A data analysis of how much time scattered information actually costs, how fast the note-taking market is growing, who is winning it, and why the fix is fewer tools rather than more.
The average employee spends 3.6 hours every day searching for information at work — an hour more per day than the year before — and IT staff spend 4.2 hours, according to Coveo’s Workplace Relevance Report. That is the demand behind a note-taking and knowledge-management market that research firms size at roughly $11 billion in 2025, headed toward $28 billion by 2030. The numbers below show where the time goes, how fast the category is growing, and why the buying decision is narrower than the app-store shelf suggests.
Key takeaways
- Employees spend 3.6 hours a day searching for information; IT staff spend 4.2 hours, per Coveo — up an hour a day year over year
- 60% of employees search across four or more data sources just to get through a normal day (Coveo)
- 31% say search frustration burns them out and 16% say it makes them want to quit (Coveo); a 2024 follow-up put frustration-driven burnout at 34% (Coveo 2024 EX Report)
- The note-taking app market was ~$11.02B in 2025, growing at a 20.5% CAGR to $28.05B by 2030 (The Business Research Company)
- Notion passed 100 million users as of September 2024, per Notion
- Notion reached ~$600M ARR at an $11B valuation, with roughly half of ARR from AI features (Forbes)
- Obsidian counts roughly 1 million users and 110,000+ Discord members, built with no venture funding (Fast Company / Wikipedia)
How much time do knowledge workers lose searching for information?
Roughly half a workday. Coveo’s survey of 4,000 employees found workers spend 3.6 hours a day looking for information, and IT staff spend 4.2 hours, per Coveo. Both figures rose about an hour from the prior year — the friction is getting worse, not better, as tools multiply.
That lost time is the core case for a real knowledge base. When notes, docs, and decisions live in one searchable place instead of scattered across chat, email, and drives, the daily hunt shrinks. It is the same throughput problem we track in our productivity software statistics.
How fragmented are the tools people search across?
Badly. 60% of employees have to search within four or more separate data sources every day just to do their jobs, per Coveo. Each additional silo adds a place to look, a login to remember, and a chance the answer is somewhere you did not check.
Fragmentation is why “add another app” rarely fixes an information problem — it usually creates a fifth or sixth source to search. The teams that recover the most time consolidate, moving scattered notes into a single knowledge base rather than adding a niche tool for every workflow.
How big is the note-taking app market?
Large and compounding fast. The Business Research Company sized the note-taking app market at $11.02 billion in 2025, growing at a 20.5% CAGR to reach $28.05 billion by 2030. That is roughly a 2.5x expansion in five years — among the faster-growing productivity categories.
The growth reflects two forces at once: the time-lost-searching problem above, and a wave of AI features that turn passive notes into searchable, queryable knowledge. Estimates vary by scope, but the direction is unanimous across firms — a multi-billion-dollar category growing in the low-20s percent per year.
How many people use Notion?
Notion passed 100 million users as of September 2024, per Notion. The company reached its first million users in 2020, so crossing nine figures in roughly four years marks one of the steeper adoption curves in productivity software.
The business behind the number is now substantial: Notion reported around $600 million in annual recurring revenue at an $11 billion valuation in December 2025, with roughly half of ARR coming from AI features and about 80% of customers outside the US, per Forbes. Notion is the default answer in the note-taking category for a reason.
Is Obsidian a serious alternative for personal knowledge management?
Yes, in a different lane. Obsidian estimates roughly 1 million users based on download counts, with a community of 110,000+ Discord members, per Fast Company via Wikipedia. It reached that scale with no venture funding, sustained instead by optional paid Sync and Publish services.
Obsidian wins where Notion does not: local-first, plain-text Markdown files you own, favored by researchers, developers, and PKM power users. It is smaller than Notion by an order of magnitude but dominant in its niche — proof the category is not winner-take-all.
Why does poor information access hurt retention?
Because friction compounds into frustration. Among Coveo’s respondents, 31% said the inability to find information made them feel burned out and 16% said it made them want to leave their company, per Coveo. A 2024 follow-up found 34% reported frustration and burnout from inadequate tools and 30% felt less confident in their work, per Coveo’s 2024 EX Report.
A knowledge base is not a nice-to-have, then — scattered information is a retention risk. The same coordination problem drives our project management statistics: work slows when nobody can find the current version.
Frequently asked questions
How much time do employees lose searching for information?
About 3.6 hours a day for the average employee and 4.2 hours for IT staff, per Coveo. Both figures climbed roughly an hour year over year, so the daily cost of scattered notes and docs is rising as the number of workplace tools grows.
How big is the note-taking and knowledge management market?
Roughly $11.02 billion in 2025, growing at a 20.5% CAGR to $28.05 billion by 2030, per The Business Research Company. It is one of the faster-growing productivity categories, propelled by information overload and a wave of AI-powered search and summarization features.
How many users does Notion have?
More than 100 million as of September 2024, per Notion, up from one million in 2020. The company reported around $600 million in ARR at an $11 billion valuation in December 2025, with roughly half of that revenue coming from AI features, per Forbes.
How popular is Obsidian?
Obsidian has roughly 1 million users and a 110,000-member Discord community, per Fast Company via Wikipedia. It is far smaller than Notion but dominates the personal knowledge management niche among power users, and it grew to that scale with no outside venture funding.
Does bad information access actually make people quit?
It contributes. 16% of employees said search frustration made them want to leave their company, and 31% said it burned them out, per Coveo. A 2024 report put frustration-driven burnout at 34%, per Coveo — a real retention cost hiding in your tool sprawl.
How many places do employees search to find answers?
Too many. 60% of employees search across four or more data sources every day, per Coveo. Each silo adds another login and another place the answer might be hiding, which is why consolidation — not another niche app — is what recovers time.
What this means for teams
The data lines up behind one conclusion: the cost of note-taking is not the software, it is the searching. Workers lose 3.6 hours a day and hunt across four-plus sources because their knowledge is scattered — and the fix is consolidation, not another app. The market is growing 20% a year precisely because teams are trying to buy their way out of fragmentation, often by adding to it.
That is the 80/20 case for the note-taking category: pick one knowledge base your whole team will actually use — Notion for structured team wikis, Obsidian for owned, local-first personal notes — and retire the overlapping tools around it. Fewer, better-chosen tools beat a longer shortlist every time. See how we score each pick on the about page.
Sources
- Coveo — Fruitless Searching, Irrelevant Information, Inefficient Tools (Workplace Relevance Report)
- Coveo — 2024 Employee Experience Industry Report
- The Business Research Company — Note Taking App Global Market Report
- Notion — 100 million people now use Notion
- Forbes — Notion Kicks Off Employee Share Sale At $11 Billion Valuation
- Wikipedia — Obsidian (software)