Evernote
Evernote is a note-taking and knowledge-management app that keeps notes, web clippings, tasks, files and recordings in one searchable workspace. It is mainly used as a personal archive and second brain for capturing information and finding it again later.
#23 in Productivity ToolsNote-Taking AppsFree plan
Who it's for
Best for
Power users with large note archives who need clipping, OCR and search together
Consultants who record meetings and want transcripts and AI summaries
Not for
Budget-focused students who need a free or low-cost app for years
Writers who want a plain, lightweight editor with no AI features
Features
Web Clipper extension
Clips web pages, articles and images into notes in one click through the browser extension for Chrome, Firefox and Safari.
Notebooks and Spaces
Keeps notes in notebooks, tags and shared spaces so related material stays grouped and easy to browse.
Tasks and calendar
Places tasks inside notes and links calendar events to notes, keeping to-dos and meetings beside the related writing.
Built-in AI features
Brings an AI assistant, semantic search, transcription, editing and cleanup tools directly into the note editor.
Capture and scanning
Records and transcribes audio, scans documents and stores PDFs and images inside notes for later search.
What users say
Pros
- Web pages clip cleanly into searchable notes, and no rival clipper comes close on fidelity.
- Scanned receipts, PDFs and archived documents stay searchable, so old paperwork is found by typing a few words.
- Meeting and lecture recordings are transcribed with speaker separation and turned into summaries and action lists.
- Semantic search across thousands of stored notes pulls up old material from a plain question.
- Notes and photos move between phone, laptop and tablet without the sync conflicts that plagued older versions.
Cons
- Renewal prices jumped sharply in successive years, making the app far more expensive than competing note tools.
- The free tier caps devices, notes and monthly uploads so tightly that it works only as a trial.
- Tasks vanish and the daily note sometimes fails to create or appears several times in one day.
- The app opens slowly on phones and the editor lags, making quick note capture frustrating.
- There is no cheaper plan without the AI tools, so a plain note-taking setup still pays for features it never uses.
- Moving a large archive out takes months because bulk exports are throttled and delivered in a proprietary format.
A selection of the review sources we used:
Summarized from public user reviews and community discussions. View details
Global Traffic Rank
Top 50k
Alternatives
Rank#23 in category#1 in category#9 in category#16 in category
Free planYesYesYesYes
ProTop web clipper, OCR on scans, meeting transcriptionFree, instant syncing, simple, private, quick capture, smart tagsLocal markdown files, linked notes, daily notes, fast syncMarkdown notes, nested tags, large libraries, fast iPhone capture
Better forTaking everyday notes on Apple devices without subscription fees or locked features
Weaker atAccessing notes across non-Apple platforms like Windows and Android