People leave OneNote for two reasons, and they point at different replacements, so it is worth being honest about which one is yours.
The first reason is that the app is different on every platform and the Mac version has always felt like a translation. The second is that the freeform canvas, the thing that makes OneNote special, is also why finding anything six months later is hard.
What you give up when you leave
Say this part out loud before you migrate: almost nothing else has the canvas. In OneNote you click anywhere on a page and type there. You can put a diagram beside a paragraph beside a screenshot, at any angle, with a stylus.
Nearly every alternative is a document: one column, top to bottom. If the canvas is why you use OneNote, no list of alternatives will make you happy, and the honest advice is to stay.
If you want structure and search instead
This is the common case. The canvas was never the draw, the sections and pages were, and now the library is big enough that finding things matters more than arranging them.
Look for notebooks and tags rather than a canvas, search that covers attachments and not just note bodies, and an export that gets your library out in one piece. Evernote-shaped apps fit this: Egg, UpNote, and Evernote itself all use the notebook-and-tag model OneNote users already think in.
Search gets worse every time you add to it
The thing that finally pushes people out of OneNote is usually not that search fails. It is that search works, returns nine results, and four of them are from a project that ended two years ago.
More indexing does not fix that. The fix is being able to take finished work out of the search without deleting it, and it is the feature least likely to appear on anyone's comparison table, including the ones that put a checkmark next to every row.
Put it on yours. Is there a single state that means done, one that pulls a page out of the everyday list and the everyday results, keeps it whole, and gives it back the moment you ask for it directly? In Egg that is the archive, and it works on a whole notebook in one move, which is the shape a migrated OneNote section tends to arrive in.
If you want to leave Microsoft entirely
Obsidian keeps plain Markdown files on your own disk. Joplin and Notesnook are open source with encryption. All three are a bigger change than moving to another notebook app, and all three make it genuinely impossible for a vendor to strand you.
If you are on a Mac and that is the whole problem
Apple Notes is free, quick, and already installed, and for a lot of former OneNote users it is enough. Egg is the option if you want the same speed on a Mac plus a real web app, encrypted storage, and attachments that read and play inside the note.
The migration is the hard part
OneNote does not export to a format other note apps read. There is no ENEX equivalent, so most routes go through printing to PDF, exporting section by section, or a conversion tool, and all of them lose something.
Whatever you land on, do one section first and check it properly before you move the rest. Nothing is worse than discovering the attachments went missing after you have deleted the source.
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
Is OneNote still free in 2026?
OneNote is free with a Microsoft account. Storage counts against your OneDrive allowance, which is where the practical limit comes from rather than the app itself.
What is the best OneNote alternative for Mac?
Apple Notes if free and already installed is the priority, and Egg if you want notebooks, tags, inline attachments, encrypted storage and a web app alongside the native Mac app.
What should I look for if my real problem is finding things?
Three things. Search that reaches inside attachments and not only page text, a structure simple enough to hold in your head, and a way to take finished work out of the default search without deleting it. The third is the one nobody advertises and the one that decides whether a large library stays usable.
Can I export my OneNote notebooks?
Not into a format other note apps read cleanly. OneNote has no ENEX equivalent, so most migrations go through PDF export, section-by-section export, or a conversion tool, and each loses some structure.