Best Notion Alternatives (2026): 7 Apps Compared

Obsidian is the favourite of people leaving Notion for privacy or speed. Notes are plain Markdown files in a folder on your own device, so they open instantly, work offline and never lock you in. You link notes together and see them as a graph. The core app is free; Sync costs $4 per user a month billed yearly ($5 monthly), Publish is $8 per site a month billed yearly, and a commercial licence is $50 per user a year. There is no built-in AI: you add it through community plugins, often with your own API key.

Google's Gemini Notebook is not a general workspace, but it beats Notion at one job: understanding a pile of sources. Upload PDFs, docs, web pages or videos and it answers questions with citations back to your sources, writes study guides and turns material into audio overviews. The free tier allows 100 notebooks, 50 sources per notebook, 50 chats and 3 audio overviews a day. Google AI Plus, Pro and Ultra plans raise those limits, and Google flagged usage-limit changes from 2 September 2026.

ClickUp is the closest all-in-one rival to Notion, with a stronger focus on tasks. It has docs and wikis, but also Gantt charts, time tracking, goals, portfolio views and built-in automations (5,000 a month on Business). Unlimited costs $7 per user a month billed yearly ($10 monthly) and Business $12 ($19 monthly). AI is separate: the Brain AI add-on is $9 per user a month billed yearly, and Everything AI, which adds an AI notetaker, is $28. The Free Forever plan has 60 MB of storage.

If your school or employer already pays for Microsoft 365, OneNote is a free, familiar notebook with pages, sections, handwriting and audio notes. Copilot in OneNote can summarise and draft from your notes, but only with an eligible Microsoft 365 consumer plan or a Microsoft 365 Copilot business licence (Copilot Business is $18 per user a month billed yearly at Microsoft's current offer price). It lacks Notion's databases and can feel dated, but it fits neatly with Outlook, Teams and OneDrive.

If the main thing you use Notion AI for is meeting notes, Granola does that job for less. It listens to your calls on your computer, without a bot joining, and combines its transcript with your own jotted notes into a clean summary. The free Basic plan keeps 30 days of meeting history; Business costs $14 per user a month for unlimited history, advanced models and integrations, including one that sends notes into Notion. Enterprise is $35 per user a month with SSO and HIPAA support.

Evernote is the classic notes app, and it is still strong at capturing things: web clipping, scanned documents, PDFs and search inside them. It now adds an AI assistant, semantic search, AI transcription and AI editing. The free plan is very tight, at 50 notes, one notebook and one device. Starter raises that to 1,000 notes and 3 devices, and Advanced removes the limits. Evernote shows prices by region, so check its compare-plans page for yours. It suits personal archives more than team wikis.

Mem takes the opposite approach to Notion: instead of building folders and databases, you dump notes in and let AI find, link and resurface them. You can chat with your notes to find answers. The catch is usage caps: the free plan allows 25 AI messages and 25 new notes a month, Plus ($9 a month) doubles that to 50, and Pro ($29) allows 100, with bigger tiers up to $199 a month. That makes it a personal tool rather than a team workspace.