Is OneNote better than Notion?

For handwriting, a free notebook and offline use, yes. OneNote has pen tools and Ink to Text, every version is free, and it keeps a local copy of each notebook. For tables you sort and filter, or sharing one page at a time, Notion is better.

Yes. Microsoft says every supported version of OneNote is free to download and use. A paid Microsoft 365 plan adds extras such as Copilot and more storage than the free 5 GB.

Is OneNote end of life?

No. Only OneNote for Windows 10 reached end of support, on 14 October 2025, and it's now read-only. OneNote on Windows is free from the Microsoft Store and is the version Microsoft supports.

Can I import OneNote into Notion?

Not directly. Export pages or sections from OneNote for Windows as Word documents, then import the .docx files into Notion, several at a time.

Is OneNote good for students?

Yes, especially for students who write with a pen. OneNote has pen tools, Ink to Text on Windows and Copy Text from Picture, and the app itself is free. A student who wants coursework in a sortable table can pick Notion instead, and Plus is free for students with one member.

Notion vs OneNote in 2026: which to use and what it costs

The short answer

Notion vs OneNote comes down to how your notes start. If they start with a pen, or you like dropping things anywhere on a page, pick OneNote. Notes that begin life as a list you'll want to sort and share belong in Notion.

OneNote is Microsoft's digital notebook. A page behaves like a sheet of paper: you click anywhere to type, write on it with a pen, paste in a photo or record audio. Notion is a workspace of typed pages and databases that lives in the cloud. OneNote costs nothing on any device. Notion costs nothing for one person, and its paid plans charge per seat.

Find your row:

If you	Pick	Why
Take class or meeting notes with a stylus	OneNote	Pen tools and Ink to Text
Already pay for Microsoft 365	OneNote	Copilot is in your plan on Windows
Run a job hunt or a budget as a table	Notion	Databases you sort and filter
Want to share one page, not the whole notebook	Notion	Sharing works page by page
Need every note on a long flight	OneNote	A local copy of each notebook
Want a layout someone else designed	Notion	Over 10,000 templates

How we compared them

Every fact below comes from Notion's and Microsoft's own pricing pages and help articles, read on 30 October 2026. Nobody here ran a weeks-long trial of either app, and we don't hand out star ratings. Prices are US dollar list prices before tax, as of October 2026.

Both apps faced the same six questions:

What does one person pay, and what changes for a household or a small team?
Can you write on the page with a pen, or only type?
Does it sort and filter your notes, or only file them away?
What still opens when there's no internet?
Can you share one page without handing over everything else?
If you leave in two years, what comes with you?

OneNote: best for handwriting and a free notebook

OneNote files notes the way a ring binder does: notebooks hold sections, sections hold pages, and nothing forces a page to look like any other. On a page you type wherever you click or write on a touch screen from the Draw tab. Pictures and audio recordings sit on the same page. Tags mark a line. A tag search then lists every tagged note by keyword and category, so an action item buried on page 40 still turns up.

It runs on Windows and Mac, on iPhone and Android, and in any modern web browser. Microsoft's guide to the OneNote versions says every supported version is free to download and use, and a paid Microsoft 365 plan unlocks extras on top. Want a notebook saved on your own hard drive? That takes the Windows desktop app, the one version that saves one there. Every other version works from notebooks in the cloud. A free Microsoft account comes with 5 GB of OneDrive storage, and your email attachments and photos share it.

Pick it if you take notes with a stylus, or you want a notes app that never asks for a card. Skip it if you want to sort notes by a date or a status. OneNote files pages into sections, and tags are the nearest it gets to a filter.

Notion: best for tables and pages you share

Notion builds every page from blocks, such as a paragraph or a to-do checkbox. The database is what sets it apart. It's a table in which each row opens as a full page. Rows carry properties you sort and filter, and Notion lists subtasks and charts among its database features. A job hunt becomes a table of applications, each with its stage and the date you applied. Filter it, and only the ones still waiting on a reply are left.

Notion's pricing page describes Free as the plan "for individuals to organize personal projects and life". Alone, you get as many blocks as you like. Bring two or more members into a free workspace and a block limit kicks in. Paid seats start at US$10 a month on Plus and US$20 on Business, billed yearly, and Notion puts the yearly saving at up to 20%. A student or teacher gets Plus free, limited to one member.

There are Notion apps for computers and phones, and it works in a web browser. Pick it if your notes are really lists you want to slice different ways, or you plan things with other people. Skip it if you write by hand. Notion is built for typing, and a handwritten page goes in as a picture or a PDF.

Side by side

	OneNote	Notion
Free	Every version, no time limit	One person, no block limit
Paid	Microsoft 365 Basic US$19.99 a year, Personal US$99.99	Plus US$10, Business US$20 a seat a month
Pen	Draw tab, Ink to Text on Windows	Typed blocks; ink comes in as a picture
Layout	Notebooks, sections, pages	Pages and databases
Sort and filter	Tags and tag search	Properties and filters
Offline	A local copy of each notebook	Pages you mark, on each device
Sharing	The whole notebook	One page at a time
AI	Copilot with Microsoft 365, on Windows	A trial on Free and Plus, included on Business
Storage	5 GB free in OneDrive	Files up to 5 MB on Free, 5 GB paid
Export	Word, PDF and OneNote files on Windows	PDF, Markdown and CSV

Start with the pen row if you own a tablet. That's the clearest split between the two apps.

The sharing row is the one people miss. Microsoft's sharing help says it has removed the option to share a single page, and that a link to one section lets people see your entire notebook. In Notion you share the packing list and nobody sees your journal.

What a year costs

List prices for 12 months, for one person and for a household of four:

Setup	One person	Four people
OneNote on a free Microsoft account	US$0, 5 GB	US$0, 5 GB each
Microsoft 365 Basic	US$19.99, 100 GB	One person only
Personal plan (Microsoft 365)	US$99.99, 1 TB	One person only
Family plan (Microsoft 365)	US$129.99, 2 TB shared	US$129.99 for up to 6
Notion Free	US$0	US$0 until the block limit
Notion Plus	US$120	US$480
Notion Business	US$240	US$960

For one person who types, both apps cost nothing. OneNote's ceiling is storage rather than features. Microsoft's export help warns that notebooks grow fast once you collect image scans and audio clips in them. Every one of those counts against the 5 GB. On Notion Free the cap is per file: nothing over 5 MB uploads, while paid plans take files up to 5 GB.

The paid money buys different things. Microsoft 365 Personal at US$99.99 a year gets you Copilot inside OneNote for Windows and 1 TB of storage, with the desktop Office apps thrown in. Family at US$129.99 covers up to six people with 2 TB of shared storage, but the AI features go to the subscription owner only. Notion Plus at US$120 a seat is for working together: uploads up to 5 GB and 30 days of page history. Notion AI stays a trial on it.

Two more terms are worth knowing before you pay. Microsoft's one-month free trial needs a card and turns into a 12-month paid plan unless you cancel. Notion refunds the full amount if you downgrade within three days of a monthly sign-up, or 30 days of a yearly one.

Handwriting and photos of pages

OneNote is the one built for a pen. Microsoft's handwriting help walks through it on Windows: open the Draw tab, choose a pen or highlighter and write on the screen. To turn your writing into type, circle it with Lasso Select and choose Ink to Text. Microsoft says that option isn't in OneNote for the web, so do it in the desktop app.

Pictures work too. Right-click a photo and choose Copy Text from Picture, and OneNote copies the words out of it so you can paste them as text. A scanned printout of several pages gives you Copy Text from All the Pages of the Printout. Microsoft's OCR help adds two cautions: some results take 24 to 48 hours to appear, and you should read the pasted text over, because it's only as good as the photo.

Notion takes handwriting in only as a file. Snap the page and upload the image, within the 5 MB limit on Free, or scan it to a PDF and import that, since PDF is on Notion's list of importable files. The page stays a picture you look at, not text you edit.

On an iPad, OneNote has rivals: Goodnotes and Notability lead our best productivity apps for iPad list.

Still writing on paper? In ActivityTracker, Scan text from photo adds the words from a picture of a page to your note, you can talk a note in and get text back, and one search looks through every note.

See how notes work

Notebooks or databases

Picture a week of dinners planned in each app.

In OneNote you'd make a Meals section with a page per recipe and a Shopping page where you tag each item still to buy. Monday's plan is a page with seven lines on it. Finding every recipe that uses chickpeas is a search, which looks through every page.

In Notion you'd make one Recipes database with a property for the main ingredient, another for cooking time and a checkbox for "made it". The week's plan is a filtered view: under 30 minutes, not made in the last month. It takes longer to build, and the payoff comes in week four, when the table answers questions a notebook page can't.

Neither app is a to-do list first. Whichever you choose, keep the jobs that have a due date on one list you trust, so the notes app holds notes and nothing goes missing between the two.

OneNote treats no-signal as normal. Microsoft's sync help says it keeps a local copy of each notebook for offline editing and merges your changes into the cloud when the connection comes back, without creating conflicts. On an iPhone or iPad, changes you make offline sync once you're back online, and on an iPad a setting called Auto Sync Attachments keeps images on the device too.

Notion makes you prepare. Its offline guide says anyone can work on pages offline in the desktop and mobile apps, but you turn on Available offline page by page, on each device. A database downloads its first 50 rows on its own, and you download any further rows one at a time. You also can't share a page or change who has access while you're offline. On Free you pick every page yourself, and Business and Enterprise also download your recent and favourite pages for you.

Sharing runs the other way. A OneNote notebook has to sit in OneDrive or SharePoint before you can share it. You invite people by email and set each one to edit or view, and they get the whole notebook. In Notion, the Share button at the top of any page invites people to that page alone, at the access level you choose, and the Publish tab puts a page on the web for anyone with the link. Someone outside your workspace joins as a guest.

AI in each

OneNote's AI is Copilot. Microsoft's Copilot help says it summarises your notes, pulls task lists out of them and drafts new pages such as an event plan. With an eligible Microsoft 365 plan, such as Personal, it works in OneNote for Windows only. A Microsoft Copilot (Work) licence adds the Mac and iPad apps and the web. It needs an internet connection.

Notion's AI comes with Business at US$20 a seat. Notion's AI help gives Free and Plus users a limited number of free responses, enough to try it. On Business, Notion Agent writes pages and fills in databases for you, AI meeting notes transcribe and summarise your meetings, and each seat gets a monthly allowance of 1,500 Standard and 500 Select credits.

For meetings you record, our best AI note taking app guide lines up eight tools that do only that job.

Moving between them

Notion has no OneNote importer. Its import help covers Evernote and Trello by name, and Word files (.docx) by type. So the route from OneNote runs through Word:

In OneNote for Windows, open File, then Export, and save a page or a whole section as a Word document.
In Notion, go to Settings, then Import, and choose Word. You can bring in several .docx files at once.
Open a few pages and check them, especially any with ink or pictures placed around the text.

If you still use OneNote for Windows 10, sync first. Microsoft's move guide says that app reached end of support on 14 October 2025 and is now read-only, and that notes it never synced won't appear in the newer OneNote on Windows, which is free from the Microsoft Store.

Going the other way, Notion exports any page as a PDF, or as Markdown with databases as CSV files. Add the PDF to a OneNote page as a printout, then use Copy Text from All the Pages of the Printout to get the words back as text. Exporting a whole Notion workspace runs from Settings, and Notion warns that a big one takes up to 30 hours to process.

Try both for one week

You don't have to pick from a table. Give each app one real week of notes:

Monday, put the same three notes into both apps. Make one a to-do list, one a photo of a handwritten page, and one a list you'd like to sort by date.
Tuesday, write a page by hand in OneNote and run Ink to Text on it.
Wednesday, turn the sortable list into a Notion database and filter it.
Thursday, share one page from each app with a friend. Ask them exactly what they can open.
Friday: airplane mode on, one new note in each.
Sunday, search both apps for a word buried inside a note.

Keep the one you opened without a second thought. If you end up keeping both, split them by how the note starts, and look back at the week with a weekly reflection template.

Made-up example: Priya, a second-year nursing student, takes every lecture with a pen on her Surface tablet. Her sister's wedding is in June, and Priya has the guest list.

For one week she runs her lecture notes in OneNote. She writes by hand in class, then circles each definition with Lasso Select and turns it into typed text for revision.

The wedding goes into Notion. She builds a guest list database with an RSVP column and a column for dietary needs. Then she shares that one page with her sister. Her lecture notes and her journal stay out of view.

On the train home on Friday, with no signal, OneNote opens every lecture. The guest list opens too, because she'd marked it Available offline on Wednesday.

She keeps both. Her cost is US$0, because OneNote is free and the wedding page fits inside Notion's Free plan as a page shared with one guest.