Best Free Note-Taking Tools in 2026

The AI notepad that transforms raw meeting notes into actionable insights.

Granola is an AI-powered notepad designed to help individuals and teams, particularly product teams, get more value from their meetings. It transcribes computer audio directly, eliminating the need for invasive meeting bots, and allows users to take their own notes during calls. After a meeting, Granola uses advanced AI models to enhance these raw notes, extracting key themes, insights, action items, and even generating follow-up emails or summaries. The tool is particularly beneficial for product teams, enabling them to turn customer conversations into actionable product insights, validate roadmap decisions, and build a searchable library of user research. It integrates with popular tools like Notion, Slack, HubSpot, and Zapier, streamlining workflows and ensuring that insights are easily shared and acted upon across different departments. Granola aims to help users stay present in meetings while ensuring no critical information is missed, ultimately boosting productivity and decision-making.

AI notetaker that summarizes your meetings so you can focus on the conversation.

4.9/5 across G2 and Trustpilot · 7,187 ratings, Sep 2026

Fathom is an AI notetaker that automatically transcribes, summarizes, and extracts action items from your virtual meetings. It aims to eliminate the need for manual note-taking, allowing users to stay fully present during conversations. The tool provides shockingly accurate transcripts, instant summaries, and action items, which are delivered directly to your inbox. Fathom integrates seamlessly with popular communication and productivity tools like Slack, Salesforce, HubSpot, Notion, and Asana, automatically syncing meeting notes, insights, and action items. It also features an "Ask Fathom" capability, allowing users to search meeting content and get customizable AI summaries tailored to their team's workflow. This helps teams move work forward faster by reducing time spent on searching and follow-up. Fathom is designed for various teams including sales, marketing, operations, HR, and product & engineering, helping them improve collaboration, track progress, and gain actionable insights from every meeting.

The original note-taking app, still kicking after all these years

4.4/5 across G2 and Capterra · 10,296 ratings, Sep 2026

Evernote was the note-taking app that defined the category. Capture notes, clip web pages, organize with notebooks and tags-the original cross-platform note storage. The web clipper remains excellent. Search finds notes reliably. The platform has years of notes for loyal users. Long-time users keep using Evernote for the accumulated value of years of stored notes and familiar workflows.

Transform meetings into productive sessions with clear outcomes

4.7/5 on G2 · 2,438 ratings, Sep 2026

Fellow is meeting management software that helps teams have more productive meetings. AI-generated meeting agendas from past discussions. Collaborative note-taking during meetings. Action items automatically tracked and followed up. Integrates with Google Calendar, Zoom, and Slack. Meeting analytics show how you spend your time. Transform meetings from time-wasters into productive sessions with clear outcomes.

Unify work and personal schedules with integrated deadlines and scheduling links

3.8/5 across G2 and Trustpilot · 14,150 ratings, Sep 2026

Notion Calendar is a beautifully designed calendar app that unifies work and personal schedules. Integrated with Notion, it shows project deadlines alongside events, offers built-in scheduling links, and supports multi-timezone collaboration-all with a fast, keyboard-driven interface.

Digital notebook for organizing everything

4.0/5 across G2, Capterra and Trustpilot · 3,864 ratings, Sep 2026

Microsoft OneNote is a free-form digital notebook that lets you capture notes, drawings, screenshots, and audio recordings in organized notebooks. Part of Microsoft 365, OneNote syncs across all devices and integrates deeply with other Microsoft products like Outlook, Teams, and Word. The canvas-based interface allows placing content anywhere on a page, making it great for brainstorming and visual note-taking. OneNote is particularly strong in education and enterprise environments where Microsoft ecosystem is prevalent.

Ambient AI for clinical notes and EHR dictation

4.5/5 on G2 · 700 ratings, Aug 2026

Nabla is an ambient clinical AI assistant used by health systems to capture the patient-clinician conversation and generate structured notes. It also offers clinical-grade dictation inside Epic and other major EHRs, plus E/M and ICD-10 coding suggestions that stay under the clinician. Nabla cites a large number of health organizations, clinicians, and patient encounters. HIPAA, SOC 2 Type 2, ISO 27001, and GDPR are listed. Partners can embed via Nabla Connect or an API. A free trial is on the site; enterprise rollouts are quote-only.

AI meeting notes and transcription

4.4/5 across G2 and Capterra · 608 ratings, Sep 2026

Otter.ai is an AI-powered meeting assistant that automatically transcribes, summarizes, and extracts action items from your meetings. With up to 95% accuracy, it works seamlessly with Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams, joining your meetings as a participant to capture everything. Beyond transcription, Otter uses AI to generate summaries, identify key topics, and assign action items to team members. The AI Chat feature lets you query past conversations-ask "What did we decide about the Q4 budget?" and get instant answers. With integrations to Salesforce, HubSpot, Slack, and Notion, Otter fits into existing workflows. Used by major companies including Salesforce, Harvard, Amazon, and IBM, it is consistently rated as one of the most accurate transcription tools available.

Organize your notes, tasks, and knowledge in one connected workspace.

4.4/5 across SourceForge and Capterra · 693 ratings, Sep 2026

Clover is an all-in-one workspace designed to help individuals and teams capture, organize, and connect their notes, tasks, and knowledge. It combines the flexibility of a document editor with the structure of a database, allowing users to create rich, interconnected content. Whether you're brainstorming ideas, managing projects, or building a personal knowledge base, Clover provides tools for seamless organization and retrieval. It's ideal for students, professionals, and teams who need a centralized hub for their information. By integrating notes, tasks, and a powerful search function, Clover aims to reduce context switching and improve productivity, making it easier to find what you need when you need it.

Mind mapping and brainstorming

4.5/5 across G2 and Capterra · 585 ratings, Sep 2026

XMind is a mind mapping and brainstorming application available on desktop (Mac, Windows, Linux) and mobile (iOS, Android). It supports multiple diagram types including mind maps, org charts, tree charts, fishbone diagrams, and timelines. The Premium tier adds real-time collaboration, cloud sync, and an AI copilot for brainstorming assistance. XMind is popular with students, professionals, and teams who need visual thinking tools for planning, note-taking, and idea organization.

Collaborative notebooks for data analysis, visualization, and machine learning.

4.5/5 on G2 · 535 ratings, Mar 2026

Noteable is a collaborative notebook platform designed for data teams to explore, analyze, and visualize data, build models, and share insights. It provides a unified workspace where data scientists, analysts, and engineers can work together on Python, SQL, and R notebooks. The platform supports real-time collaboration, version control, and integrates with various data sources and tools. Noteable aims to streamline the data workflow by offering an environment that combines coding, markdown, and interactive outputs. It's built for teams that need to iterate quickly on data projects, ensure reproducibility, and effectively communicate their findings across the organization. The platform is suitable for a range of tasks from ad-hoc data exploration to developing and deploying machine learning models. Key benefits include enhanced team productivity through shared workspaces, simplified data access and integration, and improved decision-making by making data insights more accessible and understandable. It caters to organizations looking to foster a data-driven culture and empower their teams with powerful, yet easy-to-use, analytical tools.

Open-source note-taking for developers, with Markdown and code snippet support.

4.7/5 on G2 · 277 ratings, Sep 2026

Boostnote is an open-source note-taking application designed primarily for developers. It allows users to create and organize notes, including rich text, Markdown, and code snippets, within a desktop environment. The application emphasizes a distraction-free writing experience and offers features tailored for technical documentation and code management. It's ideal for programmers, technical writers, and anyone who frequently works with code or needs to store structured information. Boostnote helps users keep their development notes, ideas, and code snippets organized and easily searchable, improving productivity and knowledge retention.

The most accurate AI note taker that captures, transcribes, and summarizes every meeting, bot-free.

4.8/5 on G2 · 223 ratings, Sep 2026

Bluedot is an AI-powered note-taking application designed to capture, transcribe, and summarize both online and in-person meetings. Unlike many other AI note-takers, Bluedot operates in the background without a bot joining your calls, ensuring a less intrusive experience. It works across various platforms including Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, and even for phone calls and on-site meetings, offering web, desktop (Mac and Windows), and mobile (iOS and Android) applications. The tool provides highly accurate AI meeting notes, capable of handling technical terms, to-dos, abbreviations, and speaker identification, and supports over 100 languages for transcription and summaries. Key functionalities include automatic CRM synchronization (HubSpot, Salesforce), email draft generation for follow-ups, and AI chat for searching past conversations. Users can customize AI notes with their own prompts and templates, control the structure and detail level, and analyze calls for coaching insights. Bluedot aims to improve productivity by automating administrative tasks, streamlining note-taking, and ensuring transparency and accountability for teams of all sizes.

Capture, organize, and elevate your ideas with AI-powered digital note-taking.

4.4/5 across G2, Capterra and Trustpilot · 263 ratings, Sep 2026

Goodnotes is a versatile note-taking application designed to help users capture thoughts, organize information, and collaborate effectively across various platforms. It offers a flexible environment where users can write, type, draw, and record audio notes, seamlessly switching between input methods. The app provides different canvases like digital notebooks for annotating PDFs and handwriting, whiteboards for expansive visual brainstorming, and text documents for formal writing. Goodnotes is ideal for students, educators, professionals, and teams. Students can use it to ace exams by taking searchable notes on lecture slides, recording audio synced to notes, and creating flashcards. Educators can grade papers faster and make lessons more engaging. Professionals can leverage its AI features for meeting summaries and enhanced note-taking, while teams can collaborate in real-time on brainstorms and documents. The integration of AI features helps users understand, organize, and elevate their notes by providing Q&A capabilities, content generation, and meeting transcription and summarization.

AI-powered notetaker for transcribing, summarizing, and translating meetings and audio in real-time.

4.4/5 on G2 · 229 ratings, Mar 2026

Notta is an AI-powered notetaker that automatically converts spoken content from meetings, interviews, or audio/video recordings into searchable text. It allows users to transcribe, edit, summarize, and collaborate on these transcripts, aiming to boost productivity by reducing the need for manual note-taking. The platform supports live transcription of meetings and offers AI-driven meeting analytics for immediate insights. Notta is designed for a wide range of users, including sales teams, consultants, educators, and media professionals, who need accurate and efficient transcription services. It helps users save time on creating meeting minutes, facilitates seamless team collaboration through instant sharing of notes and summaries, and enables easy export of content to various formats and integrations with popular tools like Slack and Salesforce. Additionally, Notta provides robust security measures to protect user data.