100 Best Note-Taking Apps for Solo Founders and Small Teams
The right note-taking app depends on whether you need quick capture, structured documentation, handwritten notes, or a connected knowledge base. These first 25 selections cover a range of approaches for founders and small teams.
Notion
Notion combines documents, databases, project pages, and collaborative workspaces in a customizable web-based environment. It helps founders replace scattered briefs and trackers by keeping operational knowledge in linked, shared pages.
Evernote
Evernote captures notes, web clips, documents, images, and tasks across desktop and mobile devices. It helps users preserve reference material that would otherwise remain buried in browser tabs or inboxes.
Microsoft OneNote
Microsoft OneNote organizes typed notes, handwriting, drawings, audio, and clippings into flexible digital notebooks. It helps teams collect varied meeting materials without forcing information into rigid document templates.
Apple Notes
Apple Notes provides straightforward note capture, checklists, attachments, scans, and shared folders across Apple devices. It helps Apple users quickly record everyday ideas without opening a more complex workspace application.
Google Keep
Google Keep saves short notes, lists, images, drawings, and reminders in a lightweight card-based interface. It helps busy founders capture small tasks and reminders before they disappear during a hectic day.
Obsidian
Obsidian stores Markdown notes locally and connects them through links, folders, tags, and plugins. It helps knowledge workers build a durable personal knowledge base without depending on a single web service.
Bear
Bear is a Markdown-focused writing app for organizing notes with tags, themes, and nested tag structures. It helps writers keep focused, well-formatted notes without navigating dense menus or database-style layouts.
Simplenote
Simplenote offers fast plain-text notes with tags, version history, publishing, and cross-platform synchronization. It helps users who want reliable text capture avoid the overhead of feature-heavy note systems.
Standard Notes
Standard Notes is a privacy-focused notes application offering encrypted notes, organization tools, and cross-device syncing. It helps privacy-conscious users protect sensitive business thoughts from exposure in ordinary cloud note services.
Joplin
Joplin is an open-source note app supporting Markdown, notebooks, tags, web clipping, and synchronization options. It helps users retain control over portable notes while collecting research from websites and documents.
Zoho Notebook
Zoho Notebook organizes text, checklists, audio, photos, and files into visual notebook cards. It helps users separate different media types without managing multiple specialized capture applications.
Craft
Craft creates structured documents with nested blocks, linked pages, rich formatting, and collaborative sharing. It helps small teams turn rough notes into polished internal documents that are easier to navigate.
Logseq
Logseq is an outliner-based knowledge tool that links daily notes, pages, blocks, and references. It helps people connect recurring observations and project thoughts without manually maintaining extensive folder hierarchies.
Roam Research
Roam Research is a networked note-taking tool built around daily notes, linked references, and block-level organization. It helps researchers surface related ideas across notes instead of repeatedly searching separate documents.
Tana
Tana organizes information as connected nodes and lets users structure content with customizable fields and tags. It helps founders turn unstructured meeting notes into reusable, sortable information for ongoing decisions.
Capacities
Capacities is an object-based note-taking app for connecting people, books, ideas, media, and projects. It helps users organize knowledge by real-world entities rather than forcing everything into folders.
UpNote
UpNote provides richly formatted notes, notebooks, tags, attachments, and synchronization across supported devices. It helps individuals maintain organized personal and work notes without learning a complex knowledge-management system.
NotePlan
NotePlan combines calendar-based daily notes, tasks, Markdown files, and project organization for planning work. It helps founders connect daily actions with project context instead of separating calendars from notes.
Agenda
Agenda organizes notes around dates and projects, emphasizing meeting records, timelines, and follow-up context. It helps users remember why decisions were made by anchoring notes to past and future events.
Amplenote
Amplenote combines note writing, task management, calendar planning, and linked ideas within one application. It helps users move from strategic notes to scheduled tasks without copying information between tools.
Anytype
Anytype is an object-based workspace for creating connected notes, collections, templates, and local-first data structures. It helps users model relationships among projects and knowledge without relying exclusively on conventional folders.
Milanote
Milanote uses visual boards to arrange notes, links, images, checklists, and files spatially. It helps creative founders see research and project components together when linear documents feel limiting.
Reflect
Reflect is a note-taking app centered on linked notes, daily entries, calendars, and searchable knowledge. It helps users revisit fragmented thoughts by connecting daily reflections with longer-term project information.
Heptabase
Heptabase provides visual whiteboards for arranging cards, notes, PDFs, and connected research concepts. It helps researchers make sense of complex source material by spatially mapping ideas and evidence.
Notesnook
Notesnook is a privacy-focused note-taking app with encrypted notes, notebooks, tags, and cross-platform access. It helps users keep confidential drafts and personal records in a dedicated privacy-oriented notes environment.
Goodnotes
Goodnotes combines handwritten notebooks, typed text, PDF annotation, and searchable page organization on supported devices. It helps replace scattered paper notebooks with searchable, reusable digital pages for study and work.
Notability
Notability lets users write, type, annotate documents, and record audio within organized notes. It helps capture lecture or meeting context when handwritten notes alone miss important details.
Nebo
Nebo is a handwriting-focused note app that converts handwritten content into editable digital text. It helps people retain natural handwriting workflows while making notes easier to edit and share.
LiquidText
LiquidText helps users read PDFs, pull excerpts into workspaces, and connect source material visually. It helps researchers manage dense documents without repeatedly switching between source pages and notes.
MarginNote
MarginNote combines PDF reading, annotation, outlining, and mind mapping for study-oriented note taking. It helps learners turn long reading assignments into structured review materials and connected ideas.
RemNote
RemNote combines linked notes, outlines, and spaced-repetition flashcards in a single knowledge workspace. It helps students avoid manually transferring class notes into separate flashcard applications for review.
Workflowy
Workflowy is an infinitely nested outline tool for organizing notes, tasks, and ideas. It helps founders break complex plans into expandable details without losing the bigger structure.
Dynalist
Dynalist provides collaborative nested lists for planning projects, documenting ideas, and tracking tasks. It helps teams organize evolving lists when flat documents become difficult to scan and maintain.
Coda
Coda creates collaborative documents that combine text, tables, buttons, and formulas in one workspace. It helps consolidate operational notes and lightweight workflows that otherwise live across disconnected spreadsheets.
Slite
Slite is a collaborative documentation platform for writing, organizing, and sharing team knowledge. It helps remote teams reduce repeated questions by keeping policies and project context documented centrally.
Nuclino
Nuclino provides a lightweight collaborative workspace for internal notes, wikis, and visual knowledge organization. It helps small teams replace fragmented internal documentation with accessible, interconnected workspace pages.
Quip
Quip combines collaborative documents, spreadsheets, chat, and embedded Salesforce information for team work. It helps sales-oriented teams discuss and update shared account information without separate document handoffs.
Dropbox Paper
Dropbox Paper is a collaborative document editor supporting notes, checklists, media, and team comments. It helps teams collect project briefs and feedback in one shareable document instead of email threads.
Outline
Outline is a collaborative knowledge base for creating, organizing, and sharing internal team documentation. It helps organizations preserve institutional knowledge when key decisions are buried in private conversations.
Supernotes
Supernotes organizes knowledge into connected note cards with backlinks, tags, and collaborative features. It helps users develop ideas incrementally without forcing every thought into long, rigid documents.
Mem
Mem is a note-taking workspace that uses AI-assisted search and organization for captured information. It helps users retrieve useful details from past notes when manual folder systems become unreliable.
Walling
Walling organizes notes, links, images, and ideas into visual walls and collections. It helps visual thinkers gather unstructured research before deciding how to turn it into plans.
xTiles
xTiles is a visual workspace for arranging notes, tasks, media, and databases on flexible pages. It helps solo founders coordinate planning materials that feel awkward inside conventional linear documents.
Miro
Miro provides an online whiteboard for visual collaboration, brainstorming, diagrams, and workshop notes. It helps distributed teams make brainstorming sessions visible and actionable without sharing a physical room.
ClickUp
ClickUp includes collaborative Docs for creating notes, wikis, and documentation alongside project tasks. It helps teams connect written project context with assigned work instead of maintaining separate systems.
Fellow
Fellow supports collaborative meeting agendas, notes, action items, and feedback workflows for teams. It helps managers prevent meeting decisions and follow-up tasks from disappearing after conversations end.
DEVONthink
DEVONthink stores, indexes, searches, and organizes documents, notes, emails, and web archives. It helps knowledge workers find information across large personal archives without relying on manual folders.
EagleFiler
EagleFiler archives and organizes documents, web pages, notes, and email on Apple platforms. It helps Mac users keep reference materials searchable rather than leaving them scattered across applications.
Trilium Notes
Trilium Notes is a self-hosted hierarchical note application with links, scripting, and encryption options. It helps technically inclined users maintain structured private notes while retaining control over their data.
CherryTree
CherryTree is a hierarchical note-taking application supporting rich text, code snippets, and embedded objects. It helps users organize technical reference notes into nested sections instead of separate unconnected files.
Google Docs
Google Docs creates shareable documents with real-time editing, comments, suggestions, and Google Drive storage. It helps teams replace emailed attachments by keeping meeting notes and revisions in one shared document.
Microsoft Loop
Microsoft Loop organizes collaborative components, pages, and workspaces that update across supported Microsoft 365 applications. It addresses scattered project details by letting teams reuse live information across connected workspaces and documents.
Apple Freeform
Apple Freeform provides an open canvas for combining notes, drawings, images, files, links, and sticky notes. It helps visual planners organize loose ideas when linear documents feel too restrictive for brainstorming.
Samsung Notes
Samsung Notes captures typed and handwritten notes, sketches, voice recordings, and PDF annotations on Galaxy devices. It solves the need to combine pen input and documents without switching between separate mobile apps.
Squid
Squid is a digital handwriting app that supports pen notes, imported PDFs, and customizable paper templates. It helps tablet users take natural handwritten notes while retaining the ability to edit and organize pages.
Noteshelf
Noteshelf supports handwritten notebooks, typed text, audio recording, document annotation, and customizable page templates. It reduces paper-notebook clutter by centralizing class, meeting, and planning notes in searchable digital notebooks.
Flexcil
Flexcil combines PDF reading, highlighting, handwritten notes, and document organization in one study-focused workspace. It helps readers capture source material and personal notes without repeatedly moving between a PDF reader and notebook.
CollaNote
CollaNote offers handwritten notes, PDF annotation, audio recording, planner pages, and collaborative notebook sharing. It helps students consolidate lectures, worksheets, and recordings rather than managing separate study tools.
Kilonotes
Kilonotes is a digital notebook for handwriting, PDF markup, image insertion, and customizable journal pages. It helps users build flexible planners and study notebooks without printing templates or carrying physical binders.
Penly
Penly is an Android digital planning app for handwritten notes, PDF planners, stickers, and hyperlinks. It solves paper planner limitations by making schedules, checklists, and linked sections easier to update.
ZoomNotes
ZoomNotes creates highly customizable handwritten notebooks with infinite pages, PDF annotation, and detailed pen controls. It helps power note-takers manage dense visual pages when standard notebook apps offer limited layout flexibility.
LectureNotes
LectureNotes is an Android handwriting app for creating notebooks, importing PDFs, and recording audio alongside notes. It helps students capture lecture material in one place instead of juggling paper notes and recordings.
FiiNote
FiiNote combines typed text, handwriting, images, sketches, recordings, and calendar-linked notes on mobile devices. It helps mobile users capture mixed media ideas when plain-text note apps cannot accommodate visual context.
Inkdrop
Inkdrop is a Markdown note app for developers, offering notebooks, code syntax highlighting, and synchronization. It helps technical users keep code-adjacent notes readable without losing Markdown portability and organization.
Typora
Typora is a Markdown editor that displays formatted writing directly while preserving plain-text Markdown files. It reduces formatting distraction for writers who want clean documents without abandoning portable plain-text files.
iA Writer
iA Writer is a focused writing app with Markdown support, file organization, and distraction-reducing editing tools. It helps writers concentrate on drafting when feature-heavy word processors encourage constant formatting and editing.
Ulysses
Ulysses organizes writing sheets, groups, goals, and exports within a focused Markdown-based writing environment. It helps long-form writers manage many fragments and drafts without manually sorting separate document files.
Zettlr
Zettlr is an open-source Markdown editor with citation tools, file management, and academic writing features. It helps researchers connect notes and references without relying on proprietary document formats or separate citation workflows.
QOwnNotes
QOwnNotes is an open-source Markdown note editor that integrates with folders and Nextcloud-based workflows. It helps privacy-minded users retain file control while accessing organized notes through their existing storage setup.
VNote
VNote is an open-source Markdown note application with notebook organization, attachments, and built-in editing tools. It helps users maintain a structured personal knowledge base using ordinary files rather than locked-in databases.
Dendron
Dendron is a Visual Studio Code extension for organizing Markdown notes through hierarchical naming and links. It helps developers navigate growing knowledge bases by imposing consistent structure on interconnected technical notes.
Foam
Foam is a Visual Studio Code-based toolkit for linked Markdown notes, graph views, and personal knowledge management. It helps users explore relationships among ideas while keeping their notes in version-controllable text files.
AppFlowy
AppFlowy is an open-source workspace for documents, databases, tasks, and collaborative knowledge organization. It helps small teams consolidate operational notes and structured information without depending entirely on proprietary workspace software.
AFFiNE
AFFiNE combines documents, whiteboards, and databases in a local-first workspace for notes and planning. It helps teams move from freeform brainstorming to organized documentation without splitting ideas across disconnected tools.
SiYuan
SiYuan is a local-first personal knowledge management application with block-based notes, links, and notebooks. It helps users organize interconnected notes while maintaining local storage and granular control over their knowledge base.
Boost Note
Boost Note provides collaborative documents and Markdown notes designed for technical teams and project work. It helps developers centralize technical notes when scattered specifications and snippets slow collaboration.
Turtl
Turtl stores private notes, bookmarks, images, and files in encrypted personal boards. It addresses privacy concerns by protecting sensitive research and personal notes with encryption.
TagSpaces
TagSpaces organizes local files and notes using tags, folders, and an offline-first desktop interface. It helps users find unstructured local documents without moving them into a cloud service.
MindForger
MindForger is a Markdown-based notebook for creating, organizing, and searching structured knowledge. It helps knowledge workers manage interconnected Markdown notes when plain folders become difficult to navigate.
WizNote
WizNote provides cloud-based note creation, document organization, and team knowledge-sharing tools. It reduces fragmented team documentation by keeping shared notes and reference materials in one workspace.
Memos
Memos is a self-hosted application for capturing short notes, reminders, and daily memos. It helps users quickly record fleeting information while retaining control over where their data lives.
SilverBullet
SilverBullet is an extensible, self-hosted Markdown note application that runs in a web browser. It helps technically minded users customize a personal knowledge base without relying on proprietary platforms.
Zim Desktop Wiki
Zim Desktop Wiki creates linked plain-text pages in a desktop wiki organized through notebooks. It helps users structure long-running projects when isolated text files lack links and hierarchy.
Tomboy-ng
Tomboy-ng is a desktop note application featuring linked notes, search, and simple formatting. It solves the difficulty of connecting related thoughts by automatically linking note titles across notebooks.
RedNotebook
RedNotebook is a journal-style desktop application for dated entries, tags, templates, and searching. It helps founders review daily decisions and progress when business reflections are otherwise inconsistently recorded.
Basket Note Pads
Basket Note Pads collects text, links, images, and files into categorized desktop note baskets. It helps users group mixed research materials when ordinary notes cannot accommodate varied content types.
MyInfo
MyInfo is a Windows personal information manager that organizes notes in searchable hierarchical outlines. It helps users retrieve detailed reference notes when extensive folders and documents become hard to search.
Keep It
Keep It is a macOS and iOS organizer for notes, documents, web links, and files. It helps Apple users consolidate reference material when notes and attachments are spread across applications.
FSNotes
FSNotes is a Markdown note manager for Apple devices that works with plain-text files. It helps writers maintain portable notes when they want readable files instead of proprietary databases.
Notejoy
Notejoy offers collaborative notes, shared libraries, comments, and search for teams and individuals. It helps small teams replace scattered meeting notes with a shared, searchable documentation space.
FuseBase
FuseBase provides collaborative workspaces for documents, client portals, discussions, and organized project information. It helps service teams share project context with clients when updates are buried in email threads.
Confluence
Confluence is a collaborative workspace for creating pages, documenting processes, and organizing team knowledge. It helps growing teams standardize internal documentation when procedures exist only in individual employees' memories.
Slab
Slab is a team knowledge-base platform for publishing, organizing, and searching internal documents. It helps employees locate company information when policies and answers are distributed across many channels.
Guru
Guru is a knowledge management platform for capturing verified internal information and surfacing answers. It helps customer-facing teams access current guidance when critical answers change frequently across departments.
GitBook
GitBook helps teams create, publish, and maintain structured documentation for products and internal knowledge. It helps product teams keep documentation readable when technical information needs clear navigation and updates.
BookStack
BookStack is an open-source documentation platform that organizes content into books, chapters, and pages. It helps teams impose clear structure on internal guides when flat note collections become confusing.
Wiki.js
Wiki.js is a self-hosted wiki platform for writing, organizing, and publishing documentation collaboratively. It helps organizations retain ownership of internal knowledge when cloud-only documentation tools are unsuitable.
HackMD
HackMD enables real-time collaborative Markdown writing, commenting, and publishing from browser-based documents. It helps distributed collaborators edit technical notes together when passing files creates conflicting versions.
HedgeDoc
HedgeDoc is an open-source collaborative Markdown editor for shared notes and live document editing. It helps privacy-conscious teams coauthor documents when they need a self-hosted collaboration option.
CryptPad
CryptPad provides encrypted collaborative documents, spreadsheets, boards, and rich-text notes in the browser. It helps teams collaborate on sensitive notes when they need stronger privacy protections for shared content.
No single app fits every workflow. Test a few against your real meeting notes, research habits, and planning routines before committing.