Jotura vs Notesnook.
Notesnook encrypts your notes on your device and keeps them inside its own store, while Jotura leaves them as ordinary files in a folder you can open. This comparison covers both honestly, including the places where Notesnook comes out ahead.
An encrypted store, or plain files you can share.
Notesnook encrypts your notes on your device and keeps them in its own encrypted store, whether or not you pay. Jotura keeps your notes as ordinary .md files with no encryption on disk, and encrypts them when Jotura Sync pushes them to a server. Pick Jotura to edit notes together with other people, keep three years of history, use tags without a cap, open an Obsidian vault as it is, and read books on an Android phone. Stay with Notesnook when you want an open source app, an iPhone client, encryption at rest, and encrypted sync at no cost. Neither is a clean fit for someone who needs both an iPhone and plain files on disk.
What each app gives you.
Both encrypt on your device before anything leaves it. Almost everything else differs.
| Feature | Jotura | Notesnook |
|---|---|---|
| Share notes with other people, encrypted | folders or single notes, editor and viewer roles, edits merge | no shared editing in its plans or help pages; publishes single notes as links |
| Version history | 3 years, showing who changed what, on Sync | 100 versions on free, 1,000 on Essential, unlimited on Pro |
| Free-plan limits | the app is free and unlimited, sync is the paid part | 50MB of attachments a month, 10MB file cap, 50 notebooks, 50 tags, 100 note versions |
| Tags | as many as you like, inline or in frontmatter, nested, with a Tags pane showing counts | 50 on the free plan, 500 on Essential, unlimited on Pro |
| Where your notes live on disk | plain .md files, not encrypted | an encrypted local store |
| Obsidian vault opens as-is | Markdown is imported into its store | |
| Book reader | Android: EPUB, PDF and CBZ, highlights saved as notes | |
| Platforms | Mac, Windows, Linux, Android | Mac, Windows, Linux, Android, iOS, web |
| iPhone and iPad | ||
| Open source | GPLv3 apps, AGPLv3 sync server | |
| Self-hosted sync server | self-hosting in alpha | |
| Encrypted sync | paid: £4 a month or £40 a year, no free trial | included free on unlimited devices |
| Encryption | Argon2id keys, per-file keys, HMAC path ids | XChaCha20-Poly1305 with Argon2id |
| Editor | formatted as you type, with a Markdown source toggle | rich text with Markdown support |
| Command-line tool | the jotura CLI, bundled with the desktop app | no official CLI |
Notesnook pricing, limits and licensing as published by Notesnook, October 2026.
Where Notesnook wins.
Stay with Notesnook when any of these five decides it.
- Open source, server included. Notesnook's apps are GPLv3 and its sync server is AGPLv3, so the server is open as well as the apps. Anyone can read the code, audit the cryptography, and build it themselves. Jotura is closed source. If you will not trust an encrypted notes app you cannot inspect, that is a fair line to draw, and Notesnook sits on the right side of it.
- A server you can run yourself. Self-hosting is still marked alpha, but the Docker stack is published and people run it today. Jotura has no equivalent at any price: if you sync, you sync through our servers.
- iOS, iPadOS and the web. Notesnook ships clients for all three. Jotura has no iOS app and no browser access. If your phone is an iPhone, that ends the comparison.
- Free encrypted sync. Notesnook's free plan includes end-to-end encrypted sync across unlimited devices, app lock, and full offline use. The limits are modest but real: 50MB of attachment storage a month, a 10MB file size cap, 50 notebooks, 50 tags, and 100 stored note versions. The Essential and Pro plans raise those ceilings. Jotura Sync is a subscription with no free trial, so on price alone Notesnook wins for anyone who only wants two devices kept in step.
- Encryption at rest, out of the box. Notesnook encrypts your notes on your device and keeps them in its own encrypted store, whether or not you pay. Jotura's notes sit unencrypted on disk, so protecting a stolen laptop is FileVault's or BitLocker's job.
Where Jotura wins.
What sharing, history and plain files give you.
- Shared editing with other people. Share a folder or a single note with the people you pick, as editors who can change it or viewers who can only read it. Edits made at the same moment merge, and the share stays end-to-end encrypted to the people you invited. Both people need Jotura Sync. Notesnook's plans and help pages list no shared editing. It publishes single notes as links, which serves another purpose.
- Three years of history. Every synced note keeps three years of history showing what changed and who changed it, and one click brings any version back. Notesnook keeps 100 versions of a note on its free plan and 1,000 on Essential.
- No caps on tags or notebooks. The Jotura app is free with no limits on notes, folders or tags. Tag a note inline with #recipe or in its frontmatter, nest tags with a slash, and the desktop Tags pane lists every tag with how many notes carry it. Notesnook's free plan stops at 50 tags and 50 notebooks.
- Your vault is a folder on your disk. Open it in Finder or Explorer and you see the file names and the Markdown you wrote. Back it up with anything or keep it in git. There is no export step, because your notes never went into a database. Open a file and save it without changing anything, and the file on disk stays byte-for-byte the same.
- An Obsidian vault opens as it is. Point Jotura at an existing Obsidian vault and it opens with no import step. Callouts, embeds, comments and wikilinks all work, and reading the vault writes nothing into it.
- A book reader on Android. 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 saves it in a Markdown note for that book, which you can edit on any device.
Common questions.
- Can I share notes with other people?
- In Jotura, yes, when both of you have Jotura Sync. Share a single note or a folder, choose editor or viewer for each person, and edits made at the same moment merge. The share is end-to-end encrypted to the people you invited. Notesnook publishes single notes as links, and its plans list no shared editing.
- Are my Jotura notes encrypted on disk?
- No. A Jotura vault is plain .md files with no encryption at rest, and Jotura encrypts them only when Sync pushes them to a server. At-rest protection is the operating system's job, through FileVault or BitLocker. Notesnook encrypts its local store whether or not you pay, so if you want your notes unreadable to anyone who picks up your laptop, Notesnook does that out of the box.
- Can I move from one to the other?
- Notesnook exports Markdown from all its apps, so you can point Jotura at the exported folder. Going the other way, you import your Markdown into Notesnook. Neither direction is a live two-way link, so pick one as home.
- Is Notesnook cheaper?
- For sync, yes. Notesnook includes end-to-end encrypted sync on unlimited devices at no cost, within its free-plan limits. Jotura Sync is £4 a month or £40 a year with no free trial, and it includes sharing and three years of history. Notesnook Essential listed at £1.80 a month and Pro at £6.32 a month or £63.29 a year in October 2026, so check notesnook.com before you commit, because those numbers move.
- Does Jotura work offline?
- Yes. Reading, writing and search all run on your device. The one exception is search by meaning with your own OpenAI key, which sends note text and queries to OpenAI if you choose it. Sync is optional, and when it is unavailable the app keeps working on your files.
- What does Jotura not have?
- Jotura has no iOS app, plugin system, graph view, canvas or publish-to-web. It is closed source, you cannot self-host the sync server, and Sync costs money with no free trial. Your notes also sit unencrypted on disk. Notesnook covers the iPhone, open source code, self-hosting, free sync and encryption at rest, so if those are the gaps that matter to you, it is the better pick.
Export a few notebooks from Notesnook as Markdown, open the folder in Jotura, and see how it reads before you move everything.
More comparisons on the compare page, includingsix Obsidian alternatives side by side.