Free Note-Taking Apps for iPhone
Apple Notes, already on every iPhone, is the free notes app to try first. It is rated 4.8 on the App Store, takes typed notes, checklists, scans and sketches in one note, and syncs through iCloud without a new account. Its limits are Apple's: no Windows or Android app, and attachments count against the 5 GB of free iCloud storage you share with photos and backups.
Past Apple Notes, what matters is what each free plan holds back. Microsoft OneNote, Simplenote and Obsidian have no limits on the free tier, and Simplenote has no paid plan at all. Five others cap how much you can keep, from Notability's five notes to Craft's 1,500 blocks, and Bear keeps free notes on a single device unless you pay $29.99 a year for sync.
Our picks
- Free with no upsell at all: Simplenote. Upgrade Cost is $0 because there is no paid plan, the free tier has no limits, and it runs on every major platform, Linux included.
- Best for an iPhone and a Windows PC: Microsoft OneNote. Free with a Microsoft account and no limits on the free tier, on all major platforms, rated 4.7.
- Best for private notes: Standard Notes. Every note is encrypted end to end, and the free plan still includes unlimited notes and unlimited device sync.
- Best for linked research notes you own: Obsidian. Plain Markdown files in a folder you control, free with no limits, and the folder can sync through iCloud Drive at no cost.
- Cheapest upgrade for handwritten notes: Goodnotes. $11.99 a year, the lowest paid upgrade in the table, for searchable handwriting and PDF markup.
At a glance
| Option | Upgrade Cost | Best For | Free Plan | Note Format | Works On | App Store Rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Quick notessource | Limited storage or uploadssource | Rich textsource | Apple and websource | 4.8source | ||
| Quick notessource | All major platformssource | 4.6source | ||||
| $99.99source | Research & organizingsource | No limitssource | Rich textsource | All major platformssource | 4.7source | |
| $120source | Team collaborationsource | Limited storage or uploadssource | Blockssource | All major platformssource | 4.8source | |
| $99source | Research & organizingsource | Limited notes or contentsource | Rich textsource | All major platformssource | 4.4source | |
| $29.99source | Long-form writingsource | Sync costs extrasource | Markdownsource | Apple devices onlysource | 4.7source | |
| Freesource | Quick notessource | No limitssource | Markdownsource | All major platformssource | 4.7source | |
| $48source | Research & organizingsource | No limitssource | Markdownsource | All major platformssource | 4.5source | |
| $23.88source | Journalingsource | Limited notes or contentsource | Rich textsource | All major platformssource | 4.7source | |
| $11.99source | Handwriting & PDFssource | Limited notes or contentsource | Handwriting & inksource | All major platformssource | 4.7source | |
| $14.99source | Handwriting & PDFssource | Limited notes or contentsource | Handwriting & inksource | All major platformssource | 4.8source | |
| $24.99source | Research & organizingsource | Limited storage or uploadssource | Rich textsource | All major platformssource | 4.7source | |
| $90source | Privacy & encryptionsource | Limited featuressource | Plain textsource | All major platformssource | 4.7source | |
| $76.8source | Long-form writingsource | Limited notes or contentsource | Blockssource | Apple and websource | 4.8source |
Which free plan runs out first
The caps come in two kinds. Notability's free Starter plan stops at five notes, Goodnotes at three notebooks with a 5 MB import limit, and Evernote and UpNote at 50 notes each; Evernote also allows only one notebook and one synced device. Craft gives every feature but caps total content at 1,500 blocks and 1 GB.
The storage caps are gentler for plain writing. Notion allows unlimited pages but limits each file attachment to 5 MB, and Zoho Notebook gives 500 MB of cloud storage. Standard Notes lets you keep as many notes as you like but only in plain text, since its Markdown and rich text editors sit in the paid plan.
Upgrade prices that aren't really upgrades
The Upgrade Cost column is the cheapest paid plan for a year, and for two apps that plan buys something else. OneNote's $99.99 is Microsoft 365, a bundle for Office and OneDrive storage, while OneNote itself stays free. Obsidian's $48 is its optional encrypted Sync service. Bear's $29.99 is the price of syncing your notes across devices, and Standard Notes' $90 plan is where its formatting lives. UpNote is unusual in also selling a one-off lifetime purchase instead of a subscription.
Apps that also work on Windows or Android
Eleven of the fourteen run on all major platforms. The three that don't are Bear, which has no Windows or Android apps at all, and Apple Notes and Craft, which add a web version but nothing for Android. If your laptop runs Windows, OneNote and Simplenote run there free with no cap, UpNote syncs free up to 50 notes, and Notability runs on Windows and Android too, though its free plan is the tightest here.
The options in detail
Apple Notes
The notes app already on every iPhone, and for most people the one to try before downloading anything else. It handles typed notes, checklists, scanned documents, photos, audio and Apple Pencil sketches in the same note, syncs through iCloud without a separate account, and can lock individual notes behind Face ID. The catch is that it only really lives in Apple's world: there are apps for iPhone, iPad, Mac and Vision Pro plus a web version at iCloud.com, but nothing for Windows or Android, and everything you attach counts against the free 5 GB of iCloud storage you share with photos and backups.
Google Keep
Google's sticky-note app: coloured cards you can label, search, pin and share, with reminders that can fire at a time or when you arrive somewhere. It is the fastest of these apps for a shopping list you want your partner ticking off in real time, and it reads text out of photos so a snapshot of a receipt stays findable. It is also the least ambitious: there are no folders, no long-document formatting and no real structure beyond labels, so it tends to be the app people use alongside a heavier one rather than instead of it.
Microsoft OneNote
OneNote gives you a freeform page you can type on anywhere, draw on with a pen, and organise into notebooks, sections and tabs like a real ring binder. It is free with a Microsoft account on essentially every platform, which makes it the natural pick if your phone is an iPhone but your desk has a Windows PC. The trade-offs are a busier interface than the simpler apps here and a page model that can feel loose once a notebook grows; a Microsoft 365 subscription is the only paid step up, and it is really a bundle for Office and OneDrive storage rather than a OneNote upgrade.
Notion
Notion is less a notes app than a workspace you assemble yourself out of blocks: paragraphs, to-dos, images and databases that can be filtered into tables, boards and calendars. For an individual the free plan is generous, with unlimited pages, and it is the strongest option here if you want notes, projects and a personal wiki in one place. The cost is time: a blank Notion is intimidating, the mobile app is noticeably slower to open than Apple Notes or Keep, and file attachments on the free plan are capped at 5 MB each.
Evernote
The app that defined this category, and still the best searcher of the bunch: it indexes text inside PDFs, photos and scanned documents, and its web clipper saves whole articles rather than links. What has changed is the free plan, which is now the tightest here at 50 notes, one notebook and a single synced device, so an iPhone-only user who never opens it on a laptop can still get real work done but anyone else will hit the wall quickly. Reviewers have been vocal about that squeeze, and its App Store rating is the lowest in this table.
Bear
A writer's app: Markdown underneath, a calm typographic interface on top, and tags instead of folders. It won an Apple Design Award and is the one people in this list tend to describe as a pleasure to type in, with no account needed to start. The important caveat for anyone comparing free plans is that iCloud sync is a Pro feature, so on the free tier your notes stay on one device; the free version also limits you to three themes and one app icon, and there are no Windows or Android apps at all.
Simplenote
Made by the company behind WordPress, Simplenote does one thing: plain text notes that sync everywhere, instantly, for nothing. There is no paid tier, no storage meter and no upsell, and it runs on more platforms than anything else here including Linux and the browser. It is also the most limited: no images, no attachments, no folders beyond tags, and formatting only through Markdown, so it suits people who write in text and want a note to open the instant they tap it.
Obsidian
Obsidian keeps your notes as ordinary Markdown files in a folder you own, then builds links, backlinks and a graph on top of them. The app itself is free with no account and no limits, and a large plugin community extends it into a kanban board, a daily journal or a research database. It is the most demanding app here to set up, and the free plan leaves syncing to you: Obsidian's own encrypted Sync service is a paid add-on, though you can put the folder in iCloud Drive instead at no cost.
UpNote
UpNote is the quiet middle ground: a proper rich-text editor with notebooks, links between notes, themes and a focus mode, on every platform including Linux, with free syncing built in. It is popular with people leaving Evernote who want something simpler but not bare, and it is unusual in offering a one-off lifetime purchase instead of a subscription. The free version stops at 50 notes, which arrives faster than it sounds, and the app is made by a small team so it moves less quickly than the big names here.
Goodnotes
Goodnotes is a digital paper notebook: you write by hand, mark up imported PDFs and lecture slides, and the handwriting stays searchable. It is built for an iPad and an Apple Pencil first, and on an iPhone alone it is more of a companion for reading and quick annotation than a place to take notes. The free tier now lets you keep three notebooks with a 5 MB import limit, so students who scan a term's worth of readings will need the paid plan, which is one of the cheapest here.
Notability
Notability's signature trick is recorded audio tied to your handwriting: tap a word later and it plays back what was being said as you wrote it, which is why it is a fixture in lecture halls. It mixes ink, typed text, photos and annotated PDFs on one page and runs on Windows and Android as well as Apple devices. The free Starter plan caps you at five notes, the tightest entry limit in this table, and audio recording and handwriting search sit behind the paid tiers.
Zoho Notebook
Zoho Notebook builds each note out of cards: a text card, a checklist card, an audio card, a photo card, a sketch card, or a bookmark that reformats a saved article for offline reading. It is genuinely free to use with syncing included, has no ads, and comes from a company that sells business software rather than your data. The card model is the reason to pick it and also its limitation, since long continuous documents fit it less naturally than they do a plain editor, and the free tier gives you 500 MB of cloud storage.
Standard Notes
Standard Notes encrypts every note end to end, so the company hosting your notes cannot read them, and it is the obvious choice for a journal, passwords or anything you would rather not trust to an advertising business. The free plan is unusually honest about what it includes: unlimited notes, unlimited device sync, offline access, two-factor authentication and encrypted backups. What you give up is formatting, because the free tier is plain text only and the Markdown, rich text and spreadsheet editors are part of a paid plan that costs more than most apps here.
Craft
Craft is the best-looking app in this list, and the one to choose if your notes get read by other people: documents built from blocks that you can share as a polished web page in a couple of taps, with full offline editing. It is Apple-first, with iPhone, iPad and Mac apps plus the web, and no Android app. The free plan gives you every feature but caps total content at 1,500 blocks and 1 GB of storage, which is fine for occasional use and tight for anyone writing daily.
How we researched this
The fourteen apps cover each kind of answer this search has: the two already on phones (Apple Notes and Google Keep), the big free-tier names, writing apps, the two handwriting apps students look for, and the plain-text and privacy end. Day One was left out as a journal, Apple Freeform as a whiteboard, Samsung Notes because it has no iPhone version, and Nebo because it is paid up front. Joplin, Notesnook, Agenda and Noteful were close calls that didn't make a list capped at fourteen.
Upgrade prices come from each vendor's pricing page, with monthly prices multiplied by twelve; Notability's and Zoho Notebook's are the App Store in-app price. Ratings are a US App Store snapshot from September 3, 2026. Apple Notes and Google Keep have a blank Upgrade Cost because neither company publishes a statement that there is no paid plan, and Keep's Free Plan and Note Format are blank because Google's help pages don't describe them. Evernote has already squeezed its free plan once, and any of these limits can move, so check the current one before moving a big archive in.