Evernote alternatives in 2026: 9 options and what each import keeps
Nine places Evernote users moved to, with prices read on 14 September 2026 and, for each one, the import path from ENEX and exactly what it carries over.
The short answer
Notion is where most leavers land, because it covers notes, projects and databases in one place. Obsidian is the pick if you want the archive as files on your own disk. Joplin is the pick if the import has to be clean, because ENEX is its direct path and it carries notes, notebooks, tags, attachments and metadata. Apple Notes is free and already on your phone.
Evernote is still operating. This is a comparison of where people went and what each move costs, not a shutdown notice.
Every price below was read on the vendor's own pricing page on 14 September 2026.
What Evernote costs now
Read live on evernote.com/compare-plans on 14 September 2026. The page was shown to us in euros.
- Free. Up to 50 notes, 1 notebook, 1 connected device, 1GB of monthly uploads.
- Starter. €6.65 a month, or €79.90 a year. Up to 1,000 notes, 20 notebooks, 1,000 attachments, 3 devices, AI features.
- Advanced. €16.66 a month, or €199.99 a year. Unlimited notes, notebooks and attachments, unlimited devices, AI features.
- Flexible, for teams, from €10 per seat a month.
The free tier is the number that pushes people out. Fifty notes and one device is a demo of the product, not a place to keep an archive.
How we picked
- Price read on the vendor's own pricing page on 14 September 2026, with the billing period named.
- Import matters more here than anywhere else, so each entry says what the path in actually is.
- The tool has to work for one person paying for it themselves.
- Every entry says where it falls short, ours included.
dEssence is our product and it is number 5. It is on the list because a large share of people leaving Evernote say the same thing, that they rarely found anything again, and that is the only part of the problem we work on. It is not a notes app and cannot replace one.
The nine at a glance: price and platforms
| # | App | Price on 14 Sep 2026 | Runs on |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Notion | Free $0; Plus $12 monthly, $10 yearly; Business $24 / $20 per member | Web, Mac, Windows, iOS, Android |
| 2 | Obsidian | Free, no sign-up; Sync $4 per user/month, Publish $8 per site/month, billed annually | Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS, Android |
| 3 | Joplin | Free and open source; Joplin Cloud from €2.40 a month billed yearly | Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS, Android, web |
| 4 | Apple Notes | Free with the device; iCloud+ from $0.99 a month for 50GB | iPhone, iPad, Mac, web |
| 5 | dEssence | Free $0, no card; Pro $10 a month | Chrome extension, Telegram, web |
| 6 | UpNote | Free to 50 notes; Premium $1.99 a month or $39.99 once, for life | Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS, Android |
| 7 | Microsoft OneNote | App free; in Microsoft 365 Personal $9.99 a month or $99.99 a year | Web, Windows, Mac, iOS, Android |
| 8 | Bear | Free with three themes; Pro $2.99 a month or $29.99 a year | Mac, iPhone, iPad |
| 9 | Craft | Free €0 with a 1,500 block limit; Plus €8 monthly, €6.40 yearly | Mac, Windows, web, iOS, iPadOS, Android, visionOS |
The same nine: import path and who it suits
| # | App | Import path from Evernote | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Notion | Official importer that signs into your Evernote account | Replacing notes, projects and databases in one move |
| 2 | Obsidian | Official Importer plugin, ENEX to Markdown | Keeping the archive as files nobody can price-change |
| 3 | Joplin | Direct ENEX import with notes, notebooks, tags, attachments and metadata | The cleanest import, at no cost |
| 4 | Apple Notes | File, Import to Notes on Mac; .enex is a supported format | Apple users who want it to stop being a decision |
| 5 | dEssence | No bulk import. You save new material going forward | The part where you never found anything again |
| 6 | UpNote | Dedicated ENEX import, with bulk limits | The closest feel to old Evernote, for the least money |
| 7 | Microsoft OneNote | None. Microsoft retired its importer in September 2022 | Free notebooks and sections, inside Microsoft 365 |
| 8 | Bear | File, Import From, Evernote on macOS, ENEX | Apple-only writing that looks good with no setup |
| 9 | Craft | Craft documents an Evernote migration path | Notes that leave your machine and have to look right |
1. Notion
Notion is where the most people land, because it replaces more than the notes. Documents, projects, databases and a wiki all live in one workspace, and the import does not need a file at all.
Price on 14 September 2026. Free $0 per member per month. Plus $12 per member per month billed monthly, or $10 billed yearly. Business $24 monthly, or $20 yearly. Source: notion.com/pricing, read with the currency set to USD.
Import path. Notion's own help page describes an official Evernote importer: Settings, Import, Third party imports, Evernote, then sign into your Evernote account and authorise the connection and pick the notebooks. Notebooks arrive as pages and notes as database items. Source: Notion help.
Best for: people whose Evernote had become a filing cabinet for projects as much as notes.
Where it falls short. The structure is yours to maintain, and that is the thing that eventually makes a big Notion hard to search. The AI features people expect sit on the Business tier.
2. Obsidian
Obsidian turns the archive into Markdown files on your disk. Nobody can raise the price of a folder.
Price on 14 September 2026. Free with no sign-up. Sync $4 per user per month billed annually. Publish $8 per site per month billed annually. Catalyst $25 one time. Commercial $50 per user per year, which Obsidian's FAQ says is not required. Source: obsidian.md/pricing.
Import path. The official Importer plugin takes ENEX files and converts them to Markdown. Two details from Obsidian's own documentation are worth knowing before you start. Evernote's export does not keep the tag hierarchy, so you have to rename child tags to Parent/Child in Evernote first if you want it preserved. And because export works one notebook at a time, notebook stacks are reconstructed from the file name: rename the file to Stack1@@@NotebookA and the notes land in Stack1/NotebookA. Source: Obsidian help.
Best for: people who left over trust rather than price, and want the files to outlive any company.
Where it falls short. No AI of its own, no clipper as deep as Evernote's out of the box, and sync is either a paid add-on or your own arrangement. Setup is a real cost, paid in evenings. See Obsidian alternatives.
3. Joplin
If the import is the whole decision, this is the answer. Joplin is free, open source, and ENEX is its native route in.
Price on 14 September 2026. The apps are free and open source. Joplin Cloud, which handles sync, publishing and collaboration, starts at Basic €2.99 a month billed monthly, or €2.40 a month billed yearly, which the page shows as €28.69 a year. Self-hosting is possible instead. Source: joplinapp.org/plans.
Import path, in Joplin's own words. ENEX import brings complete notebooks along with notes, tags, resources, which means attached files, and note metadata such as author and geo-location. Tables are converted to Markdown tables. Two things differ. Evernote's recognition data on scanned images is not preserved, although Joplin can recreate it if you enable its own OCR. And colours, font sizes and font faces are dropped in the HTML to Markdown conversion, with the text itself always imported in full; there is an option to import ENEX as HTML if that formatting matters. Links between notes are mostly preserved, because Joplin guesses the target by title, which fails when two notes share a title. Source: Joplin documentation.
Best for: a large, tagged archive that has to arrive intact and cost nothing.
Where it falls short. It looks like what it is, a community project. Sync is the part you will think about, and the polish is nowhere near Evernote's.
4. Apple Notes
The one already on the device. It is free, it is fast, and it imports Evernote files directly, which surprises people who assume it does not.
Price on 14 September 2026. Free with an Apple device, including 5GB of iCloud. If you need more, iCloud+ is $0.99 a month for 50GB, $2.99 for 200GB, $9.99 for 2TB, $29.99 for 6TB and $59.99 for 12TB. Source: apple.com/icloud.
Import path. On a Mac, File then Import to Notes, with .enex listed as a supported format alongside TXT, RTF, RTFD and HTML. There is a "Preserve folder structure on import" option. Apple's page also states plainly that if an Evernote file has an attachment or a feature Notes does not support, that attachment or feature is not imported. Source: Apple support.
Best for: Apple-only households who want this to stop being a decision they revisit every year.
Where it falls short. It is Apple-only in practice, the web version is limited, and search is fine rather than good once the archive gets large. Attachments that Evernote supported and Notes does not are silently left behind, so check the import rather than trusting it.
5. dEssence
Ours, so the boundary first. dEssence is not a notes app and cannot replace Evernote. There is no notebook, no editor, no long document.
It is on this list for one reason. A large share of people who leave Evernote say the same thing: it was not the price, it was that they stopped finding anything. That is the only part we work on.
Price on 14 September 2026. Free is $0 with no card: 20 saves a day, 20 messages a day, and 100 watched items checked daily. Pro is $10 a month: 150 saves a day, 200 messages a day, and 100 watched items checked hourly. Source: the pricing block on dessence.ai.
Import path. There is none. There is no bulk ENEX import and no migration tool. You save new material going forward through the Chrome extension, the Telegram bot or the web app, with no folders and no tags, and ask for it later in your own words. The answer names the saved items it came from.
Best for: running alongside whichever of the eight you pick, while you find out whether recall was the actual problem.
Where it falls short. No import, so ten years of Evernote stays where it is. No offline mode, no native iOS or Android app, no team workspace, and it does not read your inbox. Free is capped at 20 saves a day.
6. UpNote
The closest thing to how Evernote used to feel, at the price Evernote used to cost. Notebooks, a clean editor, and a lifetime option instead of a subscription.
Price on 14 September 2026. Free to use and sync across devices, with a limit of 50 notes. Premium is $1.99 a month or $39.99 once, for life, bought from the iOS, Android or Mac app. Source: getupnote.com.
Runs on. Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS and Android, with web clipper extensions for Chrome, Safari and Firefox.
Import path. UpNote has a dedicated Evernote import page. Text colours and highlight colours are removed by default, with an option to keep them. Bulk imports are limited if they would push the account past 20,000 notes or 10GB of attachments, in which case you import 50 notes at a time. To keep the notebook structure, export each Evernote notebook as its own ENEX file, import them together, and turn on "Use file name as notebook". Source: UpNote help.
Best for: people who wanted Evernote to stay Evernote and stop charging like a workspace.
Where it falls short. Fifty notes on the free tier. Smaller team, smaller ecosystem, no meaningful AI story.
7. Microsoft OneNote
Notebooks, sections and pages, free, inside a suite most people already pay for. The catch is the import.
Price on 14 September 2026. The app is free. Inside Microsoft 365 Personal, which adds the desktop versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and OneNote with Copilot, it is $9.99 a month or $99.99 a year. Source: Microsoft.
Import path. This is the weak point, and Microsoft says so on its own page: the legacy Evernote to OneNote Importer was retired from service effective September 2022. There is no supported first-party route. Source: Microsoft support.
Best for: people who want free, unlimited notes and already live in Microsoft 365.
Where it falls short. The migration. With no supported importer, a large tagged archive is a manual job or a third-party tool, and tags are the part that usually does not survive.
8. Bear
Apple-only, Markdown underneath, and it looks right without being configured. It is the opposite of a workspace.
Price on 14 September 2026. Free, with three themes. Pro is $2.99 a month or $29.99 a year after a 7 day trial, and Bear notes on its own page that the 15% yearly saving varies by country and tax. Pro adds encrypted notes, export to PDF, HTML, DOCX and JPG, and OCR search inside photos and PDFs. Source: bear.app.
Runs on. Mac, iPhone and iPad.
Import path. On macOS, File then Import From then Evernote, using a .enex archive. Bear's own page flags two things. ENEX carries no notebook information, so it suggests tagging notes in Evernote before exporting, or importing notebooks one file at a time and dragging them onto matching tags. And ENEX retains the notes you deleted in Evernote, so empty the Evernote trash before exporting. Source: Bear support.
Best for: people on Apple hardware whose Evernote was mostly writing.
Where it falls short. Apple only, no Windows, no Android, no web. Notebooks become tags, which is either a relief or an argument.
9. Craft
Craft is for the notes other people read. Documents look finished by default, which is a different promise from an archive.
Price on 14 September 2026. Free starts at €0 with a 1,500 block content limit. Plus is €8 a month billed monthly, or €6.40 billed yearly. Family is €15, or €12 yearly, for 2 to 6 accounts. Team is €50 a month for up to 10. Shown in euros. Source: craft.do/pricing.
Runs on. Mac, Windows, web, iOS, iPadOS, Android and visionOS.
Import path. Craft's documentation lists migrating notes from Notion, Obsidian, Evernote and other platforms. Source: Craft help.
Best for: people whose Evernote was full of documents they sent to someone, not notes they kept for themselves. See also Craft alternatives.
Where it falls short. The free tier is capped by content, so it runs out rather than expiring. It is the wrong shape for a ten year reference archive.
Before you move anything
- Name the reason you started looking. Cost, confidence, or an archive that rarely gave anything back. The right destination is different for each, and this is the step people skip.
- Export first, whatever you decide. Evernote's free tier now allows 1 connected device, so do the export from the machine you still have signed in.
- Move a small, varied sample. One clipped web page, one formatted note, one attachment, one scanned document. Not the whole archive.
- Then try to find the sample again using a phrase you would actually remember a year from now, not the note's title. Import success and recall are separate tests, and the second one is the one your old archive failed.
- Open the actual file. A title in a list is not proof the attachment survived.
Frequently asked questions
Is Evernote shutting down?
No. Evernote is operating and selling plans, read live on 14 September 2026. The recurring question in community threads followed the ownership change, the price rises and the smaller free plan. Those are reasons people looked elsewhere, not evidence of a shutdown.
What is the best free Evernote alternative?
Joplin, if the import has to be clean: it is free and open source, and its ENEX import carries notes, notebooks, tags, attachments and metadata. Obsidian is free with no account at all. Apple Notes is free if you are on Apple hardware. Notion's free tier works for one person.
Which alternative imports Evernote notes with tags intact?
Joplin. Its documentation states that ENEX import brings complete notebooks along with notes, tags, resources and note metadata, and that tables are converted too.
What gets lost in a Joplin import?
Joplin's own docs name two things. Evernote's recognition data from scanned images is not preserved, although Joplin can recreate it if you turn on its own OCR. And colours, font sizes and font faces are dropped when HTML is converted to Markdown, though the text always comes over in full. There is an option to import ENEX as HTML if that formatting matters. Links between notes are mostly preserved, and Joplin guesses the target by title, which does not always work.
How much does Evernote cost in 2026?
Free is 50 notes, 1 notebook, 1 device and 1GB of monthly uploads. Starter is €6.65 a month or €79.90 a year. Advanced is €16.66 a month or €199.99 a year. Read on evernote.com/compare-plans on 14 September 2026, shown in euros.
Do I have to move at all?
No, and for a lot of people the honest answer is to keep Evernote for the old archive and put new material somewhere else. Migrations fail most often when people try to move ten years at once.