Standard Notes vs Microsoft OneNote
Standard Notes is a European alternative to Microsoft OneNote: same office & collaboration use case, headquartered in Switzerland and governed by Swiss FADP + GDPR for EU users, while Microsoft OneNote is based in the United States.
By the EU Alternatives team Last updated
Free, secure note-taking app with end-to-end encryption, cross-platform syncing, and offline access. Protect your notes from unauthorized access.
- Jurisdiction
- Switzerland / EFTA
- Primary privacy law
- Swiss FADP + GDPR for EU users
- US CLOUD Act exposure
- No
- Open source
- No
- Free tier
- No
OneNote gives you a free-form canvas instead of a document, letting text, screenshots and handwriting sit wherever you drop them, which suits people who think in pages rather than lists. The app itself is free and syncs through a Microsoft account. Microsoft is headquartered in Redmond, so notebooks answer to US law even when stored in an EU datacentre.
- Jurisdiction
- United States
- GDPR by default
- Requires DPA + TIA
- US CLOUD Act exposure
- Yes
Standard Notes vs Microsoft OneNote at a glance
| Standard Notes | Microsoft OneNote | |
|---|---|---|
| Headquarters | Switzerland | United States |
| Data jurisdiction | Switzerland / EFTA | United States |
| Primary privacy law | Swiss FADP + GDPR for EU users | Requires DPA + transfer assessment |
| US CLOUD Act exposure | No | Yes |
| Best for | Teams that need office & collaboration built for European data-protection requirements | Teams already invested in the Microsoft OneNote ecosystem |
Choose Standard Notes if…
- You want a provider governed by a European privacy regime
- GDPR or public-sector data-protection requirements apply to you
- You'd rather back the European tech ecosystem
Stick with Microsoft OneNote if…
- You depend on integrations only available in the Microsoft OneNote ecosystem
- Your organisation has no EU data-residency constraints
- Migration costs outweigh the jurisdiction benefits for now
About Standard Notes
Standard Notes keeps personal writing behind end-to-end encryption, with notes that remain available across devices and offline. The free version handles plain text, making it useful for journals, research fragments and everyday lists. Its appeal is straightforward: a private notebook that can travel between a phone and a computer without exposing its contents to the service operator.
The apps encrypt content before syncing it to the server. Paid editing tools expand the notebook into rich text, Markdown, spreadsheets and daily journals, while the Professional plan adds encrypted file storage. That distinction matters when comparing it with Apple Notes or OneNote: privacy and basic syncing are free, but richer ways of working require a subscription.
Key benefits:
- Encrypted sync keeps note contents unreadable to the service during cloud storage.
- Offline access makes writing available when a network connection is missing.
- Unlimited devices lets the free notebook follow a user between supported platforms.
- Data export provides encrypted or plain text copies for independent safekeeping.
- Open source apps publish their implementation under the GNU AGPL licence.
- Paid file storage adds 100GB of encrypted space on the Professional subscription.
Standard Notes joined Switzerland-based Proton in 2024, but its own privacy policy names Standard Notes Ltd. as a United States-based operator and lists AWS hosting globally. European ownership and encrypted content should therefore be distinguished from EU data residency. The policy describes GDPR protections for European users without claiming exclusively European infrastructure.
The published annual prices are $90 for Productivity and $120 for Professional. It is a practical choice for private personal records; the free plain text editor is intentionally simpler than the paid workspace.
Why choose Standard Notes over Microsoft OneNote?
The decisive argument is data jurisdiction. Microsoft OneNote is headquartered in the United States, which means personal data processed through it can be subject to non-EU legal regimes: the US CLOUD Act, FISA 702, or similar laws depending on the provider. After the 2020 Schrems II ruling, EU organisations must carry out a transfer impact assessment for every such data flow.
Standard Notes removes that overhead. As a Switzerland-based provider, it operates under Swiss FADP + GDPR for EU users, and data stays in Switzerland, which the European Commission recognises as offering an adequate level of protection. For regulated sectors such as health, public administration, and finance, that's not a nice-to-have but a requirement. For everyone else, it's concentration-risk insurance: you avoid depending on a single jurisdiction that can change the rules without warning.