If you have decided that your notes should be readable only by you, the field narrows fast. Most notes apps encrypt data at rest with keys the company holds, which protects against a stolen server and not against the company — see encrypted notes for why that distinction is the whole question.
These two are among the few consumer notes apps that are genuinely end-to-end encrypted by default and open source. (Disclosure: we make a notes app, Clair Mind. Referee only.)
At a glance
| Standard Notes | Notesnook | |
|---|---|---|
| Encryption | E2EE by default | E2EE by default |
| Source | Open | Open |
| Philosophy | Austere by design; longevity first | Encrypted and featureful |
| Editor | Plain by default; richer editors on paid tier | Rich text out of the box |
| Organisation | Tags, folders on paid | Notebooks, topics, tags |
| Free tier | Usable but deliberately limited | More generous |
| Track record | Longer, with published audits | Shorter, active development |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
Both change plans; check the vendors.
Standard Notes: austerity as a feature
Standard Notes has been at this for years and its defining choice is restraint. The core app is deliberately plain, because every feature is surface area that could leak plaintext or break in five years, and the stated goal is that your notes still open in a decade.
That posture buys two real things: a longer track record with published security audits, and a product unlikely to be redesigned out from under you. For a threat model where longevity matters as much as secrecy, it is the more conservative bet.
The cost is that it feels sparse. Rich text, advanced editors and some organisational features sit behind the paid tier, and the free experience is intentionally minimal — a filter, not an oversight. People arriving from Notion or Evernote frequently find it too bare.
Notesnook: encrypted without the hair shirt
Notesnook's argument is that end-to-end encryption should not require giving up a usable app. You get a rich text editor by default, notebooks with topics, tags, a web clipper, app lock, and a more generous free tier — with the same E2EE guarantee.
For most people this is the more pleasant daily tool, and the free tier is genuinely usable rather than a trial. It is also open source with self-hosting available.
The cost is maturity. It is younger, with a shorter public security history, and more features means more moving parts. That is not a criticism of the engineering — it is the honest structural trade-off, and it is exactly the thing Standard Notes optimised against.
What neither can protect you from
Worth being clear, because encrypted-notes marketing tends to imply more than it delivers. End-to-end encryption secures data in transit and at rest on the server. It does not protect against:
- Malware or a compromised device. The plaintext exists on your machine while you read it.
- Someone who knows your unlock code.
- A weak password. Your key is derived from it; a guessable password undoes everything.
- Losing your password. Neither company can recover your notes, and that is the point. Store a recovery key somewhere safe, and treat this as the most likely way you will actually lose your archive.
- Metadata, to varying degrees — note counts, timestamps, sync patterns.
The endpoint is nearly always the weak link. The EFF's guidance on this is worth ten minutes if you are choosing based on threat model.
The feature you give up in both
Server-side search. Neither service can index text it cannot read, so search happens on-device over decrypted notes. In practice that means search is fine on a device that has synced everything and noticeably weaker on the web or on a fresh install.
The same constraint rules out most cloud AI over your notes, server-side link previews, and collaborative editing. If those matter more to you than the encryption, be honest about it now rather than after migrating — the compromise is structural, not a missing feature someone will ship.
Choose Standard Notes if
- Longevity is as important as privacy.
- You want the longest track record and published audits.
- A deliberately plain editor is fine, or preferable.
- You are inclined to self-host and want the more battle-tested option.
Choose Notesnook if
- You want encryption without giving up a modern editor and organisation.
- The free tier needs to be genuinely usable.
- You want a web clipper and app lock included.
- You are comfortable with a younger project.
The alternative worth considering
If your requirement is really "nobody else can read this" rather than "it must sync through an encrypted service", local files are a different and arguably stronger answer: Obsidian on an encrypted disk puts nothing on anyone's server at all. See Anytype vs Obsidian and plain text notes.
And if you are on Apple devices only, turning on Advanced Data Protection extends end-to-end encryption to iCloud Notes, which gets many people most of the way there for free.
Why this matters more than people think
Notes are not documents. They are the unfiltered version — the health worry, the complaint about a colleague, the thing you have not told anyone, notes about the people in your life. Nobody chooses that content deliberately; it accumulates because a notes app is where thinking goes.
Five years of that is a more intimate record than your email, which is why defaulting to a strong guarantee is reasonable even without a specific threat in mind. It is also why Clair Mind is built private-first, with your notes staying yours rather than becoming training data.
Related: Standard Notes vs Obsidian, best private notes app, best open source notes app, and the wider note app comparisons.