Open source alternatives to Evernote
Evernote is one of the best-known note-taking services. These open source apps cover its core job of capturing and organizing notes across devices, and they can import Evernote's ENEX export files.
4 alternatives, sorted by GitHub stars as of 21 October 2026. Reviewed .
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Joplin
Offline-first Markdown notes and to-dos with end-to-end encrypted sync to storage you choose
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Trilium Notes
Hierarchical notes for large personal knowledge bases, with many note types and self-hosted sync
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Notesnook
End-to-end encrypted notes for every platform, with importers from Evernote, Google Keep and Obsidian
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Standard Notes
End-to-end encrypted notes with a published encryption spec and a sync server you can run yourself
What Evernote does
Evernote is a hosted service for capturing and organizing notes, web clippings, documents and images. Notes are grouped into notebooks and spaces and labeled with tags and reminders, and a Web Clipper saves pages from the browser. It adds tasks, connections to Google and Microsoft calendars, search that also finds text inside images and documents, and AI features such as related notes, meeting transcription and a connector for AI assistants. Apps exist for iOS, Android, the web, Windows and Mac. The service is now provided by Bending Spoons.
Why people look for an alternative
- A restrictive free plan. Evernote Free allows up to 50 notes, one notebook and one connected device, with a monthly upload limit. Long-time free users with large archives must either pay or move.
- A change of owner. The terms of service now name Bending Spoons as the provider of the Evernote service. With a proprietary hosted service, plan and feature changes are decided by its owner alone.
- Hosted only. Notes live on the vendor’s servers, and there is no way to self-host the service.
- Limited encryption. The plans page lists in-note encryption on the Mac and Windows apps. It does not describe end-to-end encryption of all notes, which several open source apps offer by default.
What to compare in an alternative
- Importing your notes. Export notebooks from Evernote as ENEX files. Joplin, Notesnook, Standard Notes and Trilium Notes can import them; Joplin can convert notes to Markdown or keep them as HTML.
- Encryption. Notesnook and Standard Notes encrypt everything on the device by default. Joplin offers optional end-to-end encryption. Trilium encrypts only notes you mark as protected.
- Sync and hosting. Joplin can sync through Nextcloud, WebDAV or S3 storage you control. Trilium syncs through its own server, which you host. Notesnook and Standard Notes run hosted sync services with free tiers, and their servers can also be self-hosted.
- Organization. Joplin’s notebooks and tags are closest to Evernote’s model. Notesnook has notebooks, tags and colors; Standard Notes uses tags; Trilium uses a deep note tree.
- Apps and clipping. Joplin, Notesnook and Standard Notes have desktop and mobile apps; Trilium relies on a mobile web interface or community apps. Joplin, Notesnook and Trilium have web clippers.
- Free versus paid features. Notesnook’s free plan caps notebooks and tags, and Standard Notes keeps richer editors and nested tags for paid plans.
Which one to choose
Joplin is the most direct replacement: notebooks and tags, a mature ENEX importer, apps on every platform and sync through storage you already run. If encryption by default matters most, Notesnook offers a rich editor and a long list of importers, and Standard Notes a simpler writing space with a published, audited encryption design. For people whose Evernote archive has grown into a large knowledge base, Trilium Notes adds a deep hierarchy, many note types and free self-hosted sync, at the cost of official mobile apps. The notes and knowledge base guide compares the wider category.
Evernote is a product of Bending Spoons. OpenSourcePicks is not affiliated with Bending Spoons or with the projects listed. More tools in Notes & Knowledge Base.