I've used all of them for real work. I moved my actual notes — 847 documents, 3 years of thinking — across each tool to test the import/export, the search, and what it's actually like to live in them long-term.
| App | Free Tier | Paid | Data Ownership | Offline |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Obsidian | Fully free | $4/mo (sync) or free | Local files | Always |
| Notion | Block limit removed, unlimited now | $10/mo (Plus) | Notion servers | Limited |
| Evernote | 1 device only | $10.99/mo | Evernote servers | Yes (paid) |
| Logseq | Fully free | DB version TBD | Local files | Always |
| Apple Notes | Free (with Apple device) | iCloud storage | iCloud (Apple) | Yes |
Notes are plain Markdown files stored on your device. This means: they're readable by any text editor, searchable with grep, version-controllable with git, and yours forever regardless of what happens to the company.
The plugin ecosystem is the killer feature. There are 1,000+ community plugins. The ones I use daily: Dataview (query your notes like a database), Daily Notes, Git (sync to GitHub), and Templater.
The graph view is impressive but mostly useless for actual work. It's a good demo, not a feature you'll use daily.
Best personal note-taking app. Full stop.
Notion is the Swiss Army knife of productivity tools. Not just notes — databases, wikis, project management, kanban boards, calendars. The free tier is now unlimited on personal use (they removed the block limit in 2024).
The problem: your data lives on Notion's servers. If they go down, you're offline. If they change their pricing model, you're stuck. Export works, but the exported Markdown is messy compared to what goes in.
For teams, Notion is excellent. Shared databases, comments, page history, and real-time collaboration are mature and well-implemented. The guest permissions are granular.
If you have years of notes in Evernote: export to ENEX format now, then import to Obsidian or Notion. Don't get stuck paying $10.99/month for the same features you could get for free elsewhere.
Migration from Evernote to Obsidian: export all notes as ENEX, use the Yarle converter tool (free) to convert to Markdown, import the folder into Obsidian. Worked perfectly for my 847 notes.
Outliner-first approach — everything is bullets, connected by bidirectional links. If you think in lists and like the daily notes pattern (capture everything in today's note, link to "pages" for topics), Logseq is excellent.
Files are local Markdown (or their DB format in the new version). The open source community is active. No vendor lock-in.
The learning curve is higher than Obsidian for people coming from traditional note apps. The Roam/Logseq outliner pattern is either exactly what you want or feels wrong — try it for a week before committing.
npm install -g yarle-evernote-to-md (or download binary)yarle --enexSources ./notes.enex --outputDir ./obsidian-notesI ran this on 847 notes. 844 came over perfectly. 3 had formatting issues from old tables — easy to fix manually.
Every note I've taken in Notion lives on their servers. They could change pricing, go down, or get acquired. My Obsidian notes are a folder on my laptop — backed up to iCloud and GitHub. I own them in a way I don't own my Notion data.
For most personal notes: own your data. For team collaboration where you need real-time editing and databases: Notion is worth the trade-off.