The 10 Best Free Note-Taking Apps in 2026 (Genuinely Free, Tested)

A free plan that dies at 50 notes is a trial with cleaner marketing. A free plan that never counts notes, then charges the day you open a second device, is a different product. Prices below are from each vendor's public pricing or help page as of October 2026.

We kept ten note apps that you can still use after the first afternoon, and wrote down the first wall each one actually has. Unlimited Markdown is one job. A freeform notebook is another. Marking up a PDF and a lecture video is a third.

What counts as a free note-taking app

Four rules, so the list does not fill up with countdown timers:

• No card required to start. If the useful version expires in 7 or 14 days, it is a trial.
• The limit is named. Note caps, storage, devices, and file size all count. "Free" with a silent 5 MB upload cap is still a limit.
• Bring-your-own sync counts as free. Paying Dropbox is your storage bill, not the note app's.
• Optional paid extras are fine. Official sync, publish, or AI can cost money. The writing itself should not disappear when you decline.

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

For unlimited private notes, Obsidian and Logseq. Both are free without a note cap, and the files stay on your machine. For a freeform notebook with ink and cloud sync, OneNote, with the caveat that notebooks share a Microsoft account's 5 GB. For encrypted plain text that already syncs to every device, Standard Notes. For a visual canvas that also annotates PDFs, video, and audio at $0, Flexnote, capped at 100 cards and one device until you pay.

Free tier comparison

The 10 best free note-taking apps

1. Obsidian — best free local-first notes

Obsidian is the rare case where the marketing line matches the license. The app is free for personal, work, and nonprofit use. No account. Notes are a folder of Markdown files. Links, the graph, Canvas, and a community catalog of more than 4,000 plugins are included. A commercial license ($50 per user per year) is optional support, not a lock.

The bill is the add-ons. Sync is $4 per user per month billed annually ($5 month to month). Publish is $8 per site per month billed annually. Students, faculty, and nonprofits get 40% off both. You can sync a vault yourself with iCloud, Syncthing, or Git and pay Obsidian nothing. That works until two devices edit the same note and you are the merge tool. Built-in annotation of PDFs and lecture video is not why people pick it. Flexnote vs Obsidian, or the best Obsidian alternatives.

2. Logseq — best free outliner

Logseq is free and open source (AGPL). The stable app is an outliner on local files, Markdown or Org-mode: a daily journal, block references, backlinks. Sync that folder with any tool you already trust and the note app itself stays at $0.

Logseq is also building a database version. Local features of that version are free. Official real-time sync uses their servers, is still a limited rollout, and can be self-hosted. The project says data loss is possible in that beta, so a thesis does not belong there yet. The outline is the whole product. Long prose feels cramped, and a spatial map of a paper is the wrong job. Flexnote vs Logseq.

3. Flexnote — best free visual canvas with annotation

Flexnote is the one on this list built as cards on an infinite canvas, for reading and watching rather than for a vault of text files. The free tier is permanent: 100 cards, local storage, one device, and it includes annotation of PDFs, video (including YouTube), and audio. Those marks link back to cards. Most of the apps above do not do that job at any price.

100 cards is a real cap. A card per paper, or per lecture, fits. A card per paragraph does not. The free plan is a single device, so phone plus laptop means paying. After that, Pro is about $29 a quarter or $49 a year, or $149 once. Paid sync is your choice of Baidu Netdisk, OneDrive, S3, or WebDAV. It is not open source, there is no Linux desktop app, and there is no large plugin catalog. Encryption is "the files are on your disk," not end-to-end. If the work is a team whiteboard or a relational database, look elsewhere. What Flexnote is, visual note-taking apps, and pricing.

4. OneNote — best free freeform notebook

OneNote is free on Windows, Mac, iPhone, iPad, Android, and the web. A page is a canvas: typed text, ink, images, and printouts can sit wherever you drop them. For class notes that mix a diagram and a paragraph, that is still hard to beat at $0.

The quiet limit is storage, and it is not OneNote's own meter. Notebooks use the Microsoft account's 5 GB of cloud storage, shared with OneDrive files and Outlook.com attachments. Microsoft 365 Personal moves that pool to 1 TB and is where Copilot in the desktop apps lives. Free OneNote does not include it. Search across years of handwriting is good. Structure beyond notebooks, sections, and tags is not. Flexnote vs OneNote.

5. Notion — best free for structured notes

Notion's Free plan is genuinely unlimited for a workspace with one member: pages, databases, the basic blocks. The moment a second person is a workspace member, the same plan drops to 1,000 blocks. Deleting blocks does not give them back. Notion counts what you have created, not what is still there. Guests invited to a single page are a narrower door, and that guest cap is one of the things Plus raises.

Other walls, from the pricing page: file uploads up to 5 MB, about 7 days of page history, and Notion AI only as a short trial. Full AI sits on Business, about $20 per member per month billed annually. Plus, the small-team plan, is about $10 per member per month billed annually, and students and educators can get a one-member Plus plan free. Offline is real only for pages you mark for download. A literature PDF, a lecture recording, and a canvas are outside the product. Flexnote vs Notion, Notion alternatives.

6. Apple Notes — best free for Apple users

Apple Notes is already on the phone. Folders, tags, Smart Folders, checklists, locked notes, document scanning, and Pencil sketches are included. Current versions can record audio and transcribe it into the note. iCloud keeps iPhone, iPad, and Mac in step, and the same notes open at icloud.com.

There is no Android or Windows app. The storage story is the same shape as OneNote's: 5 GB of free iCloud, shared with device backups and photos, which usually eat the quota first. iCloud+ starts at 50 GB if you outgrow that. Notes will not become a research system. Linked notes exist, a graph does not, and a PDF in a note is an attachment, not an annotation workspace.

7. Google Keep — best free quick capture

Google Keep has no paid tier. A Google account is the whole price: notes, checklists, images, drawings, voice, color, reminders, and sharing. Google's help pages cap you at 50 labels. Deleted notes can be restored for 7 days. Google's storage FAQ lists Keep among the products that the 15 GB Drive / Gmail / Photos quota policy does not cover, so Keep is not what fills that 15 GB.

The wall is the shape. A Keep note is a sticky. It is the right tool for a grocery list, a screenshot of a receipt, a reminder before a meeting. It is the wrong tool for a semester. There is no notebook, no long-form editor, no offline story you would trust on a flight with a paper to read.

8. Anytype — best free local-first object notes

Anytype is open source, local-first, and end-to-end encrypted. The recovery key is a 12-word phrase generated on your device. Anytype cannot read the notes. Objects and types make it feel closer to a private Notion than to a text editor, on Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, and Android.

The free membership includes 100 MB of remote storage, 10 shared spaces, and unlimited private spaces. Cross that remote quota and backup-node sync stops. Local storage and same-network sync keep working, and you can self-host a backup node. Plus is $4 per month for 1 GB of remote storage. The concepts take a weekend. PDF and video annotation are not in the product. Flexnote vs Anytype, and a wider pass at local-first note apps.

9. Joplin — best free open-source Evernote-style app

Joplin is free and open source on Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS, and a terminal client. Notebooks of Markdown, tags, a web clipper, optional end-to-end encryption, and an Evernote ENEX import. Sync targets you already have: Dropbox, OneDrive, Nextcloud, WebDAV, S3, or a folder on disk. That path does not require Joplin Cloud.

Hosted sync, publishing notes to the web, and sharing a notebook are the paid service. Joplin Cloud Basic is €2.99 per month, or €2.40 per month billed yearly (€28.69 a year): 2 GB, and 10 MB per note or attachment. The interface is plain. People who want a notebook they can leave with their data tend to forgive that. Evernote alternatives.

10. Standard Notes — best free encrypted notes

Standard Notes gives the free plan more sync than almost anyone else on this list: unlimited notes, unlimited devices, offline access, tags, two-factor authentication, and encrypted email backups. Notes are end-to-end encrypted. The company cannot read them.

The catch is the editor. The free plan is plain text. Markdown, rich text, checklists, code, and spreadsheets are Productivity at $90 a year. Photos and files, 100 GB of encrypted storage, and sharing with up to five accounts are Professional at $120 a year. There is no general trial of those editors (iOS has a one-week Professional trial). If the requirement is "encrypted text that still opens in a decade," the free plan is the most straightforward one here. If the requirement is images, it is not free.

How to choose a free note app

• Unlimited writing, files you own. Obsidian if you like pages. Logseq if you like an outline and a daily journal. Budget time for your own sync, or pay for the official one.
• You already pay Microsoft or Apple with your habits. OneNote for mixed ink and typing. Apple Notes if every device you use has a bitten-fruit logo. Watch the shared 5 GB, not the note count.
• Five-second capture. Google Keep. Move anything you still need a month later into a real notebook.
• A personal wiki. Notion, while you are the only member. Read the 1,000-block rule before you add a second person.
• The vendor should not be able to read it. Standard Notes for text. Anytype if you want objects. Joplin if you want to pick the server.
• Papers, lectures, and a board you can see. Flexnote's free 100 cards are enough to run one real course or one literature pass and decide. Students comparing a wider set should read the note apps for students and the PDF annotation apps.

Frequently asked questions

Which free note app has no limits?

Obsidian and Logseq do not cap how many notes you create, and the files are local. Standard Notes does not cap notes or devices either, but the free editor is plain text. Cloud notebooks usually cap storage (OneNote and Apple Notes share a 5 GB account pool) or features (Notion's 5 MB uploads).

Which free note app works offline?

Obsidian, Logseq, Flexnote, Anytype, Joplin, and Standard Notes work offline because the notes live on the device. OneNote and Apple Notes work offline for notebooks that have already synced. Notion only opens pages you marked for download. Keep is a poor offline bet.

Which free app annotates PDFs and video?

Flexnote's free tier annotates PDFs, video (including YouTube), and audio, and links those marks back to cards. The cap is 100 cards and one device, not a missing highlighter. See PDF annotation apps and video annotation tools.

Is Notion's free plan actually unlimited?

For one person, yes: unlimited blocks. Add a second workspace member and the free plan stops at 1,000 blocks, and deleting old content does not reset the counter. Uploads are capped at 5 MB. Page history is about 7 days. Notion AI on Free is a trial. The plan that includes AI is Business.

Is OneNote free, or do you need Microsoft 365?

The OneNote app is free. Notebooks sync through a Microsoft account and draw on that account's 5 GB of cloud storage, shared with OneDrive and Outlook.com attachments. Microsoft 365 is how you get 1 TB and Copilot. You do not need it to type and ink.

Which free note app lets you skip a subscription?

Obsidian, Logseq, and Joplin can stay at $0 indefinitely if you sync files yourself or stay on one computer. Standard Notes stays free if you accept plain text. Flexnote stays free under 100 cards on one device; the step past that can be a one-time license ($149) instead of a renewal. Notion, OneNote's extra storage, and Anytype's remote space are subscriptions once you outgrow the free quota.

What is the best free note app for students?

Lecture video plus PDFs: Flexnote, if 100 cards covers the term you want to test. Handwriting on a tablet: OneNote, or Apple Notes with a Pencil. A linked vault of reading notes: Obsidian. A longer comparison is in the student note-taking apps roundup.