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.