A free Evernote alternative with no note limit, on your computer

If Evernote's Free plan stops you at 50 notes and one notebook, or the new plan prices sent you looking, Barside is a free Evernote alternative for Windows, Linux and Mac. There is no limit on notes or notebooks and no account for personal notes. Barside imports your Evernote export (.enex files) with titles, dates, tags, checklists and pictures, and it keeps your whole library on your computer, where it works offline.

Barside is a different kind of app, though. Evernote is a cloud service with apps for phones, the web and desktops, document scanning, and search that reaches inside attachments. Barside is a desktop app for people who do their notes at a computer. This page compares the two honestly, so you can tell in a few minutes whether to switch.

The short answer

Evernote is a complete capture tool. It clips the web, scans documents, searches the text in images and PDFs, holds tasks and a calendar, transcribes meetings with AI, and runs on iOS, Android, the web, Windows and Mac. If you capture on the go, that reach is hard to beat.

People look for an Evernote alternative for a few common reasons: the Free plan's small limits, the move to new paid plans, device limits on syncing, and wanting their notes back on their own computer. Barside answers them this way:

• No limits to count. Create as many notes and workspaces as your drive can hold.
• Free. Barside costs nothing. Barside Plus is optional, for cloud sync between computers and encrypted backup.
• Your library, offline. Notes, pictures, recordings and saved pages live in Barside's data folder, and everything works with no connection.
• A clean move. The built-in importer reads Evernote's .enex files, with a preview before anything is added.

If you live on your phone or in PDFs, stay with Evernote. If you take notes at a Windows or Linux computer, or at a Mac, read on.

Why people look for an Evernote alternative

These are the reasons that come up most, stated fairly. The facts about Evernote come from its own plans page and help center, as of September 2026.

• The Free plan is small. Evernote Free holds up to 50 notes and 1 notebook, and syncs 1 device.
• New plans, new prices. Evernote retired its Personal and Professional plans and replaced them with Starter and Advanced. Starter costs US$14.99 a month or US$99 a year, for up to 1,000 notes and 20 notebooks on 3 devices. Advanced costs US$24.99 a month or US$249.99 a year and lifts those caps, within what Evernote calls safeguard limits. The older plans cannot be chosen again.
• Counting devices. Free syncs 1 device and Starter 3. A laptop, a desktop and a phone already fill Starter.
• Everything goes through the cloud. Your notes are stored and synced by Evernote. Some people would rather keep their library on their own drive.
• No Linux app. Evernote's apps cover iOS, Android, the web, Windows and Mac.

Barside at a glance

Barside's notes are full pages: headings, fonts, text and highlight colors, lists, checklists, quotes, code blocks, links and tables, plus images, video and audio. Choose Create, then New note, or press Ctrl+N, and start typing: every change is saved on your computer as you go. See the local-first note-taking app.

Here is what takes the place of the Evernote habits you rely on:

• Notebooks become workspaces. Each workspace has its own color, shared by its notes, cards and pinned tabs, and there is no limit on how many you make. See workspaces for projects.
• The Web Clipper becomes three buttons. In a note, the download icon next to the recording icon saves a copy of a public page with its layout and images: paste an address or choose Use current browser tab, then Save into note. For articles, Reading keeps a clean copy with its pictures that you can highlight, tag and hear with Listen. Save browser tab puts the page you are looking at in a note's bookmark bar. None of them needs a browser extension.
• Search in images, on your computer. Barside reads the text in pictures inside your notes, so screenshots and photos of printed pages become searchable. Alt+Shift+S captures any part of the screen and copies its text, or adds the capture to a note. On Linux, install Tesseract first.
• Reminders on the note. Press the bell on a note, pick a date and time and a sound, a silent alert or the note opening. A due reminder stays until you finish it or snooze it for ten minutes. See reminders on notes.
• Tasks from your checklists. Every checklist item in every note appears on the Tasks board, from Overdue to No due date. See the task board built from your checklists.
• Audio notes and meetings. Record a screen, a window or audio into a note, and transcribe calls with speech-to-text that runs on your computer, labeled You and Others. See call transcription.
• A search bar over everything. Alt+Shift+Space in any app finds notes, tasks, bookmarks, meetings and commands. On a Linux desktop that uses Wayland, you set these hotkeys once in the desktop's keyboard settings. See the search bar and hotkeys.
• Answers from your notes. With an AI connected in Settings → AI, Ask library answers questions from your notes, Reading, bookmarks and transcripts, and cites each source. See AI search that cites its sources.

Saved pages stay readable with no connection, because the copy lives in your library. Articles you keep in Reading also show up in search and in Library answers. See save webpages for offline reading and the read-it-later app with highlights.

Evernote vs Barside: feature comparison

Every Evernote cell comes from Evernote's plans page and help center. Barside and Evernote's paid plans both connect to AI apps such as Claude and ChatGPT through MCP, so either way your AI can read the notes you allow.

Pricing compared

Prices are as each company's own page shows them, as of September 2026.

On one computer, Barside does for free what Evernote Free stops doing at 50 notes. The picture changes if you need a phone. Evernote Starter puts up to 1,000 notes on 3 devices, phones included, for US$99 a year, while Barside has no phone app and its cloud sync, with Barside Plus, links computers only. Evernote also offers college students 40% off a year of Advanced.

AI works differently too. Evernote builds its own AI in: its plans page lists AI Assistant, AI Transcribe and AI Edit on every plan, Free included. Barside has no AI of its own and never charges for AI: you connect an account with Anthropic, OpenAI, Google or OpenRouter, and that company bills you for what you use.

Where Evernote is better

Evernote does a lot that Barside does not try to do. If any of these matter to you, stay with Evernote.

• Phones and the web. Evernote runs on iOS, Android and in a browser, as well as on Windows and Mac. Barside runs on Windows, Linux computers and Mac.
• Scanning and PDFs. Evernote scans paper, annotates PDFs and searches inside them. Barside notes hold images, video, audio and files: add a PDF to a note, and Barside shows its pages and keeps the file in your library. It does not scan paper.
• Search power. Evernote's advanced search supports Boolean, geographic and filtered searches, across text and attachments. Barside's search matches words in titles, note text, bookmarks and the text read from screenshots.
• Tags. Evernote organizes with tags as well as notebooks. Barside organizes with workspaces and links.
• Capture from anywhere. Email content into Evernote, clip from the browser extension, and connect Gmail, Google Drive, Google Calendar and Outlook, plus Slack on Advanced. Barside captures on your computer.
• Encrypted text in a note. From Starter up, Evernote can encrypt text inside a note on Mac and Windows. Barside keeps secrets in its separate password vault instead.
• Teams. Evernote shares notes with anyone, even people without Evernote, its Spaces give a team one place for projects and notes, and Enterprise adds admin tools and single sign-on. Barside shares copies of notes into its own Spaces, where members chat, vote in polls and find the key messages in a Pinned bar above the chat.

How to move from Evernote to Barside

Barside reads Evernote's own export on your computer, shows you a preview, and adds nothing until you say so.

1. Open the Evernote desktop app for Windows or Mac. Exporting does not work on Evernote Web, and free accounts can export too.
2. Right-click a notebook, choose "Export...", and pick ENEX. Make sure tags and the created date are ticked in the options, then choose Export; the file lands on your desktop. Evernote exports whole notebooks, or up to 100 selected notes at a time.
3. Repeat for each notebook you want to bring.
4. If you use Evernote's encrypted text, decrypt it in Evernote before you export. Barside cannot read it and puts Encrypted content not imported in its place.
5. In Barside, open Settings & backups, find Notes from other apps and choose Import next to Import notes. You can also type import in the search bar.
6. Choose Evernote, then Choose .enex files, and pick one notebook's file or several at once.
7. Read the preview under Ready to import, then under Import into choose A new workspace. Barside suggests From Evernote; type the notebook's name instead if you like. Choose Import, then Open workspace.

What comes across:

• Titles, formatting and dates. Each note keeps its title, its text and formatting, and its created and updated dates.
• Checklists and tasks. Evernote checkboxes become checklists. Tasks from newer versions of Evernote come back as checklists in the place they had, ticked if they were done. All of them appear on the Tasks board.
• Pictures, audio and video. They are copied into your library, so the note keeps working when the export is gone.
• Links between notes. A link to another Evernote note becomes a Barside note link when that note is in the same import, matched by its title.
• Code blocks and web links keep their shape.

What changes:

• Tags become text. Each note that had tags ends with a bold Tags: line.
• PDFs and other files stay behind. Each leaves a line saying Attachment not imported with its name, and the preview lists them. Keep your .enex files as an archive, and add the PDFs you need to their notes again: Barside shows their pages.
• Reminders do not come across. Press the bell on a note to set one again.
• One workspace per import. Import each notebook on its own to give it its own workspace, but import notebooks that link to each other together, so their links survive.

Barside reads up to 5,000 notes and 1 GB of files in one import, with each .enex file up to 200 MB. Evernote's own size option splits exports at 300 MB or more, so for a notebook larger than 200 MB, export its notes in batches of up to 100 instead. The full walkthrough is in the guide to import notes from Notion, Evernote and Obsidian.

Who should switch, and who should stay

Barside is a good fit if you:

• take notes at a computer, not on a phone: Windows, Linux or Mac;
• have outgrown Evernote Free and do not want a subscription;
• want notes, web clips, tasks, reminders and recordings on your own drive, offline;
• want your own AI, or none at all.

Stay with Evernote if you:

• capture on your phone, or scan paper documents;
• keep a lot of PDFs and search or mark them up;
• depend on tags, Boolean search or email-in;
• need your notes on a tablet or in a browser, or on a Mac.

Privacy: where your notes live

Barside keeps notes, pictures, recordings and saved pages in its data folder on your computer. It counts which features are used, by name only, and you can turn that off. Importing reads your .enex files on your computer and uploads nothing. Text recognition for screenshots runs on your computer too. None of your content leaves your computer unless you use an online feature on purpose, such as sharing a note to a Space, a share link, or cloud backup and sync with Barside Plus. Cloud backup is encrypted on your computer before upload, and Barside cannot read it. Spaces travel over HTTPS and cloud sync is encrypted in transit and at rest, but neither is end-to-end encrypted. AI features send only what a request needs to the AI company you connected. See the privacy guide and local-first storage with private backups.

Other Evernote alternatives worth a look

• Microsoft OneNote. Free notebooks with free-form pages and handwriting, on Windows, Mac, the web, iPhone, iPad and Android. Read the OneNote alternative guide.
• Joplin. A free, open-source notes app with end-to-end encrypted sync and apps for Windows, macOS, Linux, Android and iOS. It imports .enex files with their tags and attachments, and creates a notebook for each file when you import a folder of them.
• Notion, if you want a shared online workspace with databases. See the Notion alternative guide.
• Obsidian, if you want your notes as plain Markdown files. See the Obsidian alternative guide.

For the wider field, see the best note-taking apps.

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