Jotura vs Evernote.
Evernote is a cloud notes service with a web clipper, search inside images, and apps on every platform. Jotura is a notes app that keeps your notes as Markdown files on your disk. Here is where each one wins.
A cloud service, or notes you own.
Evernote keeps your notes on its servers and gives you apps on Mac, Windows, iPhone, Android and the web. Jotura keeps them as ordinary .md files in a folder on Mac, Windows, Linux and Android, with no limit on the free app and optional end-to-end encrypted sync. Stay with Evernote if you rely on the web clipper, on searching text in photos and scans, or on an iPhone. Choose Jotura if you want unlimited notes for free, sync the server cannot read, sharing with editor and viewer roles, and a book reader on your Android phone.
What each app gives you.
Evernote builds more services into the app. Jotura gives you more of the app for free and keeps the notes as files.
| Feature | Jotura | Evernote |
|---|---|---|
| Free plan | the whole app, with as many notes as your disk holds; sync is paid | 50 notes, one notebook, 20 tags, one device |
| Paid plans | Sync at £4 a month or £40 a year ($5 or $50 in the US), no free trial | Starter (1,000 notes, 20 notebooks, 3 devices) and Advanced (unlimited), 7-day free trial |
| Encryption | end-to-end on Sync: Argon2id keys, per-file keys, HMAC path ids | TLS in transit and AES-256 at rest with Google-managed keys; passphrase encryption for selected text on Starter and above, in the Mac and Windows apps |
| Where your notes live | plain .md files in a folder on your disk | Evernote's servers on Google Cloud, with offline notes in the apps on paid plans |
| Note format | Markdown | rich text notes, exported as ENEX or HTML |
| Platforms | Mac, Windows, Linux, Android | Mac, Windows, iOS, Android, web |
| iPhone and iPad | ||
| Web app | ||
| Linux desktop app | not among Evernote's listed apps | |
| Tags | inline #tags and frontmatter tags, nested with a slash, and a Tags pane with counts | tags on each note, 20 on the free plan and 100 on Starter |
| Links between notes | type [[ to pick a note, aliases included; renaming a note updates its links | internal links to other notes |
| Tasks and calendar | checklists gathered in a Tasks pane, due dates, and a daily notes calendar | tasks and Evernote Calendar on every plan; due dates, reminders, assignees and Google or Microsoft calendars on paid plans |
| Sharing | a note or folder, editor or viewer, end-to-end encrypted, both people on Sync | notes and notebooks shared with other Evernote users |
| Book reader | Android: EPUB, PDF and CBZ, highlights saved as notes | |
| Web clipper | pages, articles, PDFs and annotated screenshots | |
| Search text inside images and handwriting | paid plans | |
| Search inside PDFs and Office files | a searchable Markdown mirror beside each text-bearing document | paid plans |
| Search by meaning | on the desktop, on your computer or with your own OpenAI key | semantic search, Starter and above |
| Getting your notes out | nothing to export, the files are the notes | ENEX or HTML from the desktop app, 100 notes at a time or whole notebooks |
Evernote plans, limits, platforms and security practices as published by Evernote, October 2026.
Where Evernote wins.
Six reasons to stay with Evernote, written for people who have used it for years.
- The web clipper. Evernote's clipper saves web pages, articles without the ads and sidebars, PDFs, and screenshots you can mark up with highlights and text. You tag each clip and pick its notebook as you save it. Jotura has no clipper.
- Search that reads your pictures. On paid plans, Evernote finds words inside images, scanned documents, photos of whiteboards and handwriting. Type the name of a shop and the scanned receipt turns up. Jotura mirrors text-bearing PDFs and Office files into searchable Markdown, but it never reads text out of an image or a scan.
- Every device, including a browser. Evernote runs on Mac, Windows, iPhone, iPad, Android and the web. Jotura has no iOS app and no web app. If your phone is an iPhone, Evernote covers it and Jotura does not.
- Tasks, reminders and calendars in one place. On paid plans, Evernote tasks carry due dates and reminders and can be assigned to other people, and Evernote Calendar connects to Google and Microsoft calendars. Jotura gathers checklists into a Tasks pane and has a calendar for daily notes, with no reminders and no assignees.
- Writing help built in. Evernote's paid plans include an AI Assistant, semantic search, transcription and editing help. Jotura has no assistant of its own.
- A mature ecosystem. Evernote has spent years building templates, integrations with Gmail, Google Drive, Outlook and Slack, a community forum, and certified experts who teach it. Jotura is a young app with no plugins, no integrations and no template gallery.
Where Jotura wins.
What the free app, encrypted sync and plain files give you.
- No limit on the free app. The Jotura app is free on Mac, Windows, Linux and Android, with no account, and a vault holds as many notes and folders as your disk does. Evernote's free plan stops at 50 notes, one notebook and one device, though it keeps those notes in Evernote's cloud and on the web. The free Jotura app has no sync, and you pay only when you want it.
- End-to-end encrypted sync. Jotura encrypts every note on your device before it leaves, with an Argon2id-derived master key, per-file keys and hashed path identifiers. The server holds no plaintext, no file names and no keys. Evernote encrypts data in transit and at rest with Google-managed keys, so the service can read your notes. Its passphrase encryption covers selected text inside a note, on Starter and above, in the Mac and Windows apps.
- Tags and links you can see. Tag a note inline with #recipe or in its frontmatter, and nest tags with a slash, like #travel/japan. The desktop Tags pane lists every tag with how many notes carry it. Type [[ to link another note, and renaming or moving that note later updates every link to it.
- Sharing with roles, and three years of history. Share a folder or a single note with the people you pick, as editors or viewers. Edits made at the same moment merge, and the share stays end-to-end encrypted to the people you invited. Every synced note keeps three years of history showing what changed and who changed it. Sharing needs Jotura Sync on both sides.
- A book reader on your phone. EPUB, PDF and CBZ books in your vault open in the Android app. Highlight a passage in one of four colours, add a comment, and Jotura writes it into a Markdown note for that book, which you can read and edit on any device.
- Your notes are files you own. A Jotura vault is a folder of .md files on your disk. Open it in Finder or Explorer, back it up with anything, or keep it in git. Evernote keeps your notes on its servers, and turning them into Markdown takes an export from the desktop app followed by a third-party converter.
- A Linux desktop app. Jotura runs natively on Linux. Evernote does not list a Linux app, so on Linux you are in a browser tab.
Moving from Evernote.
Evernote exports ENEX, Jotura reads Markdown, and a converter sits in between.
Export each notebook as an ENEX file from the Evernote desktop app, convert it with a tool such as Yarle or evernote2md, and open the folder in Jotura. TheEvernote to Markdown guide covers each step, what to check in attachments and web clips, and what ENEX leaves behind. For the sync side, seehow to sync Markdown notes across devices.
Common questions.
- Can Jotura import my Evernote notes?
- Not directly. Jotura has no ENEX importer. Export your notebooks as ENEX from the Evernote desktop app, convert them to Markdown with a third-party tool such as Yarle or evernote2md, and open the resulting folder in Jotura. The Moving from Evernote section above links to a step-by-step guide, including what to check afterwards.
- Is there an Evernote alternative that uses Markdown?
- Yes, several. Jotura, Obsidian and Typora keep your notes as .md files on disk, while Joplin and Bear store them in a database and export Markdown. Jotura and Obsidian both pair plain files with end-to-end encrypted sync. Jotura adds encrypted sharing of a single note or folder with editor and viewer roles, a Tags pane, and an Android book reader that saves your highlights as notes. The comparison of Markdown note apps linked at the foot of this page covers the rest.
- Is Evernote end-to-end encrypted?
- No. Evernote uses TLS in transit and AES-256 at rest with keys managed by Google Cloud, so the service holds the keys. On Starter and above, the Mac and Windows apps can encrypt selected text inside a note with a passphrase that Evernote does not store. Jotura Sync is end-to-end encrypted for every note, and a forgotten password with no recovery phrase means nobody can read the sync copy, us included.
- Does Jotura search text inside images like Evernote?
- No. Jotura has no OCR, which means optical character recognition. It builds searchable Markdown mirrors of text-bearing PDFs, Word files and spreadsheets, but a photo or a scan stays a picture. If searching receipts and handwriting matters to you, that is a strong reason to stay with Evernote.
- Which is cheaper?
- It depends on how many notes you keep. Evernote's free plan covers 50 notes on one device, and its paid Starter and Advanced plans come with a 7-day trial, priced by region on Evernote's plans page. The Jotura app is free with no note limit, and Jotura Sync is £4 a month or £40 a year with no free trial.
- What does Jotura not have?
- Jotura has no web clipper, no OCR, no iOS app, no web app, no reminders, no built-in assistant, no plugins, no graph view and no publish-to-web. It is closed source, Sync has no free trial, and notes sit unencrypted on disk, so a stolen laptop is FileVault's or BitLocker's job. Evernote covers several of those.
Convert one small notebook to Markdown, open the folder in Jotura, and see whether it suits you before you move the rest.
More comparisons on the compare page, includingthe best Markdown note apps side by side.