The short answer
Evernote vs OneNote: the short answer
If you are comparing Evernote vs OneNote on the free plans, which is how most people arrive at this question, it is not close, and the reason is one most articles have not caught up with. Evernote’s free tier now allows 50 notes, one notebook, one synced device, 1GB of storage and 200 attachments, with the AI features reserved for paid plans. OneNote’s free version does not cap your notebooks or your notes at all. Whatever else the two apps do differently, that gap decides the free comparison before you reach any feature.
This matters because the received wisdom is stale. Search Evernote vs OneNote and you will find plenty of comparisons describing a free Evernote with unlimited notes and a monthly upload allowance, which is the shape it had years ago. A one-notebook, one-device, fifty-note ceiling is a trial in everything but name. If you are choosing where to keep notes for the next five years, that is the number to check first, and to check on Evernote’s own page rather than in a roundup.
Free tiers
The free tiers, where this is actually decided
The one-device limit is the sharpest edge and the easiest to underestimate. A note app that syncs to a single device is a local notepad, because the entire point of putting notes in the cloud is opening them on the phone in your pocket and the computer on your desk. Evernote’s paid Starter plan lifts that to three devices, along with 1,000 notes, 20 notebooks and 5GB, and adds the AI Assistant and semantic search. The Advanced plan removes the caps. But the free plan, as it stands, does not do the job most people want a note app for.
OneNote’s free version has one limit worth knowing and it is a different kind: your notes live in OneDrive, and a free Microsoft account includes 5GB of cloud storage. Text and ink are tiny, so most people never approach it, but a habit of pasting in large PDFs and photos will eventually get there. The distinction matters. Evernote caps the structure of your notebook; OneNote caps the bytes. Hitting a storage ceiling after two years is a manageable problem. Hitting a one-notebook ceiling on day three is a design decision you have to work around forever.
Structure
How each one organises notes
Beyond the plans, the two apps have genuinely different philosophies, and this is where Evernote vs OneNote becomes a matter of temperament rather than specification. Evernote is a flat pile with excellent retrieval: you make notes, you tag them, you find them again by searching. Notebooks exist but they are containers rather than architecture. OneNote is a binder: a notebook holds sections that behave like tabbed dividers, and each section holds pages, and you navigate by moving through that hierarchy as much as by searching.
Neither is better in the abstract. If you think in search terms and resent filing things, Evernote’s model asks less of you. If you like knowing where things live and want to browse a year of meetings by scanning down a section, OneNote’s structure pays you back every time you open it. The honest test is what you do today with your email: people who live in a single archive and search tend to prefer Evernote’s shape, and people who maintain folders tend to prefer OneNote’s.
Features
Search, ink and capture
| Feature | Evernote | OneNote |
|---|---|---|
| Free plan notebooks | 1 | Not capped |
| Free plan devices | 1 | Not capped |
| Search across notes and files | Yes | Yes |
| Searchable handwriting | Paid plans | Yes, free |
| Notebooks stored off the cloud | No | Windows desktop only |
| Published prices on its own site | No | Free, so none needed |
Two rows in that Evernote vs OneNote table deserve expanding. Searchable handwriting is free in OneNote, which matters if you write by hand on a tablet, because it means ink is not a dead end: a handwritten page from months ago is findable the same way a typed one is. And local notebooks are a OneNote capability that no other note app on this page offers, though only on one platform. Microsoft states that the Windows desktop app is the only version of OneNote supporting local notebook storage on your own hard drive. If a workplace rule forbids consumer cloud storage for notes, that single row decides the whole comparison, and we cover the detail in OneNote for Windows 11.
Price
Price, and why Evernote makes it hard to find
Any honest Evernote vs OneNote comparison has to cover price, and here is something we did not expect to have to report. Evernote does not publish its prices on either its pricing page or its plan comparison page. Both list the plan names and the feature limits in detail, and neither carries a figure; you choose a plan and reach a checkout to find out what it costs. We are not going to quote a number we could not read on Evernote’s own site, and we would treat any article that does with suspicion, because the likeliest source for it is another article.
OneNote sidesteps the question. Microsoft lists it as free on Windows, Mac, the web, iOS and Android, and it also ships with Office and Microsoft 365 for people who have those already. There is no upgrade path to buy because there is no paid OneNote; the only thing you might eventually pay for is more OneDrive storage, and that is a decision you make years in, if ever.
We are not going to quote a number we could not read on Evernote’s own site, and we would treat any article that does with suspicion.On unpublished pricing
Switching
Switching between them
Most people arriving at Evernote vs OneNote are already using one of them. Moving from Evernote to OneNote is the more common direction and the easier one, partly because a flat set of notes maps onto sections and pages without much thought. The work is not technical, it is editorial: a pile that grew without structure has to be given one on the way in, and the temptation is to dump everything into a single section and promise to sort it later. That reproduces the pile inside a nicer container. Decide the sections first, then move things into them, even if it takes an evening.
Going the other way is harder in one specific respect, which is the free tier. Fifty notes is not enough to hold a migrated OneNote notebook of any age, so a move to Evernote is effectively a move to a paid plan. That is not a criticism, it is just a fact to price in before you start. If you are setting up from scratch on the OneNote side, our tutorial for OneNote covers the structure to build before you import anything.
Verdict
Evernote vs OneNote: the verdict
The reason to pause before settling Evernote vs OneNote on the numbers alone is temperament rather than features. If you have tried structured note-taking twice and abandoned it both times because filing felt like work, a search-first tool may genuinely suit you better, and paying Evernote for that is a defensible choice. For everyone else, and especially for anyone whose notes are work-shaped and expected to last, the binder model earns its keep. We set out which jobs it actually does well in what OneNote is used for, our wider comparison of the best note-taking app brings the other contenders in, and if you are weighing the Google side instead, a Google alternative for OneNote covers Keep and Docs.
Whichever way you go, the thing that decides whether it sticks is not the app. It is whether your pages start with a shape instead of a blank screen, which is what our OneNote templates are for, and what the OneNote hub collects guides on.
If you have moved between these two recently, tell us in the comments which direction and what broke on the way. Migration reports from people who actually did it are worth more than any feature table, including ours.
Evernote answers a narrower complaint than most people arrive with, and it is one option among several. If you are still weighing the whole field, we compared the six OneNote alternatives worth your time and who each one actually suits.
FAQ
Common questions, answered briefly
Is Evernote still free?
Which is better free, Evernote or OneNote?
How much does Evernote cost?
Can I keep notes off the cloud in either app?
Is it hard to move from Evernote to OneNote?
If yours isn’t above, drop the question in the comments and we’ll add it.
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