Most “best alternative” lists are ranked by affiliate payout. This one is written by someone who builds one of the apps on it, which you should weigh accordingly, so the entry for that app is last and says plainly who should skip it.
The useful question is not which app is best. It is which app is built for the thing you actually do, because these products are far less alike than their category name suggests.
First, decide which kind of person you are
Roughly, people leaving Evernote fall into three groups. Some want a filing cabinet: notebooks, tags, attachments, search, nothing clever. Some want a thinking tool: links between notes, backlinks, a graph, plain text they control. Some want a workspace: databases, tables, collaborators, a wiki for a team.
Picking from the wrong group is why so many migrations fail. A filing-cabinet person lasts about a week in a thinking tool before deciding note apps are exhausting.
The question these lists never ask
Every comparison, this one included so far, judges these apps on the same three things: how fast you can get a thought in, whether it syncs, whether you can find it again. Nobody checks what happens to a note you are finished with.
That matters more than it sounds, because a note-taking habit produces two kinds of note and only one of them is live. The other kind is the tax return you filed, the trip you took, the job you left, the project that shipped. You are not going to delete any of it, and you should not have to keep tripping over it either.
Evernote has no archive, so people build one. You make a notebook called Old, or a stack of them, and you push things in. It does not work, because a note in a notebook you never open still comes back in every search you run. The folders inside folders that Evernote libraries turn into are not a failure of tidiness. They are a workaround for a missing feature, built by the tidiest people in the room.
So add a fourth question to your list. Is there one state that means done: out of the note list, out of the search you type every day, kept whole, and searchable the moment you go looking for it on purpose? Ask it early. It is the difference between a library you keep and a library you start avoiding.
Obsidian, for the thinking tool people
Local Markdown files on your disk, linked together, with a plugin for anything. Free for personal use, with paid sync. If you want your notes to be a network of ideas rather than a stack of documents, this is the one, and the file-on-disk model means you can never really be locked in.
It is not a filing cabinet. Attachments and rich media are functional rather than delightful, and the setup is a hobby in itself.
Notion, for the workspace people
Databases, views, templates, and a genuinely good collaborative wiki. If your notes are half project management, Notion is the obvious move.
It is not fast, it is not offline-first, and a personal note that should take four seconds to write takes longer than that to load. Solo note-takers usually end up back somewhere simpler.
Apple Notes, for people who want to stop shopping
Free, on every Apple device, fast, and much better than its reputation. Folders, tags, decent search, scanning, and it has been quietly good for years.
The catch is the walls. It is Apple-only in practice, exporting a whole library is deliberately awkward, and once it is your system it is hard to leave.
Joplin, for people who want open source
Open source, Markdown, encryption, sync to whatever storage you like. It is the answer if the phrase “nobody can shut this down” matters more than the interface does.
It looks like what it is: a capable open-source project. The polish is not the point.
UpNote, for the filing-cabinet people on a budget
Closest in spirit to the old Evernote. Notebooks, tags, rich text, cross-platform, and inexpensive. If you want the thing you already know without the price increase, look here first.
OneNote, if your life is already Microsoft
Free with a Microsoft account, unlimited-feeling, and the freeform canvas is genuinely unique. If you take notes with a stylus, nothing else is close.
The freeform canvas is also why search and structure feel loose. And it is Microsoft: the app is different on every platform.
Notesnook, for the privacy people
End-to-end encrypted by default, open source, cross-platform. If encryption is the requirement rather than a feature, start here.
Egg, and who should skip it
Egg is the app I build, so treat this as a disclosure rather than a review. It is a filing cabinet: notebooks, tags, attachments that live inside the note, search that runs on your device, native apps on iPhone, iPad and Mac plus a web app, and encrypted storage and HTTPS. It imports an Evernote library and verifies every file byte for byte on the way in. Notes and whole notebooks archive in one move, which takes them out of the list and out of everyday search without deleting them, and a search that comes back empty tells you how many matches are waiting in the archive.
Skip it if you want a thinking tool, because there are no backlinks and no graph. Skip it if you need team collaboration, because there is none. Skip it if you want plain files on your own disk, in which case Obsidian is a better answer than mine.
Notebooks, tags, and files that live inside the note. Native on iPhone, iPad and Mac plus a full web app. Free for 100 notes, and the export door is never locked.
Start freeFrequently asked
What is the closest app to old Evernote?
UpNote and Egg are the closest in structure: notebooks, tags, rich text and attachments, without the databases of Notion or the linking model of Obsidian.
Is there a free Evernote alternative?
Apple Notes and OneNote are free outright, Obsidian is free for personal use, and Joplin is free and open source. Egg and UpNote both have free tiers with note limits.
Does Evernote have an archive folder?
No. There is no archive state, which is why so many Evernote libraries end up as folders inside folders: a notebook or a stack is the only place to put a note you are done with. The catch is that it does not do the job. A note parked in a notebook you never open still appears in every search you run, so it is out of sight and still in the way.
Can I move my Evernote notes to another app?
Yes. Evernote exports to ENEX, which most alternatives import. The thing to check before you commit is whether the destination verifies your attachments arrived intact, because that is where migrations usually lose data quietly.