendar, a gallery, or a plain table.

What this means in practice:

• Project tracking that Evernote can't match — tasks with status, owners, dates, and filters, all live in one place.
• Templates for everything: weekly planners, habit trackers, reading lists, budgets. The community has built thousands, most free.
• Collaboration built in — share a page, comment inline, assign tasks. Evernote added sharing late and it still feels bolted on.
• Publishing — turn any page into a public website with one click. Handy for portfolios and docs.

The trade-off: Notion's flexibility is also its learning curve. A blank Notion page can feel overwhelming if you just want to type. Evernote's "open and write" is faster for that.

Evernote's strengths: capture, clipper, OCR

Evernote was built for one job — getting information into the app as fast as possible — and it still does that job better than Notion.

• Web clipper: Evernote's browser extension offers five capture modes (full page, simplified article, bookmark, screenshot, selection). Notion's clipper exists but is simpler and slower in side-by-side tests.
• OCR search: Evernote reads text inside images, scanned PDFs, business cards, and even handwritten notes, and makes it all searchable. If you photograph receipts, whiteboards, or paper documents, nothing in this price range searches them like Evernote.
• Fast capture: open the app and type. No choosing a database, no picking a template. For quick thoughts and voice notes, speed wins.
• Email forwarding: every account gets a private email address — forward anything into your notes.

If your workflow is "collect everything, search it later," Evernote remains the better tool.

AI features in 2026

Both apps now have AI, but they sell it very differently.

Notion AI is strongest in the paid tiers. On Business it includes AI writing help, an AI agent that can work across your pages, AI meeting notes, and an early version of enterprise search. Free and Plus users get only a limited trial. The old separate AI subscription is gone — it's now part of the plan.

Evernote AI took the opposite approach. Since the v11 update in January 2026, AI features ship on every plan, including Free (with usage caps). That includes AI Edit (rewrite and summarize your notes) and semantic search that finds notes by meaning, not just keywords. For someone who wants to try AI note features without paying, Evernote's free tier is actually the cheapest way in.

Offline mode compared

Evernote works offline properly. Your notes sync to the device automatically, and on mobile you can pick whole notebooks to keep offline. On the free plan, offline works on your one synced device.

Notion works offline partly. Since August 2025 you can mark individual pages "Available offline," and Plus+ plans auto-download your recent and favorite pages. But databases only bring their first 50 rows offline, and AI features, embeds, and some integrations need a connection. If you take notes in basements, planes, or rural areas, Evernote is the safer pick.

The Android apps

Both apps live on the Play Store and both get regular updates. A few practical notes for Android users:

• Evernote (by Bending Spoons) has 100M+ installs and averages around 3.51 stars from roughly 1.85M ratings as of September 2026 — respectable for an app its age, though reviews often mention the price hikes. It supports home-screen widgets and quick capture from a widget without opening the full app.
• Notion's Android app covers the full workspace — databases, boards, and all. Quick capture is fine, but the app feels heavier than Evernote's because it loads your whole workspace structure.
• App download sizes vary by device on the Play Store, so don't trust any article quoting an exact MB figure — check the listing on your own phone.
• Neither app shows ads. Free users get upgrade prompts, not banners.

Get Notion on Google Play Get Evernote on Google Play

Buttons link to the official Google Play Store listings — never to APK downloads.

Privacy and security

Both apps encrypt your data in transit (TLS) and encrypted at rest on cloud servers — Notion uses AWS, Evernote uses Google Cloud with AES-256. But neither offers end-to-end encryption. That means both companies can technically access your note content, for example to run search or AI features. If you keep passwords, medical notes, or legal documents in a notes app, neither Notion nor Evernote is the right vault for them — consider a dedicated encrypted app for that. For ordinary notes, both are as safe as any mainstream cloud service.

One more angle: Notion's AI features and Evernote's AI features both process your note content. If you work under strict data rules, check each company's current AI data policy before turning those features on.

Students: check the discounts first

Students get the best deal in this whole comparison:

• Notion: free Plus plan for students and educators (verified with a school email). That alone beats every Evernote tier for class notes.
• Evernote: 40% off the Advanced plan for eligible college students. Good if you're already deep in Evernote, but Notion's free student deal is still better.

Switching from Evernote to Notion

Migrating is doable and both sides document it. The standard path: export your Evernote notebooks in Evernote's .enex export format, then run Notion's built-in Evernote import. A few honest warnings from people who've done it:

• Expect cleanup. Tags, nested notebooks, and attachments rarely map one-to-one into Notion's database structure.
• Evernote's OCR advantage doesn't transfer — scanned documents lose their searchability outside Evernote.
• Start with one notebook, not your whole archive. If the structure feels wrong, you can rethink it before committing.

Pros and cons

Which should you pick?

FAQs