Joplin — Free Alternative to Notion Plus

At a glance

GitHub repo

laurent22/joplin

GitHub stars

57,133 (checked 11 November 2026)

Licence

MIT (per the repo LICENSE file)

Main language

TypeScript

Replaces

Notion Plus

Paid price it replaces

$10/user/month (billed annually; $12/month billed monthly)

Best for

Anyone who takes personal notes daily and wants them private, portable and free instead of $10 a month.

Prices were checked on the vendor's pricing page on 11 November 2026 and may have changed since. Star counts are a snapshot from the same date.

What Joplin does

Joplin is an open-source notes app built around privacy. Notes are written in Markdown, support file attachments and full-text search, and sync across Windows, macOS, Linux, Android and iOS through Nextcloud, Dropbox, WebDAV or Joplin Cloud. There is a paid Joplin Cloud option, but syncing through your own storage costs nothing extra.

The comparison is Notion Plus at $10 per user per month billed annually ($12 billed monthly). Notion is the more polished workspace, with databases and team wikis, and its full AI features only start at the Business plan ($20 per user per month). Joplin is the opposite bet: simpler, but your notes are plain Markdown files that you can export anywhere. You are never locked into a platform to read your own notes.

Encryption is the other reason people switch. Joplin supports end-to-end encryption, so notes synced through a third-party service stay unreadable to the service itself. Combined with offline-first storage, that makes it a good home for journals, research notes and anything sensitive.

Joplin will not replace Notion for teams that live in databases and wikis. For personal notes — and for anyone who wants their notes to outlive any single app — plain Markdown files, full-text search and sync you control are the right trade, at $0 instead of $10 a month.

Why it is worth using for free

• Notes are plain Markdown files — export them anywhere, never locked into a platform
• End-to-end encryption keeps synced notes private even from the sync provider
• Full-text search, attachments and apps for desktop and mobile
• Sync free through your own Nextcloud, Dropbox or WebDAV — no subscription required

How to use Joplin

Download Joplin for your computer and phone from joplinapp.org. Create your first notebook, write a note in Markdown, and organise notes into notebooks and tags.

Then turn on synchronisation: pick Nextcloud, Dropbox, WebDAV or Joplin Cloud in Settings, and your notes stay in sync across devices. Turn on end-to-end encryption in the same settings page if you want it.

Frequently asked questions