Joplin vs Standard Notes

Joplin Basic costs €2.99 monthly or €28.69 yearly, which works out to €2.40 per month when billed annually, according to the pricing information checked on November 7, 2026. It includes 2 GB of storage and a 10 MB limit per note or attachment. No free plan is listed; a Pro price is not published.

Standard Notes has a free plan for plain-text notes, unlimited device sync, daily encrypted email backups and community support. Productivity costs $90 per year ($7.50 per month equivalent); Professional costs $120 per year ($10 per month equivalent). Monthly prices are not published. Productivity adds richer editing and a year of revision history; Professional includes 100 GB of encrypted storage and sharing with up to five accounts. These currencies and storage allowances differ, so compare what you need to store rather than headline prices.

Joplin is the broader notebook for people who want to shape how they capture and organize information. It supports multimedia notes with images, video, PDFs and audio, plus math expressions and diagrams. Its web clipper saves pages or screenshots, and plugins, themes, scripts, and Markdown or rich-text editing give you ways to customize the app. Sync can run through Joplin Cloud, Dropbox, OneDrive and other services; end-to-end encryption is supported. Joplin Cloud also supports shared or published notes.

Standard Notes puts more emphasis on encrypted note storage and access across devices. Its free plan covers unlimited synced devices and plain-text notes, with offline access and daily encrypted email backups listed among its features. Paid Productivity adds Markdown, rich text, spreadsheets and a one-year revision history. Professional adds 100 GB of encrypted storage and sharing with up to five accounts; the pricing page says it has no file-size limit and has been tested up to 2 GB. Choose based on editing and capture needs, not encryption alone.

For a straightforward free starting point, Standard Notes is easier to size up: the free plan is for encrypted plain-text notes and sync across unlimited devices. You can move to paid plans if you want richer editors, spreadsheets or file storage. The listed free features are deliberately narrower than the paid feature set.

Joplin offers more choices up front, including editors, plugins, themes, scripts and several sync routes. That flexibility may suit users who want control, but it also means deciding how to configure the notebook and sync. Before moving a large archive, check Basic’s 2 GB storage cap and 10 MB per-note or attachment limit. The available information does not establish which app is faster to learn for every user.