Evernote's pricing page is easy to read and easy to misread. The prices are plain. The limits that decide whether a plan works for you are one column over, and the most important word on the page has an asterisk attached to it.
Here is the whole thing in one table, checked against evernote.com on August 6, 2026.
| Free | Starter | Advanced | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price per year | $0 | $99 | $249.99 |
| Notes | 50 | 1,000 | Unlimited* |
| Notebooks | 1 | 20 | Unlimited* |
| Devices | 1 | 3 | Unlimited* |
| Tags | 20 | 100 | Unlimited* |
* Evernote's own footnote: “with the exception of safeguard limits applied to ensure performance and prevent abuse.” Plan limits and US pricing from evernote.com, checked August 6, 2026.
The free plan is a trial with no clock on it
Fifty notes. One notebook. One device. Twenty tags. That is not a note-taking app you can move into, and it is not meant to be. It is a sample of one, and the moment you rely on it you are over the line and paying.
The device limit is the one that bites first. A single device means your phone or your laptop, and choosing is the whole product decision. Most people hit that wall before they hit fifty notes.
Starter at $99 is the plan most people actually need
A thousand notes, twenty notebooks, three devices, a hundred tags. For a lot of people that is genuinely enough, and $99 a year is a defensible price for software you open every day.
The trouble is that all four of those numbers are ceilings, and a note-taking habit only ever grows. Notes accumulate. Notebooks multiply because that is what notebooks are for. Three devices sounds generous until you count a phone, a laptop, a tablet and a work machine.
The notebook you use as an archive costs you a notebook
Look at the notebook row again. One on Free, twenty on Starter. Then ask where your finished notes are supposed to go, because Evernote has no archive and a notebook is the only answer available. Old Projects. 2024. Done.
Which means the tidier you are, the faster you reach a ceiling you are paying for. Every notebook spent on work you have finished is one you cannot spend on work you are doing, and that is a strange thing to meter.
It is worse than it looks, because the workaround does not even work. A note in a notebook called Done still turns up in every search you run. You have spent one of your twenty notebooks moving something out of sight and it is still in your results.
One thing worth saying plainly, since this is the point in the article where you would expect a sales pitch: an archive is not a way around a note limit, and it is not one in Egg either. An archived note still counts against Egg's free hundred. What an archive buys you is a quieter search, not more room.
Advanced at $249.99, and the asterisk
The top plan says unlimited next to every row, and then attaches an asterisk. Evernote's own wording for it is “with the exception of safeguard limits applied to ensure performance and prevent abuse.”
That is a reasonable clause for a company to write. It is also the difference between unlimited and unlimited*, and if you are paying $249.99 a year specifically to stop thinking about limits, it is worth knowing the word is qualified.
What you are really paying per note
Prices only mean something against usage. A 2,000-note library on Advanced costs 12.5 cents per note per year. The same library on Starter is not possible at all, because 2,000 is over the cap. That is the actual shape of the decision: the price is not what you pay for the notes you have, it is what you pay to stop being told how many you may have.
Where encryption sits
Evernote's note encryption covers highlighted text inside a note, on Mac and Windows only. It is a way to hide a password inside a note, not a way to encrypt an account. If you assumed a paid plan meant your library was end-to-end encrypted, it does not, on any tier.
When Evernote is still the right answer
If you are deep in Evernote's ecosystem, if your team lives in shared notebooks, if your workflow depends on integrations that only Evernote has, staying is a perfectly sensible call. Software you already know is worth real money.
If you are paying mostly to keep your own notes accessible, that is the case worth re-examining, because it is the one thing every note app does.
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
How much is Evernote per year in 2026?
Free is $0 with a 50-note, one-notebook, one-device limit. Starter is $99 a year for 1,000 notes, 20 notebooks and 3 devices. Advanced is $249.99 a year and lists unlimited notes, notebooks, devices and tags, with an asterisk for safeguard limits. Checked against evernote.com on August 6, 2026.
Does Evernote still have a free plan?
Yes, but it holds 50 notes in a single notebook on a single device, with 20 tags. It works as a trial rather than as a place to keep a library.
Does archiving notes free up room on a note limit?
No, and treat any app that implies otherwise with suspicion. A note limit counts the notes on your account, and a note you archived is still a note you own. Archiving is for keeping your list and your everyday search clean. If you are against a cap, the only two things that move the number are deleting and upgrading.
Is Evernote end-to-end encrypted?
No. Evernote offers encryption of highlighted text inside a note, on Mac and Windows only. No plan encrypts your whole account end to end.
What does the asterisk on Evernote's unlimited mean?
Evernote's own footnote reads “with the exception of safeguard limits applied to ensure performance and prevent abuse.” The limits are not published as numbers.