With dozens of social media apps, newsletters, personal projects, and never-ending fleeting thoughts, we are bombarded with information from all sides. That’s why staying organized and productive is more challenging than ever, making a reliable note-taking app essential to our routine. However, with so many options available, which one is the right pick for you? Evernote and OneNote are two of the oldest note-taking apps out there, while Notion and Obsidian are new-age solutions for our growing needs.

In this post, I will go over all four contenders, exploring their strengths and weaknesses, key features, and ideal use cases to help you find the perfect fit for your needs.

Notion

More than a note-taking app

Let’s start the list with one of the most hyped (rightfully so) note-taking apps out there. Notion uses an innovative block editor where you can drag and drop different kinds of blocks (text, media, links, quotes) around pages and create a truly personalized workspace in no time. You can create different workspaces and add pages, subpages, and link-related ones in your PKM (Personal Knowledge Management) system. Notion shines in terms of the templates library. It has an excellent collection of built-in and third-party templates to choose from. Whether you want to manage projects or create a finance tracker, subscription tracker, digital journal, or book tracker, you won’t have a hard time finding a relevant template.

Another selling point of Notion is automation. With buttons, synced blocks, and integration with third-party services like Slack, you can automate your databases and take your workflow to the next level. Aside from taking notes, Notion can also be an ideal tool for managing projects. It comes with a number of database types like list, board, gallery, timeline, and more to manage your personal and work projects like a pro. The company recently introduced forms to gather feedback from your students, employees, and general audience. Overall, Notion goes beyond taking notes and can replace multiple productivity apps in your workflow.

There are a couple of cons, though. Notion doesn’t offer an offline mode, and its mobile apps are web-wrappers that don’t deliver a native experience on phones. The pricing starts at $10 per month.

• Notion

  See at Notion

Obsidian

A powerful offline-focused solution

If Notion limitations are a deal-breaker for you, consider using Obsidian. It’s an offline-first solution with a unique approach to taking and storing notes. You can create a new vault and pick any location on your device to save your notes. Obsidian uses markdown language to take notes, and it requires a learning curve. In return, markdown language gives you the flexibility of using any text editor to view your notes, something that’s not possible with OneNote, Evernote, and Notion.

Obsidian has a passionate community that has developed hundreds of plugins to extend your vault’s functionality. You can unlock advanced tables, Kanban boards, formulas, and much more with community plugins. The company also offers a couple of unique add-ons over its rivals.

The first one is Canvas, which is essentially an infinite board built into your vault. You can use arrows, cards, text, colors, and much more to brainstorm and map out your ideas and complex projects seamlessly. You can also link your related notes and glance over their relationship from a dedicated graph view. Other features include split view, multi-tab support, rich export options, and more.

The Obsidian Sync add-on starts at $5 per month. You can avoid it by using a third-party cloud service like OneDrive or Google Drive to back up and sync vaults across devices.

• Obsidian

  OS

  Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, iPadOS, Android

  Individual pricing

  Free normally; $4/month for Obsidian Sync

  Download Obsidian

Evernote

One of the oldest players in the game

I gave up Evernote after its recent acquisition. But to my surprise, Bending Spoons (new owners of Evernote) has done a solid job with new features and performance improvements. It has robust task management (way better than Notion), calendar integration to view and manage your Gmail and Outlook events, and a dedicated Home view to glance over your pinned notes, scratch pad, events, tasks, and other widgets.

The other goodies of Evernote remain the same as before. It supports tags for powerful organization, a capable search menu, real-time collaboration, offline notebooks, a handy web clipper, integration with Google Drive, a decent collection of drawing tools, and more.

However, unlike Notion and Obsidian, Evernote’s free plan is very limited. You need to start with a monthly plan at $15 to unlock all advanced features.

• Evernote

  Download Evernote

OneNote

Perfect for handwriting

OneNote is easily the most popular note-taking app out there. With notebooks, sections, a standard toolbar, tags, math formulas, and more, Microsoft has focused on and nailed the basics here. OneNote has native apps on all the platforms and it remains completely free to download and use.

As expected, OneNote shines with a deeper integration with Microsoft 365 services. You can access your notebooks right from the Windows Start menu, create Outlook tasks, insert Loop components, and even spreadsheets from Excel.

Microsoft offers Copilot AI in OneNote to brainstorm ideas and refine existing notes (it does require a separate plan, though). OneNote beats every other note-taking app in terms of drawing tools. If you frequently take notes with a stylus on a Windows convertible or iPad, look no further and go with Microsoft’s note-taking app.

My only issue with OneNote is sync speed. Sometimes, it fails to sync the latest changes across devices. I would also like to see reminder support in OneNote (something that the company is working on).

• Microsoft OneNote

  See at Microsoft Store

Which app is right for you?

Whether you're a student, professional, or simply someone who wants to declutter your mind, the quick overview above will help you to make an informed decision in no time. Let me simplify the equation for you. OneNote has a robust integration on Windows and Microsoft 365 services, Evernote shines with a brand-new Home menu and a powerful web clipper, Notion is an all-in-one productivity house, while Obsidian marches ahead with privacy and flexibility.

Go ahead, pick your favorite tool, and unlock the power of organized thinking. If you are new to such productivity apps, keep these things in mind before picking up a note-taking tool.