Best AI note-taking apps in 2026: 6 apps compared

You want a note app where AI helps you find what you wrote, sort out the backlog and save time on rewriting. Below are the six apps people compare most often in 2026: what their AI does, what it costs, who can read your notes and which devices they run on. We checked prices and features against each vendor’s own pages in early October 2026.

The short answer

• FixNote fits you if you want an assistant that answers from all your notes, plus end-to-end encryption with nothing to set up, on Windows, macOS and in the browser.
• Notion fits a team that keeps its wiki, tasks and databases in one place and is willing to pay for the Business plan to get Notion Agent, answers from the workspace and AI Meeting Notes.
• Obsidian fits people who like to tinker: notes are plain Markdown files, and AI comes from whichever plugins you choose.
• Evernote fits people with a long-standing archive of web clips and PDFs who are fine paying $14.99 a month or more.
• Apple Notes fits people who use only an iPhone, iPad and Mac and want AI for summarizing recordings and polishing text.
• Joplin fits people who care about open source, Linux and their own sync server, and want an AI chat about the open note plus search by meaning.

The comparison at a glance

App	Free plan	Paid from	AI	End-to-end encryption	Windows	Web
FixNote	Yes, no note limit	$7/month	Assistant across all notes; own key or Ollama for free	Yes, always on	Yes	Yes
Notion	Yes	$10/month	Notion AI answers from your pages, Agent, AI Meeting Notes in Business ($20); trial on Free and Plus	No	Yes	Yes
Obsidian	Yes	$5/month (Sync)	Community plugins only	With Obsidian Sync	Yes	No
Evernote	50 notes, one device	$14.99/month	AI Assistant, semantic search, AI Transcribe	Selected text only	Yes	Yes
Apple Notes	Yes, with Apple devices	No paid plan	Apple Intelligence: Writing Tools, recording summaries	With Advanced Data Protection	No	iCloud.com
Joplin	Yes, open source	€2.99/month (Joplin Cloud)	Chat about the open note, semantic search, desktop app	Yes, turned on by hand	Yes	With Joplin Cloud

Prices are for monthly billing; Joplin Cloud is priced in euros.

FixNote

FixNote is our app, so read this section with that in mind. It runs on Windows, macOS and in the browser, and on phones as a web app. There are no native iPhone or Android apps.

The center of FixNote is the assistant. It searches by words and by meaning, answers with links to your notes, and writes, edits and files notes into folders. Each change appears as a diff; deleting, or changing more than a few notes at once, always asks first, and any change can be undone. On the free plan the assistant uses your own model key or Ollama on your computer; Pro adds FixNote AI, which needs no key. Inside a note you can select text and ask to rewrite or expand it, and Tidy up suggests folders and titles for notes that have piled up. You accept or reject each suggestion yourself.

FixNote handles voice on the device: voice notes and call summaries on Windows and macOS 14.2+ never send audio online. Text in images is read on the device too, so screenshots turn up in search. The MCP server opens your notes to Claude and Cursor, and the Telegram bot turns forwarded messages into notes.

Notes are encrypted on your device, and the server stores only ciphertext. Free costs nothing, never expires and needs no account. Pro is $7 a month or $60 a year, with a 7-day trial and no card required. The weak spots: no phone apps, no Linux version, and no databases or links between notes.

Notion

Notion is the strongest of the six for team work: databases with views, a wiki, tasks and projects in one workspace. Its full AI comes with the Business plan at $20 per member per month. Notion AI and Notion Agent answer questions from your pages with links and carry out multi-step tasks across your workspace and connected apps, and AI Meeting Notes records meetings in the desktop app and writes a summary. On Free and on Plus ($10 a month) you can only try the AI.

Notion has apps for Windows, macOS, iPhone and Android, a web version and an MCP server. There is no end-to-end encryption: Notion holds the keys to your data, and you can’t use the app without an account. Offline, Notion’s apps open only the pages you marked as available offline in advance, and the browser has no such mode. More in FixNote vs Notion.

Obsidian

Obsidian keeps notes as plain Markdown files on your disk and needs no account. The app is free; Obsidian Sync costs $4 a month billed yearly or $5 monthly and uses AES-256 end-to-end encryption. There are apps for Windows, macOS, Linux, iPhone and Android, and no web version.

Obsidian has no built-in AI. Community plugins add it: chat with your vault, search by meaning, connections to different models. That is flexible, but picking and configuring the plugins is up to you. Obsidian has no official MCP server either: since version 1.12 there is an official command-line tool, and MCP servers come from the community. More in FixNote vs Obsidian.

Evernote

Evernote has been around for a long time, and its web clipper, tasks, calendar and PDF tools are still strong. It has plenty of AI: AI Assistant in a chat, semantic search, AI Transcribe for meetings and AI editing. Its plans page ticks these features on every plan, while connecting your notes to Claude and ChatGPT over MCP starts with Starter.

The free plan is the catch: 50 notes, one notebook and one device. Starter is $14.99 a month or $99 a year; Advanced is $24.99 a month or $249.99 a year. There is no end-to-end encryption, though paid plans let you lock selected text in a note with a passphrase. More in FixNote vs Evernote.

Apple Notes

Apple Notes is free and already on your iPhone, iPad and Mac. On devices with Apple Intelligence it rewrites text and summarizes audio recordings, and calls recorded in the Phone app or FaceTime land in Notes with a transcript. Apple’s dictation runs on the device. There is no chat that answers questions from all your notes.

Apple Notes has no Windows app; other computers reach it through iCloud.com. End-to-end encryption comes only with Advanced Data Protection for iCloud, and once that is on, iCloud.com access is off by default until you allow it. More in FixNote vs Apple Notes.

Joplin

Joplin is free and open source, with apps for Windows, macOS, Linux, iPhone and Android, and Joplin Cloud subscribers also get a web app. You can sync through Dropbox, OneDrive, WebDAV, your own Joplin Server or Joplin Cloud from €2.99 a month. End-to-end encryption is available in every app, but you turn it on yourself, and the master password can’t be recovered.

Joplin 3.7, released in September 2026, brought AI to the desktop app: a chat about the open note, on-device semantic search and an MCP server. The model comes from Joplin Cloud AI, your own key or Ollama, and all of it is off by default. On-device voice typing exists only in the Android app. More in FixNote vs Joplin.

How to choose

1. List the devices you write on. A Windows PC rules out Apple Notes, Linux leaves Obsidian and Joplin, and if you need a browser, Obsidian drops out.
2. Decide who may read your notes. For a journal, money or health, pick an app where end-to-end encryption is on by default, or turn it on right away.
3. Write down what the AI should do. Answers across your whole archive, edits to one note and meeting summaries are different jobs, and the apps cover them differently.
4. Work out the yearly price including AI. In Notion that means Business; in Obsidian, plugins plus Sync; in FixNote, your own key for free or Pro.
5. Pick two apps from the table, move one folder of notes into each and write only there for a week. In FixNote that is Settings → Data → Import notes, and the import and export page lists the formats it reads.