Best AI notes app in 2026: 7 apps compared

At a glance

Prices are the maker's own page or the US App Store, read on 7 November 2026.

How I picked

Everything here is a notes app first: a place where you write and keep things. I compared three things: what the AI does, what it costs, and whether the AI you already use can reach your notes. I read each maker's own pages on the day I wrote this.

The Pinto Notes and Obsidian screenshots are mine; the other pictures come from the companies that make the apps. Apps that only record meetings are further down.

1. Pinto Notes: best if you already use ChatGPT or Claude

Pinto Notes has no AI of its own, on purpose. It's a notes app that works like Apple Notes, with folders, checklists and tables, and it lets ChatGPT, Claude, Claude Code and Codex search, read and edit your notes. You connect each one once.

So you can tell ChatGPT on your phone “add the late checkout to my Lisbon note”, and the note on your Mac changes. The new line shows up tinted, with Undo, and the version before it stays in the note's history. Other apps let you review their own AI's edits; Pinto Notes does it for the AI apps you connect from outside.

Pinto Notes is free and open source, and charges nothing for the connection. Your AI app's plan still applies: on Claude's free plan, for example, you can add one custom connector. It imports your Apple Notes on the Mac. Notes are stored as Markdown and encrypted on your device before they sync, but Pinto Notes keeps a sealed copy of your key so you can sign in on a new device, so it isn't end-to-end encryption.

Where it falls short: no AI inside the app, so without ChatGPT or Claude it's a plain notes app. It's Mac and iPhone only, and newer than everything else here.

Best for: people who already ask ChatGPT or Claude to plan things and are tired of pasting notes back and forth.

2. Notion: best for a team workspace

Notion is a workspace more than a notes app: pages, databases and wikis, shared with your team. Notion AI answers questions across the workspace with citations, writes and edits (you accept or discard what it suggests), records meetings, and runs agents that do multi-step work across Notion and connected apps.

Notion AI comes with Business ($20 a member a month billed yearly, $24 monthly) and Enterprise. Free and Plus get a limited trial. Separately, Notion's official MCP server works on every plan, so ChatGPT and Claude can search and edit your pages without Notion AI.

Where it falls short: heavy for quick personal notes, the built-in AI needs a Business plan, and AI features don't work offline.

Best for: teams that keep their work in Notion.

3. Mem: best for tracking tasks and reminders

Mem is built around its AI. You write or talk, and Mem Agent builds a picture of your tasks and projects and reminds you at the right time, using your calendar. From the chat, Mem can create and edit notes, and every edit stays in version history. On a Mac or Windows PC it also records meetings without a bot joining the call.

The free plan gives you 25 messages to Mem and 25 new notes a month. Plus ($9 a month) doubles that to 50, and Pro ($29) to 100, with larger Pro plans above it. Mem has an official MCP server for Claude, ChatGPT, Claude Code and Codex, and exports your notes as Markdown.

Where it falls short: monthly caps on messages and new notes on every plan, and no Android app.

Best for: people who want automatic task tracking and reminders from their notes.

4. Evernote: best if your notes are already there

Evernote has added a lot of AI: an AI Assistant, built with OpenAI, that searches and organizes your notes from a chat; search by meaning; transcription of recordings; and AI Edit, where you review the changes before you keep them. Evernote's plan page lists these on every plan, Free included, with limits it doesn't spell out.

Free stops at 50 notes, one notebook and one device. Starter is $14.99 a month or $99 a year for up to 1,000 notes and three devices; bigger archives need Advanced, $24.99 a month or $249.99 a year. Paid plans also get Evernote's MCP server, in beta, which works with Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor and Codex.

Where it falls short: a long-time archive likely needs Advanced, and Evernote doesn't say how far the AI limits go.

Best for: people with years of notes in Evernote who want AI on top of them.

5. Apple Notes: best free AI on iPhone and Mac

If your iPhone or Mac runs Apple Intelligence (iPhone 15 Pro or later, or a Mac with Apple silicon; Apple keeps the full list), Apple Notes already has AI. Writing Tools rewrite and proofread, recordings turn into a transcript and a summary, and Math Notes solves sums as you type. In iOS 27 and macOS 27, Siri AI (beta) can find a note or look inside one, and create new ones. Writing Tools can also hand a request to ChatGPT through Apple's ChatGPT extension.

It's free and already on your devices. On a Mac, Claude can read and write your notes through Anthropic's Apple Notes connector, and the ChatGPT app can read the note you have open, but not change it.

Where it falls short: no ChatGPT or Claude chat on your phone or the web can open your notes; both work only on a Mac. Siri AI is in beta, in six languages to start, and not yet on iPhone in the EU.

Best for: people who want AI help with no new app and no new bill.

More in Siri AI and Apple Notes and can Claude read your Apple Notes?

6. Reflect: best for local notes with your own AI key

Reflect has a new app. Reflect Open, the one on reflect.app now, keeps your notes as plain Markdown files on your disk, with no account and no Reflect server. The AI is optional and uses your own OpenAI, Anthropic or Google API key, billed by that company: press ⌘J to ask your notes a question and get an answer that points to the notes it came from. Notes you mark private stay out of it.

It's free on the Mac. On iPhone and iPad it's $9.99 a month or $99 a year. The older hosted app, now Reflect Classic, still runs for people who have it.

Where it falls short: an API key is a separate bill from a ChatGPT or Claude subscription, no AI chat can reach your notes (there's only a command-line tool for agents on your Mac), and the iPhone app is new.

Best for: people who want local Markdown files and their choice of AI company.

7. Obsidian: best if you want to build it yourself

Obsidian has no AI in the editor. It keeps plain Markdown files on your disk, and its community plugins add AI: Copilot (over 3 million downloads) chats with your vault and runs agents that read and write notes, and Smart Connections finds related notes with a model that runs on your computer. Depending on the plugin, you can use an assistant you already pay for, an API key, the plugin's own paid models, or a local model. Obsidian's official command-line tool also lets agents on your computer, like Claude Code, read and write your vault.

Obsidian is free. Sync between devices is $4 a month billed yearly.

Where it falls short: it all takes setup, it's community plugins rather than Obsidian's own, and nothing reaches your vault from a phone chat.

Best for: people who enjoy building their own system. More in Obsidian MCP servers compared.

Also considered

• Craft has AI built in, with a small free allowance, and an official connection ChatGPT can use to search and update your documents. It's in our best notes app for Mac list; here it lost out on the free AI limits.
• OneNote has Microsoft's Copilot on Microsoft 365 plans that include it. It's the pick if you already pay for Microsoft 365 and use Windows.

If you meant meeting notes

A lot of “AI note taker” apps record your calls and write the notes for you. That's a different job from keeping notes:

• Granola listens on your Mac, PC or phone without a bot joining the call, and turns your rough notes into clean ones. Basic is free with 30 days of meetings; Business is $14 a person a month. Both connect to ChatGPT and Claude.
• Otter joins or records meetings and transcribes them. Basic is free for 300 minutes a month, up to 30 minutes per recording, and also has an MCP server.

Mem, Notion (on Business) and Evernote record meetings too. And if you study from PDFs and articles, Google's Gemini Notebook (called NotebookLM until July) answers questions from your sources. It's a research tool, not a notes app.

Which one should you pick?

• You use ChatGPT or Claude daily: Pinto Notes, free.
• You work in a team: Notion, with Business for the AI.
• You want the app to track tasks and remind you: Mem.
• Your notes are already in Evernote: Evernote, on a paid plan.
• You want no new app: Apple Notes.
• You want local files and your own AI: Reflect or Obsidian.

Want ChatGPT in the notes you keep? How to connect ChatGPT to your notes walks through it.

Sources

Read on 7 November 2026 on each maker's own pages: Notion pricing, Notion AI, Notion MCP, Evernote plans, Evernote AI, Evernote MCP, Mem pricing, Mem MCP, Reflect and Reflect Open, Obsidian pricing, Obsidian CLI, Copilot for Obsidian, Apple Intelligence, Apple Notes recordings, ChatGPT Work with Apps, Granola pricing, Otter pricing, ChatGPT pricing and Claude custom connectors.

Questions

Checked against the app on 7 November 2026.