The 10 best note-taking and second brain apps for freelancers in 2026

How we chose these 10 apps

A second brain is where you keep what you want to find again later: meeting notes, ideas, references, a client’s brief, decisions made over the phone. Picture a freelancer six months after a bakery website redesign. The client asks why the order page was removed, and the answer should take ten seconds to find.

• The note format, and whether you can get everything back without the app.
• Offline work.
• Links between notes, and search.
• The price for one person.
• Use with client projects: sharing, templates, filtered views.

The word “free” often hides a limit on notes, synced devices or storage. Each section gives that limit in numbers. We left out some solid tools that fit this use less well: Craft, which leans toward designed documents, Google Keep, too light to track projects, and Tana, whose 2026 offer centers on meetings and AI.

Prices and limits come from the official pages (pricing, help centers), checked in October 2026. They are given in US dollars as displayed, before local taxes. No vendor paid us and this page has no affiliate links.

1. Obsidian, Markdown notes that stay on your machine

ObsidianObsidianA free note-taking app for Windows, Mac, Linux, iPhone and Android. Your notes stay as Markdown files on your own computer. Brievora is a vault, a folder of notes and views that you open in Obsidian.obsidian.md suits a freelancer who wants a lasting second brain: meeting notes, briefs, references and client project tracking in a single folder.

Strengths

• Notes are Markdown files on your disk, readable in any text editor.
• Links between notes ([[Note name]]), backlinks and the graph view connect a client to their projects, meetings and decisions.
• Free, including at work since February 2025 (official announcement), and fully usable offline.
• Bases show your notes as a table, cards, a list, a map and, since version 1.14 of October 5, 2026, a Kanban board.
• Community plugins fill the gaps: calendar, templates, tasks.

Limitations

• No real-time co-editing: two people do not see each other’s changes live in the same note.
• A blank page at the start: folders, properties and templates are up to you. The beginner’s guide helps you lay the first bricks.
• Syncing several devices takes Obsidian Sync, which is paid, or a file solution you manage yourself.

Starting price: free. Obsidian Sync costs $4 a month billed annually (official pricing). If your notes mostly serve client projects, Brievora provides a vaultvaultIn Obsidian, a vault is a folder on your computer that Obsidian opens: your notes, their attachments and your settings. Brievora is a ready-made vault.help.obsidian.md already organized for that work.

2. Notion, for shared notes and databases

Notion suits a freelancer who writes with others: documentation shared with a client, a small studio’s wiki, pages published on the web.

Strengths

• Real-time co-editing, with comments and mentions.
• Text pages and databases in the same tool.
• Ready-made templates for a CRM, a project tracker or a wiki.
• The whole workspace exports to Markdown, CSV or HTML.

Limitations

• Notes live on Notion’s servers, and offline access is set page by page.
• On the free plan, history goes back 7 days and each file is capped at 5 MB.

Starting price: free. The Plus plan is listed at $10 per member per month. Official site: notion.com. Detailed comparison: Obsidian vs Notion.

3. Logseq, an open source daily journal in bullet points

Logseq suits people who think in bullet lists and take notes as the day goes, in a dated journal.

Strengths

• Free and open source, under the AGPL-3.0 license.
• Queries gather the tasks or blocks that mention the same project.
• Any block can be referenced or linked elsewhere, so you can find a decision in the middle of meeting notes.
• The original version saves your pages as Markdown or Org-mode files.

Limitations

• Everything is a bullet: writing a long brief or a proposal feels less natural.
• The new “DB” version, built on a database, is in beta. The team warns that data loss is possible and recommends backups.

Starting price: free. Official site: logseq.com.

4. Capacities, notes organized by type

Capacities suits people who would rather sort by type than by folder: a person, a project, a book, a meeting, each with its own properties.

Strengths

• Object types give you structure without a folder tree to maintain.
• Offline mode is part of every plan, the free one included.
• Import and export in Markdown and CSV, from the free plan up.

Limitations

• Tasks, advanced search and version history require the Pro plan.
• On the free plan, media uploads are capped at 5 GB in total, then 100 MB per month.

Starting price: free. Pro costs $9.99 a month billed annually, or $119.88 a year. Official site: capacities.io.

5. Anytype, private notes stored on your device

Anytype suits people who want private notes, tasks and databases, kept first on their own device.

Strengths

• Data stays on your device, and the vendor describes it as accessible to you alone.
• Objects, types and relations, close to a personal database.
• Export to Markdown, PDF or HTML from the desktop app.

Limitations

• A vocabulary to learn (objects, types, relations) before you feel at home.
• On the free plan, the remote storage used for sync is 100 MB.
• Export only exists on desktop.

Starting price: free. Plus costs $4 a month, 20% less billed annually. Official site: anytype.io.

6. Heptabase, for thinking on whiteboards

Heptabase suits a designer or consultant who thinks visually: note cards laid out on whiteboards, with PDFs read and annotated in the same place.

Strengths

• Unlimited notes, whiteboards and tags from the Pro plan up.
• A desktop app designed to work offline, on Mac, Windows and Linux.
• Export of all notes to Markdown from the backup settings.

Limitations

• No free plan on the pricing page.
• A Markdown export does not necessarily keep the whiteboard layout.
• Built for research and thinking, less for tracking tasks.

Starting price: $8.99 a month for the Pro plan, as shown on the pricing page. Official site: heptabase.com.

7. Apple Notes, free on Mac, iPhone and iPad

Apple Notes suits a freelancer on Apple devices who wants to jot things down fast, with nothing to install or set up.

Strengths

• Already installed, free and synced through iCloud.
• Share a note or a folder to work together, plus tags and Smart Folders.
• Export a note to PDF or Markdown.

Limitations

• The apps only exist on Apple devices.
• Export works one note at a time.
• No properties or project views: hard to track several clients there.

Starting price: free with an Apple device. Official guide: support.apple.com.

8. Bear, a polished Markdown editor for Apple

Bear suits people who write a lot, from quick notes to articles, and want a pleasant MarkdownMarkdownA plain-text format: a # makes a heading, asterisks make text bold. Any text editor opens these files, with or without Obsidian.markdownguide.org editor on Mac, iPhone and iPad.

Strengths

• Notes stay available locally, even in the free version.
• Export to Markdown, TXT, PDF, HTML, DOCX and other formats.
• Organization by nested tags rather than folders.

Limitations

• Mac, iPhone and iPad only.
• iCloud sync requires the Pro subscription.
• No databases or project views.

Starting price: free. Bear Pro costs $2.99 a month or $29.99 a year. Official site: bear.app.

9. Evernote, to archive web pages, documents and notes

Evernote suits people who archive a lot: web pages, PDFs, photos of documents, with search that also reads the text in images.

Strengths

• Web page capture (Web Clipper), plus built-in tasks and calendar.
• Search inside images and documents, and offline mode, from the free plan up.
• Export to ENEX or HTML from the desktop app, without a subscription.

Limitations

• The free plan stops at 50 notes, 1 notebook and 1 device.
• Export works in batches of 100 notes or whole notebooks, and not from the web version.

Starting price: free, within those limits. Starter costs $8.25 a month, or $99 a year. Official site: evernote.com.

10. OneNote, free-form notebooks at no cost

OneNote suits people who like a free-form page where text, images and pen sketches sit side by side, and who already work in Microsoft 365.

Strengths

• Free.
• A local copy of your notebooks for offline work, synced with OneDrive when the connection returns.
• Apps for Windows, Mac, iPhone, iPad and Android, plus a web version.

Limitations

• Notebooks are stored in OneDrive, so with Microsoft.
• The export Microsoft documents goes through PDF.
• No properties or database views.

Starting price: free. Official site: onenote.com.

Summary table of the 10 apps in 2026

Monthly prices in US dollars, billed annually when that option exists. Taken from the official sites in October 2026. A free plan capped by number of notes, like Evernote’s, works mostly as a trial.

Which app fits your profile

• You want to own your files and keep client projects in one place: Obsidian, with client projects organized in Bases.
• You write with clients or a team: Notion.
• You take notes through the day, in bullet points: Logseq.
• You sort by type (people, projects, references): Capacities, or Anytype if privacy comes first.
• You think in diagrams and read a lot of PDFs: Heptabase.
• You want quick notes on your iPhone with no setup: Apple Notes, or Bear if you write at length.
• You archive web pages and scanned documents: Evernote.
• You sketch with a pen or work inside Microsoft 365: OneNote.

Before you migrate, test with a single finished project: import its notes, look for three specific pieces of information, then decide. Count over three years too: a $10 monthly subscription adds up to $360, while a free plan or a one-time purchase costs nothing more over time.