After a dramatic decline, Evernote is starting to rebound: The note-taking app has slowly undergone refinements and added features since its acquisition by Bending Spoons in 2023. In particular, we enjoy its top-notch tools for writing, organizing, and syncing notes, along with a few genuinely useful AI transcription features. The app's web clipper is also among the most capable we've used. That said, Evernote's extremely limited free version and expensive paid tiers remain downsides. As such, we recommend you also consider one of our Editors' Choice winners: Joplin excels for its ease of use and focused design, while OneNote offers many of the same features for less money (or free).

Pricing: Expensive, With a Limited Free Tier

Evernote offers a free version that lets you upload just 250MB of data each month. You can maintain a total of 50 notes in one notebook, which is a severe limitation. I'm not aware of any other note-taking app that limits its free version this way. Most simply cap the overall amount of data you can store in the cloud. Evernote's free version runs on a single device, meaning syncing is not an option. That's another constraint I haven't encountered elsewhere. Because of these two restrictions, I can't recommend Evernote's free tier.

(Credit Evernote/PCMag)

OneNote is a much better free app. You get 5GB of OneDrive storage for free to share across online Microsoft 365 apps. With a free Google account, you get 15GB of storage to share across the likes of Google Keep and Gmail. Some apps, including Obsidian and Joplin, don't offer first-party syncing for free, but they both let you create an unlimited number of local notes and can optionally sync using a third-party service, such as Dropbox.

Evernote's base Personal plan ($10.83 per month, billed annually) supports 10GB of monthly uploads, which should be enough if you aren't constantly adding videos or other large files. You can also sync your notes between as many devices as you like and file support tickets. The Professional tier ($14.16 per month, billed annually) raises the upload limit to 20GB. Professional users also get access to Slack integration. You have to contact the company for Enterprise plan pricing, which includes IT-centric features, such as account administration and single sign-on.

Evernote's paid versions are expensive compared with alternatives. A Microsoft 365 Personal plan (around $8.33 per month, billed annually), for example, gets you 1TB of storage with no syncing limits for OneNote and anything else you want to store in OneDrive. It also includes the desktop versions of Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Word. Meanwhile, you can pay the same rate (around $8.33 per month) to get 2TB of Google One storage to use across all of the company's online productivity apps. Apple Notes syncs using iCloud storage, which costs $9.99 per month for 2TB. Given that all of these options cost less than Evernote and extend beyond note-taking, Evernote isn't a good value. There are reasons to use Evernote, but its price is not one of them.

Interface and Ease of Use: Less Clutter Than Before

Evernote offers visually consistent desktop (macOS and Windows) and mobile (Android, iOS, and iPadOS) apps, along with a web version. When you sign up for an Evernote account on the web, the site asks you a bit about what you plan to use it for. Evernote will then attempt to get you to sign up for a subscription, though you can still continue with the free version. You don’t need to provide a credit card unless you opt in for a subscription.

(Credit Evernote/PCMag)

After those setup steps, you see Evernote's main page. Much like on the desktop apps, you see your notebooks in the left sidebar below various other hideable features (calendar, files, and tasks). This sidebar is primarily how you navigate the interface. The right panel has a few widgets, which you can customize if you have a paid subscription; otherwise, it's just a few of your recent tasks and a sticky note.

A search bar lets you find notes in the conventional way or with AI. A button for creating new notes sits above others for adding new calendar events and tasks. By default, any task you add via this button shows up in a note called "Things to do," though you can add the task to another note if you prefer. A drop-down menu allows you to add a Sketch (drawing) that shows up in a new note in your default notebook. The audio recording feature works similarly, creating a new note with said file.

Although potentially useful, the calendar appointment and task buttons might feel like clutter if you already use a different calendar and to-do list app. The good news is that you can hide these buttons via the settings. Recent Evernote updates make it easy to disable features you don't use, which I appreciate—clutter was a major problem a few years ago.  

Taking and Organizing Notes: Straightforward and Structured

Evernote stores notes in notebooks. You can add as many notebooks as you want and organize them into groups (or stacks). You can also tag notes and sort them that way. Evernote gives you a great deal of flexibility here.

The interface for taking notes is streamlined and easy to figure out. I appreciate that you can double-click a note in the desktop app to open it in a dedicated window, which is perfect if you want a smaller notepad to use alongside meeting minutes or any research documents. Notes use rich text. You can choose among six fonts and use standard formatting tools (bold, italic, and underline).

In addition to writing text, you can upload attachments to notes. Images show up in-line, and other types of attachments, such as PDFs and spreadsheets, show a preview. Embedding documents in a note is a great way to keep all your research in one place. You can, for example, attach a PDF and then put your notes from the PDF in the document below it. You can even preview the entire document in your note or mark it up using a highlighter. It all works intuitively and is similar to the experience in OneNote.

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But there is a major difference between how Evernote and OneNote handle notes. Notes in Evernote are linear, meaning they maintain proper alignment and formatting as you type. You can insert a sketch if you want, which is particularly useful if you're using a stylus and tablet, though it shows up as an inline image. OneNote, meanwhile, lets you type anywhere you want and sketch right on the note. Neither approach is necessarily better, but you might have a preference.

(Credit Evernote/PCMag)

Web Clipper: One of the Best Around

One of Evernote's best features is its web clipper. This is a browser extension (Chrome, Firefox, and Safari) that allows you to grab content from any web page and save it to Evernote for future reference. You can capture the full page if you like, but the star feature here is the Simplified Article option, which removes all the ads, sidebars, and other clutter.

In testing, I found the web clipper to work as well as or better than OneNote's. I love that you can add notes, tags, and tasks to a clip before saving it to Evernote and that you can specify the destination notebook. My only complaint is that you can't highlight notes before clipping them, like with OneNote.

AI Transcription: Works Well for Audio, Images, and Video

Once you upload an audio file, image, or video to Evernote, you can transform it into text with just a couple of clicks. This AI-powered process worked quite well in my tests. I tried it with an image of some of my handwritten notes, which I struggle to read at times, and got great results. The same was true for audio and videos I uploaded—accurate transcriptions showed up quickly.

(Credit Evernote/PCMag)

However, there are some limitations. Evernote caps every note at 200MB, even for enterprise users, so you can't use this for long videos. The tool can’t differentiate between multiple speakers either, meaning you won’t know who is saying what unless you go through and add that context manually. For audio files and handwritten notes, though, it’s a quick way to turn something that otherwise wouldn’t be searchable into text. 

Search and AI Features: Potentially Powerful

Evernote's classic search bar is fast and makes it easy to find any note, whether you're searching for its content, name, or tags. Otherwise, an AI search tool lets you ask questions using natural language. However, the results are mixed. 

If you've used an AI chatbot, you're likely aware that they can occasionally "hallucinate" or fabricate information. It's convenient to be able to ask a plain-language question about your notes, such as when your upcoming flight will depart, but I don't advise counting on the answer without double-checking the source first. In any case, the tool helpfully provides a few paragraphs in response to your questions, along with potentially relevant notes.

Speaking of AI, Evernote has a few other features that automate smaller tasks. If you highlight text and click the AI button, for example, the app offers options to paraphrase, proofread, summarize, or translate it. You can also use the AI to help write the title, introduction, or conclusion for the current note. I like that these AI features target specific use cases. 

Integrations and Collaboration: Tons of Options

Evernote plays well with other apps, which is a huge advantage for integrating it into your business or personal life. For instance, you can set it up so that typing a command in Slack sends a post to Evernote as a note. Evernote's embedded calendar can optionally connect to Google Calendar or Outlook to show those events alongside your dated tasks and notes, too. Finally, paying for an Evernote plan gets you a unique Evernote email address that you can use to forward messages to your account as notes.

If Evernote doesn't natively support an app or online service you want to connect, you can always check if it's possible via IFTTT or Zapier.

Evernote makes it fairly easy to switch to another note-taking app, which I respect. You can export any notebook to an ENEX or HTML file. It's possible to import the former into Apple Notes, OneNote, and even Obsidian, among others, meaning you can take your Evernote notes with you if you decide the app isn't for you. The app even provides exporting instructions for a number of competitors. Recent features make it easier to import HTML, text, and Word files. I was able to quickly add several Markdown-formatted text files without issues, too.

Evernote offers a couple of different ways to collaborate with other users. For example, you can share individual notebooks. Alternatively, you can create a Space to share multiple notebooks. This feature, once locked to the Enterprise tier, is now available for all users.