The 80/20 of Note-taking
Tools for capturing notes, docs, and personal knowledge. The category is crowded; the 80/20 is not.
The note-taking category is full of clever tools chasing the same handful of users. The functional spread between the top three is smaller than their marketing pages suggest — what actually differentiates them is collaboration model, not feature count.
Our rule: pick the tool whose collaboration model matches how your team already works. If you write docs and want one or two collaborators commenting, the leader is obvious. If you’re managing personal knowledge across years of notes, the leader is different. If you’re a team of 50+ engineers, none of the leaders are a great fit and you should be using a wiki.
Core picks
Common questions
What are the best note-taking tools?
Our top picks are Notion. See the full list below for our 80/20 verdict on each.
How do you pick the best note-taking tool?
We sort every tool into core (use unless you have a reason not to), situational (great for a specific use case), or skip. The choice usually comes down to your team size, collaboration model, and existing toolchain. See our methodology page for the full evaluation criteria.
Are there free note-taking tools?
Yes. Notion have a free tier or are open-source.