By profession
Best note-taking apps for writers
Writers need two things that pull in opposite directions: a screen with nothing on it, and a drawer holding every fragment they have ever cut. The good apps do both without making you switch.
Top pick: Grape, at 9.2 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
An editor that gets out of the way
Markdown, a word count, and no sidebar blinking at you while you work.
Somewhere for the offcuts
Links and tags so a deleted paragraph can be found again when it turns out to be the opening.
Clean export
Text that lands in a manuscript or a CMS without carrying invisible formatting with it.
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 writers: Markdown, Export, Note info.
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 writers: Markdown, Export, Note info.
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 writers: Export, Note info, Version history.
People who share their notes and want them to look good.
Fit
8.1 overall
$10/mo
Drafts
Where text starts, before you decide where it belongs.
For writers: Markdown, Export, Note info.
People whose notes are inputs to other apps, not a library to keep.
Fit
6.8 overall
$1.99/mo
Ulysses
For the people who finish the book, not the vault.
For writers: Markdown, Export, Note info.
Novelists, bloggers and anyone with a deadline and a word count.
Fit
6.7 overall
$5.99/mo
Octarine
Local markdown files, a clean editor and one payment.
For writers: Markdown, Export, Note info.
Obsidian-minded people who would rather buy a finished app than build one.
Fit
7.5 overall
$79 once
Joplin
Open source, end-to-end encrypted, and it syncs wherever you tell it to.
For writers: Markdown, Export, Note info.
Privacy-minded people leaving Evernote who want to control the storage.
Fit
7.5 overall
$3/mo
UpNote
What Evernote used to be, for a one-time forty dollars.
For writers: Markdown, Export, Note info.
Evernote refugees who refuse to pay monthly.
Fit
7.3 overall
$2.99/mo
Amplenote
Notes and tasks that argue with each other until your day is planned.
For writers: Markdown, Export, Note info.
People who want their notes to produce a daily plan.
Fit
7.5 overall
$7.99/mo
NotePlan
A markdown vault and your calendar, living in the same window.
For writers: Markdown, Export, Note info.
Mac and iPhone planners who want their notes and their day in one app.
Fit
7.2 overall
$12/mo
Questions writers ask
- Should a writer use markdown?
- Yes, if only for the exit. Markdown opens in anything, converts to anything, and means the app you pick this year is not a decision you are stuck with in five.
- Is a note app enough, or do I need Scrivener?
- For essays, articles and newsletters, a note app is plenty. For a novel with a hundred scenes you want to reorder, a dedicated writing tool still wins on the corkboard.
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