Joplin review

The Evernote workflow, rebuilt in the open since 2016

Joplin is what most people mean when they ask for a free Evernote. Notebooks and sub-notebooks on the left, tags, notes in Markdown with attachments, and a browser extension that clips full articles, simplified pages, or selections straight into a notebook. It has been maintained by Laurent Cozic since 2016 and is AGPL-3.0 licensed.

The design choice that matters most: Joplin does not run its own mandatory cloud. You pick where sync goes, and Dropbox, OneDrive, Nextcloud, WebDAV, and S3 are all supported alongside the paid Joplin Cloud.

Ex-Evernote users, self-hosters, and terminal people

• People leaving Evernote who want notebooks, tags, and a clipper to work the same way
• Anyone who wants encrypted sync using storage they already pay for
• Self-hosters, since Joplin Server runs in Docker
• Users who need a terminal client, which Joplin actually ships

Free apps, your own sync target, and Cloud priced from EUR 2.40

As of July 2026, every Joplin app is free with unlimited notes and no device cap. Sync to your own storage costs nothing. Joplin Cloud is the optional hosted service: Basic at EUR 2.40 per month billed yearly (EUR 2.99 monthly) with 2 GB of storage and a 10 MB note size cap, Pro at EUR 4.79 per month billed yearly (EUR 5.99 monthly) with 30 GB and notebook sharing, publishing, and email-to-note, and Teams at EUR 6.69 per user per month billed yearly with 50 GB and a two-user minimum.

A decade-old interface, and four other limits

• The interface is functional rather than pleasant. Next to AFFiNE or Anytype it looks like a decade-old app, because it partly is
• The Markdown editor is fine but the rich text mode is weaker, and switching between them can mangle complex formatting
• Encryption is off by default, which surprises people who assume otherwise
• Search is literal and slow on very large collections compared with Evernote's
• Web clipping is good on articles and unreliable on heavy JavaScript pages and paywalled sites

Would we move an Evernote archive here? Yes

If your requirement is "Evernote's workflow, free, and my data not on someone else's server", Joplin is the answer and has been for years. You trade visual polish for control, an active maintainer, and an import path that actually works. We would not recommend it to someone who wants a modern writing surface, but for archival note-keeping with a clipper it is the most dependable free option here.