Evernote alternative
Evernote’s free plan now stops at 50 notes and one notebook, and the Advanced plan costs $249.99 a year. Koru is a free, open-source, native desktop notes app with no plan limits. It keeps your notes on your own devices and imports your Evernote notebooks with their tags, checklists and attachments. A web clipper, search inside images and PDFs, and phone apps are on Koru’s roadmap; if you depend on them every day, Evernote is ahead for now.
Evernote replaced its Personal and Professional plans 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.
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. Long-time users describe losing confidence in where it is going, and 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. |
| 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 | On your own devices. Works fully offline, with no account required. | On Evernote’s servers, with offline access in the apps. |
| Sync | Directly between your devices, peer to peer. No Koru server required. | Through Evernote’s cloud. Free syncs 1 device, Starter 3. |
| Platforms | Windows today. macOS in beta. iOS and Android apps in development. Linux on the roadmap. | 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 | Tasks, lists and reminders are on the roadmap and in nightly builds. Calendar integration is on the roadmap. | Tasks and Calendar. |
| AI | Connect Claude, ChatGPT or a local model to your notes through the built-in MCP server. Bring-your-own AI provider chat is on the roadmap. | Built-in AI features on paid plans, plus an MCP connection. |
| Encryption | No password-locked notes yet. | 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 are on your own computer rather than on our servers. What it does not have yet is everything in that list after cloud sync. Koru Cloud, an optional always-on sync service, is coming soon from $9.99 a month, and you will never need it to use your notes.
Evernote is a cloud service with apps on top. Koru is an app first: your workspace lives on your computer, works with no connection and no account, and syncs directly between your devices when they can reach each other.
Because the app is open source and the notes are on your disk, a future price change cannot 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, and its mature phone apps are the features long-time users miss most, and Koru does not have them today.
All of them are on Koru’s public roadmap: a web clipper, searching text in images and scanned PDFs, mobile share to Koru, email capture, and tasks with reminders. Koru runs on Windows today, with the Mac app in beta and the iOS and Android apps in development. 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 does not include its own AI yet. Its built-in MCP server runs on your computer and lets the AI you already use, such as Claude, ChatGPT or a local model through Ollama, read and work with your notes. With a local model, nothing leaves your machine.
Missing something you rely on? Tell us at hello@koru.do. What people ask for shapes the roadmap, and when Koru Cloud launches, subscribers will vote on what we build next.
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 with no account, no trial and no note limits. Koru Cloud, an optional paid sync service, is coming soon from $9.99 a month, but your notes and device-to-device sync never depend on it.
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 and reminders do not become Koru tasks.
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.
Koru runs on Windows today. The Mac app is in beta, and the iOS and Android apps are in development.
Yes, with the AI you already use. Koru’s built-in MCP server lets tools such as Claude, ChatGPT or a local Ollama model read and work with your notes. Built-in AI chat with your own provider is on the roadmap.
