By device
Best note-taking apps for Windows
On Windows the note app is usually surrounded by documents, a browser with forty tabs and a meeting. What matters is capture, search and getting things in from everywhere else.
Top pick: Grape, at 9.0 out of 10 on this ranking. The most AI you can point at your own notes while keeping them on your own machine. Young, and it shows in the missing web app and in sharing that stops at email invites, but the study tools, the $9 AI plan and the lifetime license make it hard to ignore.
What we weighted
Take it from the browser
A clipper that saves the page rather than the link.
Handle the documents
PDFs and attachments treated as first-class, not as afterthoughts.
Search that finds it
Fast full-text search across years of notes.
Every app keeps its site-wide score, but the order here is a separate fit reading built from those three needs, so it is not the same list you get on the home page.
Grape
Take the note. The AI does the filing, the studying and the searching.
For windows: Web clipper, PDF & documents, Cloud sync.
Students and individual note-takers who want AI over their own notes, kept on their own device, and who now and then share a folder with a classmate or a colleague.
Fit
9.0 overall
$3/mo
Obsidian
Plain markdown files on your disk, with a plugin ecosystem bolted on top.
For windows: Web clipper, PDF & documents, Cloud sync.
Long-term thinkers who want to own the files and are willing to tinker.
Fit
8.4 overall
$4/mo
Craft
Documents that look designed before you touch anything.
For windows: Web clipper, PDF & documents, Cloud sync.
People who share their notes and want them to look good.
Fit
8.1 overall
$10/mo
Notion
The all-in-one workspace that swallowed the note app category.
For windows: Web clipper, PDF & documents, Cloud sync.
Teams and organisers who want documents, tasks and databases under one roof.
Fit
8.5 overall
$12/mo
RemNote
Take notes and generate the flashcards in the same keystroke.
For windows: Web clipper, PDF & documents, Cloud sync.
Medical, law and language students who live in spaced repetition.
Fit
7.9 overall
$8/mo
Heptabase
Notes on whiteboards, for when the outline is not the shape of the idea.
For windows: Web clipper, PDF & documents, Cloud sync.
Researchers and students mapping a subject they do not understand yet.
Fit
7.8 overall
$11.99/mo
Capacities
A studio for your mind, organised by object type instead of folders.
For windows: Web clipper, PDF & documents, Cloud sync.
Knowledge workers who think in people, sources and projects.
Fit
7.7 overall
$12.99/mo
Joplin
Open source, end-to-end encrypted, and it syncs wherever you tell it to.
For windows: Web clipper, PDF & documents, Cloud sync.
Privacy-minded people leaving Evernote who want to control the storage.
Fit
7.5 overall
$3/mo
Microsoft OneNote
An infinite paper notebook that has quietly been free for twenty years.
For windows: Web clipper, PDF & documents, Cloud sync.
Students and Windows users who want free handwriting plus typing on one page.
Fit
7.8 overall
Free
Day One
A journal that has been quietly perfecting one job since 2011.
For windows: Web clipper, Cloud sync, Export.
Anyone keeping a personal journal who wants it to outlive the app.
Fit
7.7 overall
$49.99/yr
Questions windows ask
- Is OneNote still the default on Windows?
- It is, and it is free, syncs through OneDrive and takes a stylus on a Surface. The complaints are about search and the free-form canvas, which cuts both ways.
- What runs well on an older Windows laptop?
- Simplenote, UpNote and Joplin are light. Notion and Obsidian both want more memory than a four year old machine enjoys giving them.
Keep looking
Related guides
Shortlists