Google Keep Alternatives

OneNote is the closest thing to a free upgrade from Keep. It is Microsoft's digital notebook: you create notebooks, split them into sections, and fill each section with pages where you can type, paste images, transcribe voice, and sketch, annotate and highlight with a pen or a finger. Where Keep shows every note as a card in one feed, OneNote gives you a three-level structure that mirrors a paper binder, which is exactly what people mean when they say Keep "has no folders". All supported versions of OneNote are free to download and use, on Windows, Mac, iPhone, iPad, Android and the web; a Microsoft 365 subscription only unlocks premium features. For Keep-style jotting, OneNote for Windows now includes Sticky Notes, built for quick capture (Win + Alt + S opens them), which bring a note back when you return to the source where you wrote it.

How the price reads against Google Keep: both are free for personal notes, and both lean on the cloud storage of the account behind them. If your notebooks fill up with scans and recordings, Microsoft 365 Basic adds 100 GB of cloud storage for $19.99 a year, or $1.99 a month ($23.88 over a year, so the yearly plan saves $3.89). Watch the bigger plans: Microsoft 365 Personal, with 1 TB and the desktop apps, showed a limited-time first-year price of $69.99 against a regular $99.99 in 2026, so the second year costs $30 more. That offer and the one-month free trial cannot be combined: you choose between trying it free and paying the lower first year. If you are already leaving OneNote rather than joining it, our OneNote switching guide covers the other direction, and the Microsoft OneNote Zapier integrations show how to send notes into it automatically.

Apple Notes is already on every iPhone, iPad and Mac, which removes the main reason people pick Keep in the first place: it is just there. It goes further than Keep on organization, with folders, tags, checklists, tables and locked notes, and it syncs through iCloud. Locked notes are end-to-end encrypted for iCloud accounts. You get 5GB of free iCloud storage the first time you sign in with your Apple Account, and the same notes open in a browser at icloud.com/notes, so a Windows work laptop is not a dead end. Shared notes and shared folders let a household keep one grocery list, the role Keep plays for many families.

How the price reads against Google Keep: both cost nothing for notes. The bill appears when your storage fills, and on Apple that storage is shared with photos and device backups. In the United States iCloud+ 50GB costs $0.99 a month ($11.88 a year) and 2TB costs $9.99 a month, and iCloud+ can be shared with up to five family members. The limit is the device mix: if part of your family uses Android, those people work in the browser rather than in a native app. For a broader view of the category, our best note-taking apps ranking scores Apple Notes against paid tools.

Simplenote is the alternative for people who like Keep exactly because it is light. It does one job: fast plain-text notes that sync automatically and in real time across your devices. Organization is by tags with instant search, much like Keep's labels, and every change is backed up so you can go back to an older version. You can write in Markdown, preview it and publish a note online, or share a to-do list with someone. The apps cover iOS, Android, Mac, Windows, Linux and the browser, and the whole thing is free: "Apps, backups, syncing, sharing", in its own words.

How the price reads against Google Keep: Simplenote costs nothing, like Keep, and its site lists apps, backups, syncing and sharing as completely free. What you give up is media: Simplenote cannot attach images, PDFs or any other file to a note, so a Keep account full of photo, drawing or voice notes is a poor fit. There is no set limit on the number of notes you create. The other trade-off is structure: tags are the filing system, so a large archive becomes a long list. If you want plain text with more power and your own files, look at Obsidian, ranked sixth.

Standard Notes is the pick when the reason you are leaving Keep is privacy. Every note is end-to-end encrypted with XChaCha20-Poly1305 and synced across web, desktop and mobile, so the company storing your notes cannot read them. The free plan already includes unlimited device sync, plain text notes, tags and password protection for individual notes; folders, like the richer editor, come with a paid plan. The code is published on GitHub under the AGPL-3.0 license, which means outsiders can inspect how the encryption works. Paid plans unlock the Super note type (Markdown, rich text, checklists and code in one editor), spreadsheets and longer revision history.

How the price reads against Google Keep: the free plan is a fair swap for Keep's text notes, but anything beyond plain text costs money. Productivity is $90 a year ($7.50 a month), with the Super editor and a one-year note revision history, and Professional is $120 a year with 100GB of encrypted cloud storage for photos, videos and documents. Both are billed yearly, and there is no free trial: you get a full refund within 14 days on Productivity or 90 days on Professional instead. Students get 30% off. Watch for seasonal sales on annual plans and check that the renewal returns to $90 or $120.

Notion is not a quick note app; it is a workspace where a note can become a page, a page can hold a database, and a database can be a task board, a reading list or a client tracker. People reach for it when Keep's lists turn into projects: a trip plan with bookings, a course with lectures, a side business with clients. Pages nest inside pages, so organization goes as deep as you need, and everything can be shared with teammates or guests. The free plan is for individuals and small trials: files upload up to 5 MB each and page history covers 7 days, and a free workspace with several members can add only a limited number of blocks before it has to upgrade.

How the price reads against Google Keep: Keep is free; Notion is free for one person and then charges per seat. Plus costs $10 per seat per month billed yearly ($120 a year) or $12 billed monthly ($144 a year), with uploads up to 5 GB and 30 days of page history. Notion refunds the full amount if you downgrade within three days on monthly billing or 30 days on annual billing. Students and educators get Plus free, limited to one member, by signing up with a school email address. If you are weighing it against a task app, our Todoist vs Notion comparison shows where each one fits. Capture is the weak spot: opening a database to jot a phone number is slower than Keep. Our Notion review details its scores, and the Notion training helps you set up a first workspace.

Obsidian stores every note as a Markdown file in a folder on your own device, called a vault. That one choice changes everything compared with Keep: your notes are plain files you can back up, search or open in any editor, and they stay readable even if the app disappears. On top of the files, Obsidian adds links between notes, a graph of those links, and a library of more than 10,000 community plugins. It is free without limits, with no sign-up required, and you are not required to pay for a commercial license even at work.

How the price reads against Google Keep: the app costs nothing, like Keep, but syncing between phone and computer is where the bill appears. Obsidian Sync costs $4 per user per month billed annually ($48 a year) or $5 billed monthly ($60 a year), and Publish, to put notes on a website, is $8 per site per month billed annually. Students, faculty and nonprofit employees get 40% off Sync and Publish, and Sync encrypts your notes end to end with AES-256. You can avoid Sync by placing your vault in a cloud drive you already pay for, at the cost of some setup. The learning curve is real: plugins and folders reward people who enjoy building a system, and frustrate people who want Keep's open-and-type simplicity. Researchers will find more options in our note-taking apps for researchers. Our Obsidian switching guide covers what people move to when it gets too heavy.