Microsoft OneNote has been a long-standing tool for digital note-taking. It is popular for its fuss-free design, efficient note-taking capabilities, and real-time collaboration.
However, OneNote isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution. You must integrate several other tools with the platform to enhance its feature set.
So, if you’re looking for a more comprehensive solution, there’s a likely Microsoft OneNote alternative waiting for you. Read on and find out the 13 top OneNote alternatives that fit your needs.
13 Best Microsoft OneNote Alternatives
- ⏰ 60-Second Summary
- Why Should You Go for OneNote Alternatives?
- The 13 Best OneNote Alternatives
- 1. ClickUp (Best AI-powered note-taking, summarizing, and collaboration tool)
- 2. Google Keep (Best for Google Workspace users)
- 3. Evernote (Best for comprehensive note-taking and AI transcriptions)
- 4. Notion (Best for managing data and complex projects)
- 5. Obsidian (Best for taking personal notes and improving productivity)
- 6. Simplenote (Best for basic note-taking)
- 7. Bear (Best for note-taking on Apple devices)
- 8. Joplin (Best for creating, organizing, and storing personal notes)
- 9. Zoho Notebook (Best for visual note-taking with multimedia content)
- 10. Workflowy (Best for in-depth and structured note-taking)
- 11. Milanote (Best for visual note-taking and project management)
- 12. Coda (Best for building custom workflows and tools within documents)
- 13. Roam Research (Best for creating an organized and interconnected notes network)
Summarize this article for me please⏰ 60-Second Summary
Here are the best OneNote alternatives you should try out in 2025:
- ClickUp: Best AI-powered note-taking, summarizing, and collaboration tool
- Google Keep: Best for Google Workspace users
- Evernote: Best for comprehensive note-taking and AI transcriptions
- Notion: Best for managing data and complex projects
- Obsidian: Best for taking personal notes and improving productivity
- Simplenote: Best for basic note-taking
- Bear: Best for note-taking on Apple devices
- Joplin: Best for creating, organizing, and storing personal notes
- Zoho Notebook: Best for visual note-taking with multimedia content
- Workflowy: Best for in-depth and structured note-taking
- Milanote: Best for visual note-taking and project management
- Coda: Best for building custom workflows and tools within documents
- Roam Research: Best for creating an organized and interconnected notes network
Summarize this article for me pleaseWhy Should You Go for OneNote Alternatives?
OneNote is great for Microsoft Office users. It’s free, easy to use, and offers a decent amount of cloud storage. But there are certain downsides.
- Lacks advanced formatting options: Unlike its competitors, Microsoft OneNote has basic formatting. Hence, it’s difficult to create polished documents directly within the app. Though you can change fonts, bold, italicize, and underline texts, you can’t fine-tune character spacing or intricately format tables and headers and footers
- Synchronization issues: According to a few users, OneNote isn’t reliable at syncing. It delays syncing information across platforms and devices. So, if you work offline or from multiple devices, you might face workflow disruptions
- Cluttered user interface: OneNote is pretty straightforward, but its interface is slightly cluttered, especially for newbies. It takes some time and training to figure out the app features and use it to its maximum potential
🧠 Did you know? Microsoft OneNote ranked 13th in the ‘Most Popular Microsoft Apps Worldwide by Downloads’ in the third quarter of 2024, with 3 million downloads worldwide.
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Summarize this article for me pleaseThe 13 Best OneNote Alternatives
1. ClickUp (Best AI-powered note-taking, summarizing, and collaboration tool)
Work today is broken. We’re all working in too many disconnected apps, and it’s killing team productivity. The constant switching between apps—copying, pasting, formatting, and sharing notes—wastes time and increases the chances of miscommunication or losing important details.
ClickUp helps you tackle this easily and improves work efficiency. It is the everything app for work that does much more than simple note-taking. Unlike OneNote’s rigid approach, ClickUp captures and integrates notes directly into your project management workflows via ClickUp Docs.
It helps you organize your ideas and workflows, create nested pages to maintain a hierarchical structure, add tables, embed bookmarks, and even build wikis to centralize scattered knowledge. You can also use bi-directional links on Docs to link notes and tasks within ClickUp.
ClickUp’s AI tool further improves the note-taking experience. ClickUp Brain is an intelligent AI assistant that helps with brainstorming, content formatting, follow-ups, and task management. You can also use it as an AI note summarizer to summarize long documents and meeting and lecture notes.
ClickUp Notepad is your perfect companion that can be used to quickly jot down, organize, and format notes and transform entries into trackable tasks. Plus, you can easily access these notes from the browser or via the ClickUp app.
ClickUp also has a variety of templates to help you capture notes in a standard format. For example, the ClickUp Meeting Notes Template can help you track your team’s discussions.
Using this template, you can:
- Organize meeting notes and action items
- Align discussions with meeting structure and guidelines
- Keep your meeting minutes and agendas well-documented for later use
ClickUp best features
- Work organization: Create a knowledge hub and organize your notes and ideas using ClickUp Notepad
- Real-time collaboration: Collaborate on notes and ideas and convert them into trackable tasks using ClickUp Docs and ClickUp Tasks
- Workflow automation: Automate note summarizing, assigning tasks, and more with ClickUp Brain
- Contextual notes: Use ClickUp Clips to instantly record screens and share them with your notes to add context
- Workflow visualization: Brainstorm ideas, visualize processes and workflows, and sketch and draw freely with ClickUp Whiteboards
- AI note-taking: Get automatic meeting summaries, transcripts, and action items with ClickUp’s AI Notetaker
ClickUp limitations
- Since ClickUp is feature-rich, newbies might take time to learn its features
ClickUp pricing
free forever
Best for individual users
Free Free
Key Features:
60MB Storage
Unlimited Tasks
Unlimited Free Plan Members
unlimited
Best for small teams
$7 $10
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Unlimited Storage
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Unlimited Integrations
business
Best for mid-sized teams
$12 $19
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Google SSO
Unlimited Message History
Unlimited Mind Maps
enterprise
Best for many large teams
Get a custom demo and see how ClickUp aligns with your goals.
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* Prices when billed annually
The world's most complete work AI, starting at $9 per month
ClickUp Brain is a no Brainer. One AI to manage your work, at a fraction of the cost.
ClickUp ratings and reviews
- G2: 4.7/5 (10,000+ reviews)
- Capterra: 4.6/5 (4,300+ reviews)
What are real-life users saying about ClickUp?
2. Google Keep (Best for Google Workspace users)
Google Keep’s integration with other Google apps is what makes it one of the simplest yet most effective Microsoft OneNote alternatives. Though minimalistic, the tool does a decent job as a notes app.
You can use the handy Chrome extension or access it from your Gmail to save notes and links quickly. Plus, you can share these notes via Gmail or collaborate on them using Google Docs.
Google Keep best features
- Create to-dos and grocery lists, brainstorm ideas, and organize them into notes
- Add reminders to notes to prevent missing deadlines
- Use color codes, labels, filters, and pins to find notes easily
Google Keep limitations
- Lacks advanced formatting options
- No organizational features like folders and tags
- A few users experienced frequent crashes
Google Keep pricing
- Free
- Business Starter: $7 per user/month
- Business Standard: $14 per user/month
- Business Plus: $22 per user/month
- Enterprise: Custom pricing
Google Keep ratings and reviews
- G2: No reviews available
- Capterra: 4.7/5 (200+ reviews)
What are real-life users saying about Google Keep?
3. Evernote (Best for comprehensive note-taking and AI transcriptions)
Evernote’s digital note-taking tool offers a sophisticated system for organizing and searching notes. You can store audio clips, texts, and images and sync your notes across multiple devices to access them anytime.
It’s also easy to search any note, attachment, or photo using note titles, dates, tags, or keywords. Evernote also offers seamless integrations with Google apps like Google Calendar, which helps you sync your schedules and tasks effectively.
Evernote best features
- Auto-sync notes online across all devices
- Transcribe meeting notes and convert audio, video, and image files into text files using AI
- Scan notes, docs, and files with a built-in document scanner
- Build a to-do list by creating tasks inside your notes
Evernote limitations
- Learning the tool takes time and effective training sessions
- Several users seem unsatisfied with Evernote’s free version as it limits notes up to 50, one notebook, and 250 MB monthly uploads
- The desktop version upgrade resulted in slow-loading pages and other software glitches
Evernote pricing
- Free
- Personal: $14.99/month
- Professional: $17.99/month
- Teams: $24.99 per user/month
- Enterprise: Custom pricing
Evernote ratings and reviews
- G2: 4.4/5 (2,000+ reviews)
- Capterra: 4.4/5 (8,200+ reviews)
What are real-life users saying about Evernote?
📖Read More: How to Take Notes from a Video Like a Pro
4. Notion (Best for managing data and complex projects)
Notion is a collaborative note-taking tool that stands out with its highly customizable workspaces. It combines notes, databases, and project management in one platform. With Notion, you can create interconnected pages, manage projects, and organize information with multiple view options.
It also offers ready-made templates to standardize processes and collaborate on notes. Plus, Notion’s AI tool for note-taking comes in handy for searching and translating notes.
Notion best features
- Organize content on a page by moving items, editing, and customizing them the way you want
- Build complex documents with block-based editing system
- Create an advanced knowledge management system to enhance project performance
Notion limitations
- According to several users, Notion has a steep learning curve and might overwhelm new users
- It’s challenging to find information within the app
- The offline functionality is very limited, which might frustrate users who need to access or edit critical information frequently
Notion pricing
- Free
- Plus: $12 per seat/month
- Business: $18 per seat/month
- Enterprise: Custom pricing
- Notion AI: $10 per member/month
Notion ratings and reviews
- G2: 4.7/5 (5,900+ reviews)
- Capterra: 4.7/5 (2,400+ reviews)
What are real-life users saying about Notion?
📮ClickUp Insight: Our survey found that knowledge workers maintain an average of 6 daily connections at their workplace. This probably entails multiple pings back and forth across emails, chat, and project management tools.
What if you could converge all these conversations in one place? With ClickUp, you can! It’s the everything app for work that combines projects, knowledge, and chat in one place—all powered by AI that helps you and your team work faster and smarter.
5. Obsidian (Best for taking personal notes and improving productivity)
Obsidian is a unique network-focused OneNote alternative that lets you link your ideas and thoughts, creating a network of notes. It offers several customization options with plugins and helps you build a personal knowledge base through linked notes.
You can use backlinks to link one note to another and form an interconnected web that simplifies complex thoughts and research. Obsidian can also help you create a graph visualizing the link between your notes so you can understand your thinking patterns.
Obsidian best features
- Connect notes and link ideas, places, people, books, etc. with Obsidian Links
- Brainstorm, research, create diagrams, and more on a limitless canvas
- Track the version history of notes for better collaboration and accountability
Obsidian limitations
- Has a slightly steep learning curve
- When working in large vaults with a significant number of notes and files, the software navigation might slow down
Obsidian pricing
- Personal use: Free forever
- Commercial use: $50 per user, billed annually
Obsidian ratings and reviews
- G2: No reviews available
- Capterra: 4.8/5 (30+ reviews)
What are real-life users saying about Obsidian?
6. Simplenote (Best for basic note-taking)
Simplenote is a no-frills app for quick and efficient note-taking. It has a clean interface that helps capture notes, tag notes for instant search, and auto-sync them across devices. So, if you’re a student or a professional looking for simplified OneNote alternatives to jot down meeting notes, Simplenote can be a great option.
Simplenote best features
- Share to-do lists, post instructions, and publish notes online
- Auto-back up notes with every change so you can track previous notes
- Use Markdown format to write, preview, and share notes
Simplenote limitations
- No ready-to-use note-taking templates
- The table features are too basic
- Lacks hierarchical organization and advanced formatting
Simplenote pricing
- Unavailable
Simplenote ratings and reviews
- G2: 4.2/5 (30+ reviews)
- Capterra: Not enough reviews
What are real-life users saying about Simplenote?
📖 Read More: How to Share and Collaborate on Notes
7. Bear (Best for note-taking on Apple devices)
Bear is a solid OneNote alternative for Apple users. It uses Markdown language to write and format notes. Be it shopping lists or project to-dos, you can easily organize notes with photos, tables, and lists, add flexible tags for search, and format them the way you like with the Markdown editor. You can also share notes with multiple users across devices using iCloud.
While the app isn’t robust, it’s useful for writers, bloggers, and professionals as they can create aesthetic and simple visual designs, write books, or even build a wiki to store ideas centrally.
Bear best features
- Search for texts inside images and PDFs with OCR search
- Sketch your notes using the Apple pencil or your finger
- Choose from 250+ icons as tags to track notes and pin important tags
- Keep your confidential notes encrypted with private security features
Bear limitations
- Even the pro plan lacks advanced features, according to some users
- Only available for Apple devices
Bear pricing
- Free
- Bear Pro: $2.99 per month
Bear ratings and reviews
- G2: 4.6/5 (40+ reviews)
- Capterra: Not enough reviews
What are real-life users saying about Bear?
💡Pro Tip: Use a consistent tagging system across your notes and use broader categories like projects, personal, meetings, etc., to make search faster and more efficient.
8. Joplin (Best for creating, organizing, and storing personal notes)
Joplin is a privacy-focused, customizable, open-source Microsoft OneNote alternative that lets you organize your notes within notebooks. You can use its rich Markdown editor and toolbar to create aesthetically formatted notes while ensuring their protection with end-to-end encryption.
Since the platform is popular as a strong privacy-focused note-taker and allows adding drawings and diagrams, it’s suitable for personal note-taking. Plus, you can also work on images, PDFs, audio files, and other multimedia content.
Joplin best features
- Format notes, sync them across devices, and tag them for easy search
- Add drawings, diagrams, and other visual elements within notes with a built-in drawing tool
- Collaborate on notes, publish notes on the internet, and share the URL with others
Joplin limitations
- Joplin is expensive, given its limited feature set
- Sometimes, the software might lag, causing workflow disruptions
Joplin pricing
- Basic: 2.99€ (~$3.2)/month
- Pro: 5.99€ (~$6.5)/month
- Teams: 7.99€ (~$8.6)/month
Joplin ratings and reviews
- G2: Not enough reviews
- Capterra: No reviews available
What are real-life users saying about Joplin?
9. Zoho Notebook (Best for visual note-taking with multimedia content)
Zoho Notebook has a similar notebook-based structure to OneNote but offers a card system for arranging notes within notebooks. It lets you create individual notebooks on different topics with texts, images, audio files, sketches, etc.
Plus, you can store your ideas on separate sticky notes, keep them organized, and even color-code them for easy tracking. However, it works best for creative professionals and students who work on visual ideas and value an intuitive note-taking experience.
Zoho Notebook best features
- Create notebooks with note cards, audio notes, checklists, images, files, etc.
- Jot down handwritten notes and sketch visual ideas with Sketch cards
- Automatically convert content into note cards with Smart Cards
Zoho Notebook limitations
- Text formatting options are limited
- Zoho Notebook can be very slow, especially when opening multiple note cards, loading large notebooks, or adding images
Zoho Notebook pricing
- Notebook Essential: $0
- Notebook Pro: $1.99 per month
- Notebook for business: $4.99 per month
Zoho Notebook ratings and reviews
- G2: 4.4/5 (70+ reviews)
- Capterra: 4.5/5 (80+ reviews)
What are real-life users saying about Zoho Notebook?
📖 Read More: Best AI Note-Taking Apps for Meeting
10. Workflowy (Best for in-depth and structured note-taking)
Workflowy is one of the best OneNote alternatives when it comes to structured note-taking. It uses bullets to help you break down larger tasks and organize them into to-dos.
The tool also has great outlining capabilities, such as a drag-and-drop functionality to reorder sections, which makes it easier to create article outlines. Plus, Workflowy comes with zoom-in/out abilities that help you stay focused on your tasks.
Workflowy best features
- Create multiple versions of a task or text and auto-update them in real time with Mirror (live copy)
- Zoom into your notes for a distraction-free interface and focus on just the relevant part
- Convert bullets into tasks or to-do items, bookmark tasks, and group them for easy access
Workflowy limitations
- Some users find the interface a bit clunky, and moving items within a task is challenging
- Limited formatting options. For instance, there are no larger headings or styling options to differentiate notes
- The free version has a 100MB file upload cap along with a monthly bullet limit
Workflowy pricing
- Basic: Free
- Workflowy Pro: $8.99/month
Workflowy ratings and reviews
- G2: 4.5/5 (25+ reviews)
- Capterra: Not enough reviews
What are real-life users saying about Workflowy?
11. Milanote (Best for visual note-taking and project management)
Milanote is a digital note-taking app ideal for creative professionals. While OneNote has a more linear approach to note-taking, Milanote is popular for its freeform flexible interface that allows you to organize ideas, collaborate in real time, and create visual boards that speak your mind.
So, if you’re a marketing or design professional or a student working on creative projects, this OneNote alternative can give you the best mood board-like experience with ideal mind-mapping features.
Milanote best features
- Arrange ideas and content the way you want with drag-and-drop canvas
- Write and edit notes, upload files and images, and manage tasks in one platform
- Save inspiration and ideas from websites with Milanote web clipper
Milanote limitations
- The tool doesn’t have a calendar feature, which might make it difficult to organize and schedule notes and tasks
- The free version is limited to 100 notes, images, or links, and only 10 file uploads
Milanote pricing
- Free
- Pay per person: $12.50/month
- Team: $49/month for up to 10 people
Milanote ratings and reviews
- G2: 4.5/5 (40+ reviews)
- Capterra: 4.7/5 (50+ reviews)
What are real-life users saying about Milanote?
📖 Read More: Obsidian vs. OneNote: What’s Better for Note-Taking?
12. Coda (Best for building custom workflows and tools within documents)
Coda allows you to create interactive docs with tables, charts, pages and sub-pages, images, links, and other dynamic elements. You can also maintain databases, monitor team performances, and collaborate for task assignments.
In short, Coda is a note-taking and task management tool with robust features that combines document editing, and database capabilities and is best for enterprise teams working in highly customizable environments.
Coda best features
- Create docs with text notes, images, callouts, collapsible content, etc, in a collaborative space
- Centralize knowledge—from strategies and schedules to company policies—in nested pages
- View and track data, set up automation, delegate repetitive tasks, etc. with Coda AI
Coda limitations
- Docs with large datasets crash due to load, which might result in losing important data
- Simple features are hard to use. For example, the editing data in tables is confusing
- Requires coding knowledge to set up formulas and automations
Coda pricing
- Free
- Pro: $12/month per Doc Maker
- Team: $36/month per Doc Maker
- Enterprise: Custom pricing
Coda ratings and reviews
- G2: 4.7/5 (450+ reviews)
- Capterra: 4.6/5 (90+ reviews)
What are real-life users saying about Coda?
📖 Read More: Best Document Management Software to Get Organized
13. Roam Research (Best for creating an organized and interconnected notes network)
Roam Research is known for its bidirectional links, which you can use to link notes, related pages, and blocks. You can track page edits and use ‘/’ command to add relevant blocks like to-dos, text editing tools, live timer, etc.
The best part? Roam gives you a graph view of your notes where your notes are represented as nodes and backlinks, creating a cosmic web. Though the tool has a steep learning curve, its graph view can help explore note connections, trace their origins, and extract insights.
Roam Research best features
- Use bidirectional links to interconnect notes and access them across devices from the browser
- Organize scattered knowledge and ideas into a graph database
- Access community-developed third-party plugins to add new graph functionalities with Roam Depot
Roam Research limitations
- Many users don’t like Roam’s pricing model. It’s complicated and expensive compared to the features it offers
- The software can be slow when managing large databases
Roam Research pricing
- Pro: $15/month
- Believer: $8.33/month
Roam Research ratings and reviews
- G2: Not enough reviews
- Capterra: Not enough reviews
What are real-life users saying about Roam Research?
Summarize this article for me pleaseTry AI-Powered Note-Taking With ClickUp
While note-taking might be a seemingly easy job, it isn’t. When you juggle several projects and have too many notes to handle, you need a solution that makes things easier.
OneNote is great for capturing notes and seamlessly integrates with the Microsoft ecosystem, but its lack of advanced features makes users look for alternatives.
We’ve covered several solid OneNote alternatives. And now, the final call is yours. Assess your needs and choose the tool that ticks all the boxes. If you need a simple note-taker, you can consider Simplenote. For visual note-taking, consider Milanote or Zoho Notebook. However, if you’re looking an everything app with collaborative features, choose ClickUp.
ClickUp gives you an integrated platform where you can capture notes, document ideas, brainstorm, and even execute these ideas without switching apps Ready to explore ClickUp? Sign up for free today! 🏃♂️➡️
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