Evernote alternative
Evernote's free plan stops at 50 notes and one notebook, its Personal and Professional plans are retired, and Advanced costs $249.99 a year. Koru is a free, open-source, native desktop notes app with no plan limits. Your notes live in a local database on your device, and Koru imports your Evernote notebooks with their tags, checklists and attachments. It has no web clipper, no search inside images and PDFs, and no phone app yet; if you depend on those every day, Evernote is ahead for now.
Evernote retired its Personal and Professional plans and replaced them with Starter ($99 a year) and Advanced ($249.99 a year). Starter caps you at 1,000 notes, 20 notebooks and three devices, so long-time users with large archives end up on Advanced. Some legacy subscriptions billed through Google Play and the App Store are being repriced too.
Since December 2023, Evernote Free has been limited to 50 notes, one notebook and one device. For anyone who kept years of notes in Evernote, free is no longer an option.
Bending Spoons bought Evernote in late 2022, laid off much of its staff in 2023 and moved operations to Europe, then repackaged the plans. From December 1, 2026, existing users contract with Bending Spoons Operations S.p.A. under new Terms. A notes app is something you want to rely on for decades.
Evernote exports only from its desktop app, in ENEX or HTML, and up to 100 notes or one notebook at a time. With dozens of notebooks, getting your whole archive out becomes a project.
| Feature | Koru | Evernote |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free. No account and no trial. | Free: 50 notes, 1 notebook, 1 device. Starter: $99/year. Advanced: $249.99/year. Personal and Professional are retired. |
| Note and notebook limits | No plan limits. | Free: 50 notes, 1 notebook. Starter: 1,000 notes, 20 notebooks. Advanced: unlimited, subject to safeguard limits. |
| Where your notes live | In a local database on your device. Works fully offline, with no account required. | On Evernote's servers, with offline access in the apps. |
| Sync | Directly between your own devices, peer to peer and end-to-end encrypted, built on iroh. No Koru server required. | Through Evernote's cloud. Free syncs 1 device, Starter 3. |
| Platforms | Windows and macOS. No phone app yet. | Windows, Mac, iOS, Android and the web. |
| Open source | Open source under MPL-2.0, on GitHub. | No. Proprietary. |
| Web clipper | On the roadmap. | Yes, as a browser extension. |
| Search | Full-text search and #tags across your workspaces. Searching text inside images and scanned PDFs is on the roadmap. | Search, including text inside images and documents. |
| Tasks and calendar | Not in Koru. | Tasks and Calendar. |
| AI | No built-in AI. A built-in MCP server lets AI tools that support MCP, such as Claude, read and work with your notes, and coding agents run in terminal tabs beside your docs. | Built-in AI features on paid plans, plus an MCP connection. |
| Encryption | No password-locked notes yet. Sync between your devices is end-to-end encrypted. | Encrypt selected text inside a note, in the desktop app. |
| Export | Markdown and TextBundle. | ENEX or HTML from the desktop app, up to 100 notes or one notebook at a time. |
Evernote Advanced costs $249.99 a year. For that you get cloud sync on every device, a web clipper, search inside images and PDFs, tasks, a calendar and built-in AI, and that is a lot of product.
Koru costs nothing and has no plan limits, because your notes live in a local database on your own device rather than on our servers. It syncs your own devices directly, peer to peer, instead of through a cloud. It doesn't have the rest of that list today.
Evernote is a cloud service with apps on top. Koru is an app first: your notes live in a local database on your device, work with no connection and no account, and sync directly between your own devices, end-to-end encrypted, over iroh.
Because the app is open source and exports everything as Markdown or TextBundle, a future price change can't lock you out of your own archive. That is the promise Evernote users feel they lost.
Be clear-eyed about this before you switch. Evernote's web clipper, its search inside scanned documents and images, its phone apps and shared notebooks are what long-time users miss most, and Koru doesn't have them today.
A web clipper and searching text in images and scanned PDFs are on Koru's public roadmap. Koru runs on Windows and macOS, and there's no phone app yet. If you capture mostly from your phone or the web, it may be worth waiting.
Evernote builds its own AI into its paid plans. Koru has no built-in AI. Its built-in MCP server runs on your computer and lets AI tools that support MCP, such as Claude, read and work with your notes. You can also run coding agents such as Claude Code or Codex in a terminal tab, next to your docs and files in the same window.
Missing something you rely on? Tell us at hello@koru.do. What people ask for shapes the roadmap.
Koru imports Evernote offline from your exported .enex files. Nothing is fetched from Evernote, and you do not need to sign in to anything.
Yes. Koru is free and open source under MPL-2.0, with no account, no trial and no note limits.
Fully. Your notes live in a local database on your device, so all of them open, change and search with no connection. Sync between your own devices is peer to peer and end-to-end encrypted, and no server stores your notes.
Yes. Each exported notebook becomes a container in Koru with its notes inside, and tags, checklists, images, PDFs and other attachments come with them. Evernote Tasks keep their text, but not their due dates or reminders.
For some legacy subscriptions billed through Google Play and the App Store, yes. Der Bund reports Evernote Personal Annual in Switzerland going from CHF 109 to CHF 163 a year from December. Evernote's new Terms also take effect on December 1, 2026 for accounts created before October 1.
Not yet. A web clipper is on Koru's public roadmap. Until then, you can paste content into a page.
Not yet. Koru keeps PDFs and images as attachments that open in your usual apps, and searching the text inside them is on the roadmap.
Not yet. Koru runs on Windows and macOS. There's no phone app yet.
Koru has no built-in AI, but its built-in MCP server lets AI tools that support MCP, such as Claude, read and work with your notes. You can also run coding agents in a terminal tab beside your docs.
