UnbentThe short version
Choose Unbent if
- Your Evernote is mostly scans, receipts and documents, and you mainly need to find them.
- You want to pay $60 a year for unlimited notes rather than $99 for 1,000 or $249.99 for no cap.
- You want fields on your notes (a date, a total, who it was from) and a table to sort them by.
- You want an export you can open without the app, from any browser, as often as you like.
Choose Evernote if
- You rely on its web clipper, its document scanner, or its native apps.
- You search photos and handwriting without thinking about it, and need that to keep working.
- You share notebooks with other people.
- Your archive is large and the price is not the problem.
Why they differ
Evernote and Unbent do the same thing with a scan, and Evernote did it first: paper goes in, its text is read, and it is found again by what it said. Evernote still reads more without being asked (a photo, a page of handwriting). The difference is what your notes are made of, and what happens when you want to leave.
Evernote keeps notes in its own format, exports them from its desktop app a notebook at a time, and has changed its owner and roughly doubled its price within a year. Unbent was built by someone who left it with 13,000 notes, around one rule: the archive is yours. Every note is a Markdown file kept exactly as you typed it, the export is plain folders from any browser, and an account that stops paying turns read-only rather than locked.
Side by side
| Unbent | Evernote | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $60 a year for unlimited notes and 10 GB of files (25 GB more for $12 a year). Two weeks free to try. | Free for 50 notes and one notebook. Starter is $99 a year for 1,000 notes; Advanced is $249.99 a year with no cap on notes. |
| Searching inside files | Note text and the text of every PDF, searched on the server as soon as it arrives, so every device finds it. Photos are read when you press Auto-fill. | PDFs, Office documents, images and handwriting in images, read automatically. |
| Fields and tables | Typed fields per notebook (date, amount, select, rating and more), a table view, and filters on any field: receipts by month, warranties by when they run out. | None. Notebooks, tags and spaces. |
| Offline | In any browser, phone included: your notes, notebooks and tags are kept on the device and searchable there, with the files of the notebooks you choose. | Offline notes on its apps. |
| Encryption | Encrypted in transit and at rest. Not end-to-end: the server reads your notes, so it can search all of them without every device downloading them first. | Encrypted in transit and at rest on Google Cloud. Not end-to-end. |
| Export | Everything, any time, from any browser: a folder per note, its Markdown saved exactly as you typed it and its files beside it. Opens with nothing installed. | ENEX or HTML, from the desktop app only, a notebook or up to 100 notes at a time. ENEX is a format only another notes app reads. |
| Apps | A web app for any desktop or phone browser, installable. Android and iOS apps are coming. | Windows, Mac, iOS, Android and the web, with a web clipper. |
| AI and assistants | Auto-fill reads a scan and fills in its title, notebook and fields. An MCP server that Claude, ChatGPT and others connect to over the web, with every edit an assistant makes kept in the note's history. | A built-in AI assistant, semantic search and transcription, and an MCP server for paid plans. |
| Sharing | One person per account. | Shared notes and notebooks, Spaces, and business plans. |
What Unbent does better
- Fields you can sort by. A receipts notebook can carry a date, a total and a shop on every note, shown as a table and filtered by any of them. In Evernote the same receipts are notes in a notebook, with tags.
- Filing a scan for you. Press Auto-fill and Unbent reads the scan and fills in its title, its notebook and the date, total and sender. You check it instead of typing it.
- An export you can use. Everything at once, from any browser, as plain folders: each note in Markdown with its files beside it, readable with nothing installed and importable back in. Evernote exports ENEX from its desktop app, a notebook or 100 notes at a time.
- A price that does not count your notes. $60 a year for as many notes as you keep. If you stop paying, the account turns read-only, and every note still opens, searches and exports.
- Assistants you can check. Claude, ChatGPT and others work in your notes over the web, every edit they make is kept in the note’s history and marked as theirs, and none of them can delete anything for good.
What Evernote does better
- Reading pictures without being asked. Evernote reads every image, and the handwriting in it, as it arrives. Unbent reads every PDF as it arrives, but a photo only when you press Auto-fill or ask an assistant.
- Getting things in. A web clipper, a document scanner in the phone app, email-in, and native apps in every store.
- Sharing, tasks and the rest. Shared notebooks and Spaces, tasks, reminders, a calendar and templates. Unbent does notes, files, fields and search, for one person.
Moving from Evernote
Export each notebook from Evernote's desktop app as an .enex file and drop the files on Unbent's import page, in the browser. Each note keeps its notebook, tags, dates and files, and the text Evernote read from your scans comes with them, so they are searchable again straight away. An interrupted import picks up where it stopped, and running one twice does not duplicate anything.
The longer story, of one 13,000-note archive and why it moved, is Why Unbent exists.
What this page says about Evernote was checked in October 2026, against the sources below. Prices and features change; if something here has, we would like to know.
More comparisons
14 days free, no card needed. Then $60 a year.