10 Best Note-Taking Apps for 2025

Take better notes and organize your thoughts and ideas with PKM tools, all-round note-taking tools and advanced tools with new AI abilities, here's our top note-taking picks.

Note-taking apps can be powerful tools in your arsenal.

They have been successful in helping people better organize their lives, achieve promotions, and even build the most prominent companies we see today. Even Leonardo Da Vinci was an avid note-taker. Tools like note apps can take you far by allowing your mind to remember things without the pressures of storing that information.

Practices like GTD by David Allen and Second Brain by Tiago Forte have all been birthed from the art of note-taking, and the impact it can have on your daily life can be fruitful.

What do the best note-taking apps do?

Some of the characteristics of good note-taking apps to consider:

Best Note-Taking Apps for 2025

Explore all our recommendations & choices:

1. Obsidian

Obsidian remains one of the best note-taking applications on the market and has one of the best ratings on Tool Finder as a notes app purely due to a combination of factors.

The first of those factors is the product's value for money. Obsidian packs so much into It for the price of nothing, which is impeccable. The second factor remains the ability to update the application at the pace of user feedback, which is remarkable.

Obsidian, whilst being a much more focused on advanced note taking, offers a friendly, approachable experience that with some education can be learnt and adopted for any need. The only gripe will be for those who want syncing between devices will have to pay $8 per month for the Obsidian Sync plan - but for the solo experience on desktop Obsidian is outstanding. One to consider in 2024.

Pros:

• Comes with PKM abilities
• Powerful graph view for networked notes
• Obsidian adds new features fairly regularly
• You can switch on and off features

Cons:

• Lacks project management
• Does not have database abilities

Pricing:

Obsidian is free to use with no limits; there is a $4 per month pricing for E2E notes & sync.

2. Capacities

Looking like Notion, Capacities brings fresh thinking to the notes space by focusing the premise on object-based note-taking. With unlimited notes, Capacities brings a way to take notes that allows you to set a structure. For example, do you want to take book notes? Create the object: book and you can go from here, meaning you can re-use it and apply it ongoing.

Perfect for templates but from the core of the blocks for notes you use every single day. Capacities is the best newcomer and brings a fresh approach with a stunning design that many people are flocking to in 2024.

Pros:

• Beautiful Notion-like design
• It comes with a calendar mode for daily notes
• Works well offline with near offline functionality
• Comes with AI features for chatting with notes
• Easy to use once you get started

Cons:

• Lacks powerful databases
• It can be complicated for the average note-taker

Pricing:

Capacities are free to use, with a $9.99 per-month upgrade needed to access premium abilities.

3. NotePlan

NotePlan impressed us this year as an all-around tool for your productivity with notes and a system for tasks and calendars in one. Many people like this combination of markdown feel, but with the abilities you get in Evernote & other such tools.

Their mobile app has been upgraded to help many people use the planner abilities on the go and we've been watching their progress in 2024.

Pros

• Combines tasks, notes & calendars in one
• Fast and robust app for Apple-focused devices
• Perfect for those with date-based notes
• Works well with templates
• Popular for bullet journal lovers

Cons

• Pricier yearly option with no free

Pricing:

NotePlan charges $99.99 per year with no free plan.

4. Reflect Notes

Reflect brings a sense of class to this list with a stunning design this application isn't just about the looks. Reflect Notes packs in graph for connected notes, meetings for connecting your calendar, E2E note encryption and newer AI abilities.

Reflect Notes does come at a price of $10 per month without a free plan. They want to be the best-in-class notes app and fund their future features with this, and you can tell the attention to detail they offer throughout the application.

With Reflect AI, you can dictate and transcribe notes, create action lists, and save custom prompts - ideal for newbies to using AI and beyond. There's a lot of focus on security of notes and integrations - making Reflect one of our apps to watch throughout 2024.

Pros:

• Balanced design between PKM & note-taking app
• Always adding new features and AI abilities
• Designed for busy professionals
• A much better focus on security

Cons:

• Much pricier option
• Can be overwhelming for more basic note-takers

Pricing:

Reflect Notes is $10 per month, billed annually. No free plan.

5. Evernote

Much like Amplenote, Evernote wants to be your base for tasks, notes & calendar in a much more traditional style making life easier for connecting calendar events, meeting notes, project tasks and project notes all in one hosted location.

Evernote presents a decent notes app that has had many years of struggles with their history of change between 2013 - 2020 it has recently been acquired by Bending Spoons with a vision of making AI the focus of the long-standing notes app.

For those looking for a traditional all-rounder, Evernote still does a brilliant job and we hope the new team at Bending Spoons will breathe speed, reliability & new features into it over the 2024 season.

Pros:

• Bring all your tasks, notes & calendar in one
• Comes on iOS, Android & all desktop
• Comes with famous Web Clipper on the browser
• Bending Spoons has been actively developing

Cons:

• Much pricier than before

Pricing:

Evernote is $14.99 per month with a limited free pricing.

6. Anytype

Pros:

• Open-source note-taking
• Local-first and peer-to-peer networking
• Works with markdown and native on desktop
• It comes with sets and collections for set-ups
• Good-rated iOS, and Android on respective App Stores
• Privacy-focused notes with E2E secure notes
• Good community and audience

Cons:

• It can be overwhelming to use
• Limited database abilities compared to Notion
• Still developing features

7. RemNote

RemNote is one of the best, or if not, the best notes app for students. It combines the ability to take notes and collect PDFs, presentations & uploads with notes & the ability to turn the notes into flashcards. This ability isn't hard or complicated and allows students to import notes from other apps and then instantly turn those into flashcards making them an more useful study resources.

There are no limits on the ability to create flashcards or notes in RemNote, but there are locks on abilities like PDF annotation and file upload per note. RemNote has approachable pricing for those who want to invest in their studies. It is probably popular with pHD and master's students looking to better invest in their tools.

Pros

• Unlimited flashcards
• Easy-to-use features
• Can extend to PKM use for post-college
• Analytics for flashcards insights
• Way to add daily notes for journaling

Cons

• It can be expensive for a premium
• Many people might find it overwhelming

Pricing:

RemNote costs $8 per month (billed annually) for premium. It is free to use and has no limits.

8. Amplenote

Amplenote hits the spot as a classic notes app with the vision to grow and grow. They currently have a range of features, almost too many, that help you to unlock your notes, but not just your notes - your tasks and calendar can be housed in Amplenote. Much like Evernote, they want to be your brain for everything and believe they could do with building a system for it hence their match-up to GTD.

One of the notable experiences as a notes app isn't actually their note abilities; for us, we adored the ability to manage your task alongside and rank your tasks using a simple set of parameters, which makes adding notes to tasks much more interactive for projects and beyond.

Pros:

• Combines tasks, notes & calendar
• It comes with a daily note feature called Jots
• Designed for individuals looking for an Evernote replacement
• It has many GTD-like features for managing the workload
• The task score feature is brilliant for prioritizing tasks

Cons:

• Can be too intense to learn fro some people
• The design isn't as attractive

9. Tana

Pros:

• Powerful abilities
• Suitable for individuals & teams
• Designed for PKM

Cons:

• Could be difficult to learn

10. Goodnotes

Pros:

• Ideal for those who use iPads
• Works well with styluses to make sketch notes
• The reasonable $9.99 per year pricing
• Great for student note-taking
• Abilities like ruler, scaling & customizations for toolbar

Cons:

• It might not be for everyone
• Can be difficult to use if you aren't good at sketching