Evernote vs Milanote Comparison 2026
Evernote is a searchable note archive built for finding things again: receipts, clips, scanned pages, even text inside images, from $8.25 a month billed yearly after a free plan. Milanote is a freeform board for the vague part of a project, moodboards and outlines rather than documents, free with no time limit up to 100 items, then $9.99 a month billed annually with every cap removed. One is where research and half-formed ideas go to be found again in two years. The other is where a project's shape gets worked out first.
The notes app that indexes what it captures
A board for the vague part of a project
At a glance
- Evernote starts cheaper, at $8.25.
- Both have a genuinely free tier.
Side by side
Evernote | Milanote | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price (they differ) | From $8.25 | From $9.99 |
| Pricing model | Free plan, paid tiers | Free plan, paid tiers |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Billing | Not stated | Monthly or annual |
| Free trial | 7 days | Not stated |
| API | Not stated |
Evernote
The notes app that indexes what it captures
Evernote is a note store built around finding things again rather than around writing them. Web clips, scanned pages and photographs are searchable including the text inside images, which is why it has outlasted several tidier competitors. For a creator it is where the research, the receipts and the half-formed ideas go before any of them turn into work. The free plan is deliberately narrow now and the paid tiers carry upload allowances rather than feature gates. Sync across devices is the thing people pay for.
Only on this side
- Covers writing & scripts
Milanote
A board for the vague part of a project
Milanote is a freeform board for notes, images, links and files, which is what planning looks like before it is a task list. Moodboards, story outlines and channel plans all sit better here than in a document. The free account has no time limit and stops at a hundred items, which is a real project rather than a demo. Anybody who wants deadlines, assignees and a burndown should buy a project tool instead, because this deliberately has none of that.
Why people weigh these two
- Milanote instead of Evernote
- Milanote is a board for the vague early part of a project, from $10 with a free tier, better for visual thinking than a searchable text archive.
- Evernote instead of Milanote
- Evernote indexes everything you save into it and favors written notes over a visual board, a better fit for research than for laying out a moodboard.
Which one should you pick
Pick Evernote if research, receipts and half-formed ideas arrive from everywhere and need to be found again years later. The free plan is deliberately narrow now, and the paid tiers meter uploads rather than gate features, starting at $8.25 a month billed yearly.
Pick Milanote for the planning stage of something visual: moodboards, video outlines, channel strategy, where a list would force decisions too early. The free plan genuinely has no time limit, but its 100-item cap counts everything on every board and arrives faster than it reads. Anybody who wants deadlines, assignees and progress tracking is looking at the wrong tool, since Milanote deliberately declines to have any of that.
Common questions
- Which is cheaper?
- Evernote's Starter plan is $8.25 a month billed yearly, a little under Milanote's per-person plan at $9.99 billed the same way. They serve different jobs though: Evernote is a searchable archive, and Milanote is a freeform planning board.
- Does Milanote's free plan expire?
- No, it has no time limit, unlike a trial. It caps at 100 notes, images or links total across every board, with ten file uploads, though shared boards stay unlimited. That cap counts everything, so it arrives faster than it reads.
- Can Evernote's free plan search inside a scanned document?
- Yes, that is its core feature: web clips, scanned pages and photographs are searchable including the text inside images. Milanote is not built for that; it holds notes, images, links and files on a visual board rather than indexing their contents.
- Which one has task assignees and deadlines?
- Neither, really. Milanote deliberately has none of that, built for the stage of a project where the shape is still unclear. Evernote has tasks inside notes but is fundamentally a note store rather than a tracker with assignees and progress views.
Ratings are the average of reviews readers left. The facts are stated by each tool’s own listing and are not verified by CloutStack. How we make money.