The app that defined the category, now run by Bending Spoons
Evernote is the app that taught everyone what a digital notebook was. Notebooks and tags, a browser clipper that saves articles cleanly, a scanner that turns phone photos of receipts into searchable documents, and search that reads text inside images and PDFs. Bending Spoons bought it in 2023, moved operations to Europe, and rebuilt the plan structure.
We list Evernote here because it is the tool most people in this category are trying to leave, and because it still does two things better than any free alternative.
Still the right call for scanned-paper archives
- People with archives of scanned paper who rely on search inside images and PDFs
- Heavy web clippers who need capture to work on awkward pages
- Teams already standardized on it who are not looking to migrate
- Anyone who wants OCR without assembling it themselves
$99 to start, $249.99 for unlimited notes: the price of staying
As of July 2026, free is 50 notes in 1 notebook, with 5 spaces, 20 tags, 200 attachments, 1 GB of storage, and sync on 1 device. That is a trial with no expiry date rather than a usable free tier, and it is the direct reason for most of the searches that bring people to this page.
Starter costs $99 per year or $14.99 per month. Advanced costs $249.99 per year or $24.99 per month and is the only self-serve plan with unlimited notes. Enterprise is custom.
50 notes and one device: the limits that push people out
- A 50-note cap makes the free plan unusable as a daily tool
- $99 per year is expensive next to a $0 app that keeps files on your disk
- Repeated price increases and plan reshuffles since 2023 have worn out long-time users
- The desktop app has had a decade of performance complaints and they are not fully resolved
- Notes live in Evernote's format, so leaving means an ENEX export and an import that rarely lands perfectly
Export the ENEX, and where we would send you next
Evernote is not a bad product, it is an expensive one with a free tier that no longer serves anybody. If your notes are mostly scanned documents you need to search, paying for Advanced is a defensible decision because no free tool matches that. Everyone else should export an ENEX file and try Joplin first, which reproduces the notebooks, tags, and clipper workflow at no cost.
Reader reviews
What people who actually use Evernote think of it.
No reviews of Evernote yet. If you have used it, yours would be the first.
The useful part is the specifics: what you used it for, and where it got in your way.
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