Notion Alternatives: Prices and Plans Compared

Notion Alternatives at a Glance

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How the Notion Alternatives Differ

Notion's pricing page lists Free at $0 per member per month, Plus at $10, Business at $20 and Enterprise at custom pricing. The page says yearly billing saves up to 20% without stating which billing mode the listed figures use or giving a yearly per-seat number. Free allows 5 megabytes (MB) per uploaded file and 7 days of page history, Plus allows 30 days, and Business 90 days. Paid plans allow files up to 5 gigabytes (GB).

On AI, Free and Plus include a trial of Notion AI, and Business bundles Notion Agent and AI Meeting Notes. A Custom Agents add-on is free to try and then $10 per 1,000 monthly Notion credits. Notion's AI security page says that, by default, neither Notion nor its AI providers use customer data to train models, and that providers retain data for 30 days or fewer on Free, Plus and Business.

The alternatives split into local-first and encrypted tools (Obsidian, Standard Notes, Joplin), a Notion-style workspace (AppFlowy), personal note apps (Bear, Simplenote) and a long-running clipper (Evernote). None offers all of Notion's databases and team pages.

Obsidian

Obsidian's pricing page says the core app is free without limits. Sync is $4 per user per month billed annually or $5 billed monthly, Publish is $8 per site per month billed annually or $10 monthly, and Catalyst is a $25 one-time supporter payment. A Commercial license is $50 per user per year, which Obsidian encourages but does not require.

Obsidian says Sync uses Advanced Encryption Standard (AES)-256 end-to-end encryption and that your data is stored locally on your device, so Obsidian cannot access it. Sync includes version history, shared vaults and cross-device sync. Students, faculty and nonprofit employees get 40% off Sync and Publish. The page makes no AI statement and lists no database or team workspace features.

Worked cost for a team of five over a year: Sync is 5 x $4 x 12 = $240 billed annually, or $300 monthly, and $250 more if everyone buys the Commercial license. Notion Plus for the same five people is $600 at the listed price, with the billing mode not stated.

Standard Notes

Standard Notes lists three plans, all priced per year: Standard at $0, Productivity at $90 and Professional at $120. A Black Friday banner promises 50% off annual plans without giving the discounted prices. Standard shows note history for the current session only, Productivity adds one-year revision history, and Professional has unlimited history, 100 GB of encrypted cloud storage and no stated file size limit (the page says it was tested up to 2 GB).

The plans page says notes are encrypted with XChaCha20-Poly1305. Its privacy page says the code is open, that it cannot read or sell your notes, and that there is no tracking or intrusive analytics. Neither page makes an AI statement. Productivity is described as ideal if you are not using files.

A team of five on Productivity pays 5 x $90 = $450 a year. Professional's page mentions sharing with up to five accounts, which could change that figure, so confirm before buying for a team. Standard Notes has no database or team workspace layer.

Joplin

Joplin Cloud is priced per account: Basic is 2.99 EUR/month or 2.40 EUR/month yearly (28.69 EUR/year), Pro is 5.99 EUR/month or 4.79 EUR/month yearly (57.48 EUR/year), and Pro 100 GB is 9.99 EUR/month or 7.99 EUR/month yearly (95.88 EUR/year). Teams is 7.99 EUR/month or 6.69 EUR/month yearly per user, with a 2-user minimum. Joplin Server Business is yearly only: 40.00 EUR per user for 2 to 10 users, 35.00 for 11 to 50 and 30.00 for 51 or more.

Basic allows 10 MB per note or attachment and 2 GB of storage, and cannot share its own notebooks. Pro and Pro 100 GB allow 200 MB per item with 30 GB and 100 GB. Joplin says the app is open source, supports end-to-end encryption, which is not enabled by default and must be turned on from one device first. Joplin Cloud AI, a beta chat model that can summarize or rewrite notes, is included in Basic, Pro, Pro 100 GB and Teams but not Server Business.

A team of five on Teams yearly pays 5 x 80.28 = 401.40 EUR; Server Business is 5 x 40.00 = 200.00 EUR, with you hosting it.

AppFlowy

AppFlowy's Personal plan is $0 for personal productivity. Pro is $12 per member per month billed annually or $16 billed monthly, with guest editors free. The pricing table gives Personal 100 MB of storage, 7 MB uploads and 7 days of version history, and Pro unlimited storage, unlimited uploads and 90 days of history.

The page lists AI meeting notes and responses as a limited trial and AI search as local AI. It makes no statement on AI data use. It links to a GitHub repository and a self-hosting guide, and makes no encryption statement on the pricing page.

A team of five on Pro pays 5 x $12 x 12 = $720 on annual billing, or $960 monthly, against $600 for Notion Plus at the listed price. AppFlowy costs more than Notion at that size, and its free plan's 100 MB cap is the tightest limit on this page.

Bear

Bear Pro is a 7-day free trial and then $2.99/month or $29.99/year. The free tier gives local access to notes and document scanning, with 3 themes and 1 app icon, and no iCloud sync. Sync runs only through iCloud, which is a Pro feature, and Bear is available on Mac, iPhone and iPad.

Bear's sync FAQ says data is encrypted in transit and at rest on Apple's servers. With Apple's Advanced Data Protection turned on, only you can decrypt it, though note titles and tag names stay unencrypted. Bear says it does not want to access your data and may collect anonymous usage statistics. Bear's site makes no AI statement.

Bear has no team plan. Five people each paying $29.99 a year is $149.95 for five separate accounts with no shared workspace. It fits Apple users who want a clean writing app, not teams.

Simplenote

Simplenote says apps, backups, syncing and sharing are all completely free, and publishes no paid plans. It runs on iOS, Android, Mac, Windows, Linux and the web, syncs in real time, and backs up notes on every change so you can see versions from last week or last month. You can share a to-do list or publish a note online.

The site makes no encryption claim and no open source claim, though it links a GitHub repository for Linux downloads. Its homepage has an Ask AI chat widget, and the homepage does not describe what it does or how it handles data. No limits on notes, devices or file size are published.

A team of five pays $0 over a year, but gets no databases, wiki pages or team workspace. It fits people who want plain, fast notes.

Evernote

Evernote lists five plans: Free, Starter, Advanced, Flexible and Unlimited. Its compare-plans page shows no prices; Starter and Advanced can be billed monthly or yearly, and the compare-plans page shows no prices for any plan, and Enterprise is arranged through sales. Free allows 50 notes, 1 device and 1 GB; Starter allows 1,000 notes, 3 devices and 5 GB; Advanced and Unlimited list unlimited notes and storage, with safeguard limits.

Evernote's AI features include an AI Assistant, semantic search, transcription and editing tools, and a connection to tools such as Claude and ChatGPT. Its privacy policy says it does not use your input or output to train its AI models and may use third-party AI providers to process input and output, and that AI can be turned off in account settings.

Because no plan has a public price, a five-person yearly cost cannot be calculated. Compared with Notion, the free plan is tighter and no database or wiki layer is listed.

How to Choose a Notion Alternative

Start with where you want your notes to live. Obsidian, Standard Notes and Bear keep a local or encrypted-first model, Joplin and AppFlowy add open source options, and Evernote, Simplenote and Notion store notes on the vendor's servers.

Next, check AI. Notion bundles agents and meeting notes into Business, Joplin includes a beta AI chat in most paid cloud plans, and Evernote lists several AI tools. Obsidian, Standard Notes and Bear list none on the pages above, and Evernote and Notion both publish statements that they do not train models on customer data.

Then do the seat arithmetic. For five people over a year, Obsidian Sync is $240, Joplin Teams is about 401 EUR, Notion Plus is $600 at the listed price and AppFlowy Pro is $720. A single person has far more options, because Bear, Simplenote and Obsidian cost under $30 a year or nothing.

Who This Is Not For

This page is not for teams that need a migration plan, since it does not compare import tools or export formats. It is also not for readers who need confirmed security certifications, which vendors publish separately.

What Would Change Our Answer

A published per-seat yearly price for Notion, public pricing from Evernote, or an encryption claim from AppFlowy or Simplenote would change which options fit which reader. Prices are as of 2026-11-13, and Notion's page does not state the billing mode of its listed prices.

When Notion Is Still the Better Fit

Notion fits teams that rely on databases, linked pages, permissions and shared workspaces, and that accept vendor-hosted storage. None of the seven alternatives lists all of those features on its pricing pages.

It also fits groups that want AI bundled into the plan. Business includes Notion Agent and AI Meeting Notes at $20 per member per month, and Notion states that customer data is not used to train models by default.

Verdict

Obsidian and Standard Notes fit people who want local or encrypted notes, Joplin and AppFlowy fit people who want open source, and Bear and Simplenote fit individuals who want simple writing. Plans and terms change. The deciding factor is usually the one feature a reader cannot lose, such as shared databases or offline notes; the sections above show which vendors list it.