Evernote vs Apple Notes

A word about us before anything else. We make Harbor, a notes app. We compete with both apps on this page, and we’ve put Harbor in the tables on the same terms as everyone else so you can see where it loses. Every Apple Notes figure below comes from Apple’s own support pages and user guides for iOS 27 and macOS 27, read on the date at the top. The Evernote figures come from Evernote’s plan page, read the same day.

Apple Notes costs nothing and it’s already on your iPhone. Evernote costs $99 a year to keep 1,000 notes, or $249.99 a year to keep all of them.

The short answer: if everything you own is made by Apple, Apple Notes will do almost everything you used Evernote for, for free. If there’s a Windows PC or an Android phone anywhere in your day, it won’t, and that one row decides it.

What each one costs

The catch with “free” is the 5 GB. It’s shared with your iPhone backups and your photo library, and for a lot of people it filled up years ago. Text notes barely register. A decade of scanned receipts and PDFs does. If you already pay for iCloud+, Apple Notes is free in the full sense.

Evernote Free is 50 notes on one device, which is a trial, not a plan. Most people leaving are leaving Starter or Advanced, and what Evernote costs now, and how it got there is its own story.

Where each one runs

This is the whole decision for a lot of people.

Apple Notes is a native app on iPhone, iPad, Mac and Vision Pro, and it’s very good there. Everywhere else it’s a web page. There’s no Windows app, and the iCloud for Windows app syncs your photos and passwords but not your notes. Android gets the same web page in a mobile browser.

The web version is real — tags, tables and shared notes all work — but it shows iCloud notes only, and a note locked with your device passcode can’t be opened there. One more wrinkle Apple documents: an Apple Account that’s never been signed in on an Apple device gets 1 GB of iCloud, not 5.

Evernote has always run everywhere, and that’s still the best thing about it. If you’re leaving Evernote because it worked on every machine you own, Apple Notes is a step down. We checked twelve apps device by device in which notes apps actually run everywhere.

Getting your Evernote notes in

This is better than most comparisons say. A Mac can import Evernote files directly.

Export your notebooks from Evernote as .enex files. In Notes on the Mac, choose File > Import to Notes and pick them. Apple’s documentation says:

• Imported notes land in a folder called “Imported Notes”. Sort them into folders afterward.
• Tags come across on macOS 13 or later.
• Any attachment or feature Notes doesn’t support isn’t imported. Apple doesn’t list which ones, and it doesn’t say whether creation dates survive. Import a small notebook first and check.

There’s no way to do this on an iPhone or iPad. You need a Mac.

Getting the files out of Evernote is the harder half. The desktop app quietly limits how many notes you can select at once, among other things. The complete Evernote export guide walks through it.

Search, scans and handwriting

Apple Notes search is genuinely good and costs nothing. It finds typed text, handwriting, text in documents you scanned with the Notes scanner, and objects in images. On a Mac it also searches attached PDFs. On an iPhone you can search a PDF inside the note you’re in, but not across your library. Apple doesn’t claim it reads text in ordinary photos, so we won’t claim it either.

The scanner is built into Notes on iPhone and iPad and saves a clean PDF. On a Mac you can scan with your iPhone straight into a note.

Evernote searches text in images on every plan, Free included, and it reads handwriting. If your notes are mostly scanned paper, both of them will find it.

Folders, tags and links

Evernote organizes with notebooks, stacks and tags. Starter caps you at 20 notebooks and 100 tags, which is easy to hit with a library you’ve built for ten years.

Apple Notes has folders and subfolders, #tags typed right into a note (one word each), Smart Folders that collect notes by tag, date or mention, and links between notes — as of iOS 27 you can link to a section of a note, too. None of it is capped.

It’s a different shape, not a weaker one. If your Evernote system leans hard on tags, Apple Notes will feel familiar.

Clipping the web

Evernote has a real web clipper. It saves the article, the simplified page or a screenshot into a note, and it’s still one of the best things Evernote makes.

Apple Notes doesn’t have one. Sharing a page from Safari adds it to a note as an attachment. That isn’t a clip: you don’t get a clean copy of the article to edit, trim and file the way Evernote gives you. If clipping is how half your notes get made, read what actually replaces the Evernote Web Clipper before you decide.

Privacy and encryption

Apple Notes can lock a note, with a separate Notes password or your device passcode, and unlock it with Face ID or Touch ID. Locked notes are end-to-end encrypted, so Apple can’t read them. If you forget a custom Notes password, Apple can’t get those notes back.

Locking has limits. You can’t lock a note that has tags, PDFs, audio, video or documents in it, or a note you’ve shared. A locked note shows only its title in search.

Ordinary notes aren’t end-to-end encrypted by default. Apple holds the keys. Turn on Advanced Data Protection for your Apple Account and they become end-to-end encrypted too, and iCloud.com access switches off unless you turn it back on.

Evernote has no end-to-end encryption. Its in-note encryption hides selected text inside a note, on Mac and Windows only, and not on the Free plan.

On privacy, Apple Notes wins this one clearly. One trade to know about: encryption and search pull against each other — the reason a locked note can’t be searched. We have the same trade in Harbor, and we wrote about when encrypting your notes is worth it.

AI, and getting your notes into it

Apple Notes has Apple Intelligence: Writing Tools to rewrite and proofread, which can hand off to ChatGPT, plus audio recordings with a live transcript. Transcripts work on iPhone 12 and later; summaries of those recordings need an iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 16 or later. Math works in any note and doesn’t need Apple Intelligence.

What Apple doesn’t have is a way for your AI to read your notes. There’s no Notes API and no official MCP server. On a Mac, open-source MCP servers like mcp-apple-notes read Notes through Apple’s scripting, and Shortcuts can create, append to and find notes. It works. It’s also Mac-only and unofficial.

Evernote includes its AI Assistant, semantic search and AI Transcribe on every plan, Free included. Its MCP connector — the official way to let Claude or ChatGPT read your notes — needs Starter or Advanced. We compared every notes app with an MCP server if that’s the row you care about.

If you leave later

Worth checking before you move in. Apple Notes exports one note at a time on iPhone and iPad, as PDF or Markdown. On a Mac running macOS 26 or later you can select a folder’s worth and export them as Markdown together. There’s no single “export everything” button. How to export all your Apple Notes at once covers every route, including the free tools that keep your folders.

Evernote exports ENEX from its desktop app, and most notes apps can read it.

So which one

Pick Apple Notes if everything you own is Apple. It’s free, it’s already there, its search reads handwriting, its locked notes are properly encrypted, and a Mac will import your Evernote export in a few minutes. For an all-Apple household leaving Evernote over the price, it’s the obvious first try, and we’d tell a friend the same.

Stay on Evernote if you need Windows or Android, or if you live in the web clipper. That’s what Apple Notes can’t give you, and no setting will change it. You pay for it, and in 2026 you pay a lot more than you used to.

Where does Harbor land? We’re a subscription — $9.99 a month or $99 a year — so if free is the point, Apple Notes wins and we won’t pretend otherwise. What we do is Evernote’s half without Evernote’s ceilings: native apps on Mac, Windows, iPhone and iPad, and Android, plus a web app; a web clipper for Chrome, Edge, Firefox and Safari; OCR on every plan, handwriting included; an MCP server and CLI on the one plan; and a written price promise — no increase for three years, then capped at 10% a year.

If that’s your kind of library, our one-step Evernote import keeps your notebooks and tags. Harbor vs Evernote gives us the same treatment as this page, and the full alternatives roundup covers the rest.

Sources

Read on October 12, 2026:

• Notes import from Evernote on Mac — Apple support 102223 and Import into Notes on Mac
• Search, handwriting and scanned documents — Search notes on iPhone and on Mac
• Scanning — Scan text and documents on iPhone
• Locked notes and what can’t be locked — Lock your notes on Mac and Apple Platform Security: Notes
• Advanced Data Protection — iCloud data security overview
• iCloud.com, Windows and storage — Notes on iCloud.com, iCloud for Windows, iCloud+ plans and pricing, iCloud storage without an Apple device
• Tags, Smart Folders and links — Tags in Notes, Smart Folders, Add links
• Audio transcripts and Apple Intelligence — Record and transcribe audio, ChatGPT with Apple Intelligence
• Shortcuts actions for Notes — Apple support 101583
• Evernote plans, limits, AI and MCP — evernote.com/compare-plans

Prices change and features move. If something here is out of date, tell us and we’ll fix it — the date above is the promise.