Is Notion better than Apple Notes?

For notes that become lists with dates and statuses, yes. Notion's databases filter and sort them, and it runs on Windows and Android. For quick notes, scans and shared checklists on Apple devices, Apple Notes is better, and it's free.

Yes, for one person, with no limit on pages or blocks. A workspace with two or more members hits a block limit on the free plan. Plus costs US$10 a seat a month billed yearly, or US$12 billed monthly.

Can I move my Apple Notes to Notion?

Yes, through Markdown files. Export notes from Notes on a Mac as Markdown, then import them into Notion on a computer or the web. Notion has no direct Apple Notes importer.

Does Notion work offline?

Yes, for pages you download first. Turn on Available offline for each page on each device you carry, and a database brings down its first 50 rows by itself.

Does Apple Notes work on Windows or Android?

Through a web browser. Apple's Notes app runs on the iPhone, the iPad and the Mac, and anywhere else you open your iCloud notes at iCloud.com.

Notion vs Apple Notes (2026): which to use and what it costs

The short answer

Notion vs Apple Notes depends on what your notes turn into. If they stay notes, like a gate code, a gift idea or a recipe a friend read out, Apple Notes is the better app. Use Notion if they grow into lists you want to sort by date or status, like wedding suppliers or a reading log.

Apple Notes comes free with your iPhone and your Mac. Notion is a workspace of pages and databases with apps for Mac and Windows, phone apps for iPhone and Android, and a web version, and it costs nothing while you're the only member. A second member starts the free plan counting blocks, so households and teams tend to pay per seat.

Start with the job you do most:

If you want to	Use	Because
Get a thought down before it's gone	Apple Notes	It's already on the phone
Scan a letter or a receipt	Apple Notes	The scan saves as a PDF in the note
Find a word inside a photo	Apple Notes	Search reads scans and handwriting
Track items with a date and a status	Notion	Databases you filter and sort
Work on Windows or Android too	Notion	Apps for both
Plan with people who skip Apple	Notion	Pages they open in a browser

How we compared them

Every fact here comes from Apple's and Notion's own help and pricing pages, read on 30 October 2026, not from months of daily use. There are no star ratings. Prices are US list prices before tax.

Both apps faced the same six questions:

What does a year cost, alone and with a second person?
Which phones and computers does it run on?
How fast does a thought become a note?
Can you sort your notes, and does search reach your scans?
What does someone need before you can share with them?
If you leave, how do the notes come out?

Apple Notes: best for quick notes on Apple devices

Apple Notes is the notes app built into the iPhone, the iPad and the Mac. Turn on iCloud for Notes and a note typed on the phone appears on the Mac, and on any computer in a web browser at iCloud.com. The notes count against your iCloud storage, where every account gets 5 GB free. Apple's iCloud+ price list puts 50 GB at 99 US cents a month in the United States, and your photos and phone backups share that space.

A note can hold checklists, simple tables, scans, drawings or audio recordings. Type # and a word anywhere in a note to tag it, such as #recipes or #car. Then a Smart Folder gathers notes by tag, by checklist, or by the date you made or edited them.

Structure is where it stops. A table in Notes is a grid you type into. Apple's table guide covers adding rows, dragging them around and turning text into a table, and it says nothing about sorting one. If you're also weighing Obsidian, Obsidian vs Apple Notes covers that pair.

Pick it if every device you own is Apple and most of what you write fits on one screen. Skip it if you spend your workday on a Windows laptop, where your notes live in a browser tab, or if you want to filter a list by due date.

Notion: best for notes that turn into lists

Notion builds every page out of blocks, such as a paragraph, a heading or a to-do box. The database is the reason to choose it. A database is a set of pages that share properties like a date, a status or a link, and Notion's database guide says you can show the same set as a table, a list, a calendar or a chart. Each row opens into a full page.

Notion's pricing page pitches Free "for individuals to organize personal projects and life". Alone, you add as many pages and blocks as you like. The free plan does cap each uploaded file at 5 MB, and it keeps 7 days of page history. Plus costs US$10 a seat a month billed yearly or US$12 billed monthly, while Business, the plan that includes Notion AI, costs US$20 or US$24. Students get Plus free for a one-member workspace, and so do teachers.

Its template gallery holds over 10,000 layouts. If you write with a pen more than you type, Notion vs OneNote is the closer fight.

Pick it if the things you track have a date, a status or a price, or you switch between an iPhone and a Windows PC. Skip it if most of your notes are one line long, because in Notion every note has to live on a page or in a row, and choosing where is one decision too many.

Side by side

	Apple Notes	Notion
One person	Free	Free
Paying for more	iCloud+ from 99 US cents a month	Plus from US$10 a seat a month
Apps	iPhone, iPad, Mac	Mac, Windows, iPhone, Android
In a browser	iCloud.com	Yes
Organising	Folders, tags, Smart Folders	Pages and databases
Search reaches	Text, PDFs, scans, handwriting, photos	Page titles first, then page text
Sharing needs	An Apple Account	An email address
Extras	Scanner, drawing, audio with transcript	Templates, Web Clipper, Notion AI on Business
Getting notes out	A note as PDF or Markdown	A page or the whole workspace

Read the apps row first. On a Windows work laptop, Apple Notes is a browser tab.

What a year costs

List prices for one person over 12 months:

Setup	A year
Apple Notes in the free 5 GB	US$0
Apple Notes with iCloud+ 50 GB	US$11.88
Notion Free, on your own	US$0
Notion Plus, billed yearly	US$120
Notion Plus, billed monthly	US$144
Notion Business, billed yearly	US$240

For one person on Apple devices, both apps cost nothing. Text notes take up very little room, so the reason to buy iCloud+ is your photos and backups.

The sums change when a second person comes in. Two members in one Notion workspace on Free means a block limit, and two Plus seats come to US$240 a year. You can often skip the second seat, since Notion lets you invite someone to a single page as a guest, and its pricing page says guests are free and see only the pages they're invited to. Apple Notes charges nothing to share, since each person brings their own iCloud.

Want Notion AI? That's the Business plan, and Free and Plus get a limited number of AI responses to try it, per Notion's AI FAQ.

Getting a thought down fast

Apple Notes wins on capture. On a Mac, a Quick Note opens from a keyboard shortcut or the bottom-right corner of the screen and stays visible while you copy things into it. Safari sends a page, or a line you've highlighted, straight to a Quick Note.

On an iPhone, Scan Text puts the words from a sign or a page into your note. Scan Documents saves a page as a PDF inside it. Notes on a Mac can also record audio and write a live transcript while people talk, in the languages Apple supports.

Notion's answer is its phone app plus the Web Clipper, a Chrome and Safari extension that saves web pages into your workspace. They do the job, slower than a note that's already open.

Say you're at the hardware shop and need the colour code from a paint tin at home. If last month's receipt sits in Apple Notes as a scan, a search for the colour name finds it. Notion would only find that code if you'd typed it in.

Databases versus search

Notion is the one to choose when your notes need sorting. Picture a wedding with a florist, a photographer, a venue and a cake to book, each with its own quote and deposit date. Notion turns that into a database where every supplier is a row. The calendar view shows when each deposit falls due, and a filter leaves only the suppliers still waiting on a reply. You'd handle it in Apple Notes with one note per supplier, a #wedding tag on each and a Smart Folder to collect them, which works until you want them in date order.

For finding things, choose Apple Notes. Apple's search guide says a search looks through:

the text of every note
the names of attached files, and the PDFs themselves
drawings and handwriting
text in scanned documents
what a picture shows, so "bike" finds the photo of a bike

Notion's search help says its default sort ranks page titles above the words inside a page and lifts recently edited pages. Put a phrase in quotes for an exact match. Searching every source with AI needs a workspace that has Notion AI.

Offline use and privacy

Notion works offline, with conditions. Notion's offline guide says anyone can view and edit pages offline in the desktop or mobile app, and create new ones. A page you already have opens offline only if you downloaded it first:

Open the page, tap the three-dot menu and turn on Available offline.
Repeat it on every device you'll carry, because offline pages are saved per device.
Download sub-pages one by one.
For a database, the first 50 rows come down by themselves, and any row past that needs its own download.

Embeds and forms won't load offline, and neither will buttons. You also can't share a page or change who sees it until you reconnect. On Business and Enterprise, Notion downloads your recent and favourite pages for you.

Apple Notes gives you two levels of privacy. Apple's iCloud security overview says iCloud data is encrypted in transit and at rest, with the keys held by Apple so it can help you get your data back. With Advanced Data Protection turned on, Notes becomes end-to-end encrypted, readable only on your own trusted devices. The trade is that Apple can't recover those notes if you lose access to your account.

You can also lock a single note with your Mac's login password or a separate one. Apple's lock guide warns that if you forget a custom password and can't use Touch ID, Apple can't get you back in.

When both of you use Apple devices, Apple Notes is the easier choice. Apple's sharing guide offers two ways. Send a copy, which the other person can read but not change. Or share a link, so you both edit the same note or folder and see each change as it happens. You decide who gets in, either people you pick or anyone with the link, and whether they can edit or only view and download.

Before you share, know the rules:

Any note you drop into a shared folder is shared with everyone in that folder.
A locked note can't be shared for editing.
The person opening it needs the invited email or phone number on their Apple Account.
A sent copy never updates, so send it again after you change the note.

Notion shares page by page. Notion's sharing guide puts a Share button at the top of every page, where you invite someone by email and pick their permission level, or publish the page to the web. A friend with an Android phone opens it like anyone else.

So a grocery list two iPhones add to belongs in Apple Notes. A trip plan with that Android friend belongs in Notion.

Moving your notes from one to the other

Notion's import page lists apps such as Evernote and Trello, and Apple Notes isn't one of them. The move goes through Markdown files instead. From Apple Notes to Notion:

In Notes on a Mac, select a note, choose File > Export To and pick Markdown. Apple's export guide offers PDF as well.
Open Notion on a computer or the web, because Notion's import help says imports don't run on mobile yet.
Go to Settings, then Import, and choose Text and Markdown. Notion takes several Markdown files in one go.
Check each imported page against the original before you delete anything.

Going the other way, Notion's export help lets you export a whole workspace as Markdown and CSV from the desktop app or the web, and it warns that a big workspace can take up to 30 hours. When the zip arrives, unzip it, then in Notes on a Mac choose File > Import Markdown, select the folder and tick "Preserve folder structure on import". Everything lands in a folder called Imported Notes.

Databases are the catch here. Notion exports each one as a CSV file plus a Markdown file for every row, and Apple's list of import formats has Markdown and HTML on it but no CSV. Each row arrives as its own note. The table itself stays behind in the CSV, which opens in Numbers or Excel.

Packing up a Notion workspace or a folder of Apple Notes? ActivityTracker's notes take Markdown files or a .zip export and drop the long id Notion adds to every file name. Folders become notebooks. Tags come across too.

See how notes work

Use both, and test them for a week

You don't have to pick one. A split that works for many people puts quick capture and shared checklists in Apple Notes, anything with a date or a status in Notion, and every to-do on one list outside both.

To see which one you'll keep opening, give both a real week:

Monday, make a Notion database from five things you're tracking, each with a date and a status.
Tuesday, scan a letter into Apple Notes and search for a word printed on it.
Wednesday, share an Apple Notes checklist with a friend.
Thursday, mark one Notion page Available offline, switch on airplane mode and edit a note in each app.
Friday, count which app you opened without thinking. The weekly reflection template gives that look back a shape.

Keep the one your thumb goes to. For more iPhone options, see the best note taking app for iPhone.

Made-up example: Dev is redoing his bathroom and hosting a book club of five.

He keeps the book club in Notion, as a database of books with the month, the host and a status, and the calendar view shows who hosts when. He shares that one page with the other four as guests, so his workspace stays at one member and costs nothing.

For the bathroom he uses Apple Notes. He scans three quotes from tilers into one note and shares a checklist of tiles and taps with his partner, who ticks items off at the shop. Searching "grout" finds the line on the second quote.

Both stay free: the bathroom notes fit in iCloud's free 5 GB, and Notion Free covers one member with as many pages as he likes.