Blog summary
Evernote and OneNote have been rivals for over a decade, but the ground shifted. Evernote squeezed its free plan down to 50 notes and one notebook, while OneNote stayed completely free with no note cap. Evernote is the tidy, structured clipper with the best web clipper going and strong search. OneNote is the free-form canvas built for handwriting, tablets and no-limit note-taking, tucked inside Microsoft 365. Moving between them got trickier too, since Microsoft retired its official Evernote importer. So the real question is not which app is objectively better, it is which one fits how you take notes, what you're willing to pay, and how you'd move your old notes across. This guide walks through all of it, and shows where Spanbox fits once your notes are sorted.
For years, picking between Evernote and OneNote was a genuine toss-up. Two heavyweight note apps, both cross-platform, both free enough to live in, each with a loyal crowd who swore theirs was better. Then Evernote changed the math. Its free plan got cut to the bone, and suddenly a lot of long-time users started eyeing the exit.
That's why "Evernote vs OneNote" gets searched so much now. It isn't an idle comparison anymore. It's people deciding whether to jump, and OneNote is the obvious place they look first, because it's free and it never capped how much you can keep.
But free isn't the whole story. These two apps think about notes in completely different ways. Evernote is a filing cabinet, neat and searchable. OneNote is a giant whiteboard you can scribble anywhere on. One might feel like home and the other like a foreign country, depending entirely on how your brain works. So let's go through both properly, side by side, and figure out which one is actually right for you.
What is Evernote?
Evernote is the app that made note-taking a thing. For years it was the default place people dumped everything, articles, receipts, screenshots, half-formed ideas, and trusted they could find it all later. It runs on every platform, syncs across them, and built its name on being the tidy, searchable memory you never had.
Its whole personality is structure and recall. Notes live in notebooks, tags pull them together across boundaries, and the search is genuinely excellent, reaching text inside images and PDFs on paid plans. The web clipper is still the best in the business, saving a clean copy of almost anything with a click. The catch is the money. Since December 2023 the free plan holds you to 50 notes and one notebook, and the paid tiers, now run by Bending Spoons, climb into the low hundreds of dollars a year.
Pros
- Best-in-class web clipper for saving anything
- Powerful search, including text in images and PDFs
- Clean notebook-and-tag structure that stays tidy
- Mature apps on every platform
Cons
- Free plan capped at 50 notes and one notebook
- Paid tiers cost real money now
- Offline access on mobile is a paid feature
What is OneNote?
OneNote is Microsoft's answer, and it plays a very different game. Instead of a list of notes, it hands you an endless free-form canvas. You can click anywhere on a page and start typing, drop an image beside it, draw an arrow between them, or scribble a diagram with a stylus. It feels less like filing and more like a digital binder you own.
The headline is that it's free, with no limit on how many notes you keep. You're bound only by your OneDrive storage, which starts at 5GB on a free Microsoft account. Notebooks split into sections and pages, handwriting and ink are first-class, and it shines on a Surface or an iPad with a pen. It's part of Microsoft 365 but doesn't need a subscription to use, and Copilot adds AI help if you do pay. You can try it at OneNote.
Pros
- Free with no cap on the number of notes
- Free-form canvas, type or draw anywhere
- Excellent handwriting and ink on tablets
- Backed by Microsoft and tied into 365
Cons
- Layout can sprawl without discipline
- Search is good but trails Evernote's
- Tied to a Microsoft account and OneDrive
Things to know before you switch
Before you move a decade of notes anywhere, four questions sort the choice out faster than any feature list.
Your budget - Do you want to pay nothing, ever? OneNote is free with no note limit. Evernote's free plan now stops at 50 notes, so staying on it long term isn't really an option for most people.
How your brain organizes - Do you like a tidy list of notes you search, or a loose canvas you arrange by hand? Evernote rewards structure. OneNote rewards sprawl. Pick the one that matches how you already think.
Your devices - Do you write by hand on a tablet? OneNote's ink is far ahead on a Surface or iPad. If you mostly type on a laptop and clip from the web, Evernote still feels sharper.
Moving your notes - How much history are you carrying over? Microsoft retired its official Evernote importer, so migration now means an ENEX export and a third-party tool. If neither app fits, our roundup of Evernote alternatives covers the wider field.
Evernote vs OneNote: the full comparison
Here's the head-to-head on everything that actually decides it, from free plans and pricing to clipping, ink, search and migration. Prices and plan details are current at the time of writing, and both companies change them often.
| Feature | Evernote | OneNote |
|---|---|---|
| Primary focus | Structured notes, clipping, search | Free-form notebooks, ink, canvas |
| Best for | Web clippers and tidy archives | Handwriting, students, no-limit notes |
| Free plan | 50 notes, 1 notebook, 2 devices | Unlimited notes, 5GB OneDrive |
| Paid pricing | Low hundreds a year | Included with Microsoft 365 |
| Layout model | Notebooks, notes, tags | Notebooks, sections, pages |
| Canvas | Fixed page layout | Free-form, place anything anywhere |
| Handwriting and ink | Basic | Excellent on Surface and iPad |
| Web clipper | Best in class | Solid OneNote Web Clipper |
| Search | Strong, text in images and PDFs | Good, text and some ink |
| Offline access | Desktop yes, mobile is paid | Yes on desktop apps |
| AI features | Evernote AI on paid plans | Copilot via Microsoft 365 |
| Platforms | Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, web | Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, web |
| Import from the other | ENEX export | Official importer retired, use ENEX tool |
| Owner | Bending Spoons | Microsoft |
| Best free pick | No, since the cap | Yes |
Which one fits how you work?
The right pick depends less on which app is objectively better and more on what your day actually looks like. Here's how it lands for the most common cases.
Students and note-scribblers - OneNote, easily. Free, no cap, and the best inking on a tablet means you can handwrite lecture notes, drop in diagrams and record audio without ever hitting a paywall.
Web clippers and researchers - Evernote still edges it, if you can stomach the price. The clipper and the search that reads inside your saved PDFs are hard to give up when your whole workflow is capture-and-find-later.
People who just want free - OneNote, no hesitation. If the only reason you're reading this is Evernote's new cap, OneNote gives you unlimited notes for nothing and covers the basics you actually used.
Microsoft 365 households - OneNote, since it's already paid for. If you have 365 for Word and Excel, OneNote comes with the storage and Copilot built in, so there's no reason to pay Evernote on top.
What is Spanbox and how it saves your time?
Here's the part no note-app comparison mentions. Whichever you pick, the note app is only one tab in a much busier day. You clip a link from a Slack thread, you note down a to-do from a WhatsApp, you paste something from an email into OneNote or Evernote. The notes aren't the problem. It's the window-hopping between every app feeding into them.
That's the gap Spanbox fills. It's a local-first desktop app that runs your chat and email apps as real tabs in one calm window, with every unread message pulled into a single unified inbox. WhatsApp, Slack, Gmail, Telegram and 60+ more, side by side, with a command bar that jumps you to any conversation in a keystroke. So the message you wanted to save a note from and the note app you're saving it into finally live next to each other. You can even run several accounts at once without a wall of browser tabs.
Because it's local-first, your accounts and messages stay on your own machine, nothing routed through a company's servers, which fits the same own-your-notes instinct that has you comparing these two in the first place. It's free for three apps to start, and it sits quietly beside whichever note app you land on. If you want the full walkthrough, our guide on putting all your apps in one place covers the setup. Spanbox won't take a note for you. It just clears the noise around the work so you can stay in it.
The verdict
There's no universal winner here, and any piece that crowns one is answering the wrong question. Choose OneNote if you want free, no-limit notes, love writing by hand, or already pay for Microsoft 365. Choose Evernote if the web clipper and its deep search are the heart of how you work, and the subscription is worth it to keep them.
For most people leaving Evernote purely over the new cap, OneNote is the soft landing, and it costs nothing. If neither quite fits, there's a whole field of good options in our productivity tools roundup. Sort your note app, then keep the rest of your stack tidy around it, and run your chats and email through Spanbox so the stuff feeding your notes doesn't scatter your focus. The best note app is the one that matches your habits, not the one that wins an argument online.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Is OneNote a good replacement for Evernote?
Is OneNote completely free, and is Evernote still free?
Can you move your Evernote notes into OneNote?
Which is better for handwriting and tablets, Evernote or OneNote?
Which has the better web clipper, Evernote or OneNote?
Do you have to use Microsoft 365 to use OneNote?
