Best note-taking apps for students
Lecture recording, PDF annotation, flashcards and quizzes, priced for someone who does not have an expense account.
Top pick: Grape at 9.0 out of 10. 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. Compare it with GoodNotes.
Grape
Take the note. The AI does the filing, the studying and the searching.
Mac / Win / Linux / iOS / Android
Best for: 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.
$3/mo
GoodNotes
Handwriting on a tablet, done better than anyone else.
iOS / Mac / Win / Android / Web
Best for: Students and anyone whose thinking happens with a stylus.
$9.99/yr
RemNote
Take notes and generate the flashcards in the same keystroke.
Web / Win / Mac / Linux / iOS / Android
Best for: Medical, law and language students who live in spaced repetition.
$8/mo
Heptabase
Notes on whiteboards, for when the outline is not the shape of the idea.
Win / Mac / Linux / iOS / Android / Web
Best for: Researchers and students mapping a subject they do not understand yet.
$11.99/mo
Microsoft OneNote
An infinite paper notebook that has quietly been free for twenty years.
Win / Mac / iOS / Android / Web
Best for: Students and Windows users who want free handwriting plus typing on one page.
Free
Noteshelf
Handwriting on every platform, with an AI that reads your pages.
iOS / Mac / Android / Win
Best for: Stylus users who are not on an iPad, or not only on an iPad.
$9.99/mo
Logseq
A journal-first outliner with flashcards baked in, over local files.
Win / Mac / Linux / iOS / Android ยท Open source
Best for: Daily journalers and students who want linked notes plus revision.
Free
NotebookLM
Not really a note app. It reads your sources and studies them with you.
Web / iOS / Android
Best for: Studying, research and making sense of documents you did not write.
$19.99/mo
Notability
Recorded audio linked to every stroke you wrote while it played.
iOS / Mac
Best for: Students recording lectures on an iPad.
$14.99/yr
Samsung Notes
The reason the S Pen is worth using, and it costs nothing.
Android / Win
Best for: Galaxy Tab owners who want free handwriting notes.
Free
Noteful
A seven-dollar ink engine that embarrasses apps costing ten times more.
iOS / Mac
Best for: iPad note takers who care about the pen and resent subscriptions.
$6.99 once