Every notes app says it is secure. NotePrivate put seven of them side by side on the things that decide it: whether notes are encrypted with a key only you hold, whether they stay encrypted on your own device, whether anyone can check the code, and what you pay. NotePrivate is one of the seven, and its gaps are listed with everyone else's.
Vendor details read from each vendor's own site, 8 September to 1 October 2026 · Named products are market context, not endorsements
A secure note taking app encrypts your notes with a key only you hold, so the company behind it cannot read them, and keeps them encrypted on your device as well as on the way to a server. On that test, Standard Notes is the best documented choice, with public source code and published third-party audits, and Notesnook is the strongest free option, with the same end-to-end encryption on its free plan and apps for Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS and the web. Joplin encrypts notes on their way to the sync target once you switch its encryption on, though the copy on your computer is not covered. Apple Notes keeps most notes readable to Apple unless you turn on Advanced Data Protection, Obsidian stores notes as plain Markdown on your disk, and Evernote is not end-to-end encrypted. If you take notes on a Mac or Windows PC and want them encrypted on your own disk with no account, that is the job NotePrivate is built for. NotePrivate is planned at $59 a year, is not on sale yet, and has no phone app yet.
Sources for this secure note taking app summary: standardnotes.com/plans and the Standard Notes audit list, read 8 September 2026; notesnook.com/pricing, read 27 September 2026; Joplin's end-to-end encryption help page, read 28 September 2026; Apple's iCloud data security overview (support.apple.com/102651), read 1 October 2026; obsidian.md/pricing, read 27 September 2026. The NotePrivate price is planned, not live.
A padlock icon proves nothing, and neither does the word encryption on a pricing page. These are the five questions NotePrivate would ask of any secure note taking app, itself included, before trusting it with notes you would least want read.
Sources for these secure note taking tests: support.apple.com/102651, read 1 October 2026; obsidian.md/pricing, read 27 September 2026; joplinapp.org end-to-end encryption help and plans page, read 28 September 2026; standardnotes.com, read 8 September 2026; notesnook.com, read 8 September 2026. The difference between a vault password, a note lock and disk encryption is laid out in full on its own NotePrivate page.
Seven notes apps people weigh when security is the reason they are shopping, NotePrivate included. The encryption column answers one question only: can the company that runs the app read your notes?
| App | End-to-end encrypted by default | Where notes are stored | Open source | Platforms | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NotePrivate | YesFrom the first note | Encrypted vault on your own disk; sync optional, as ciphertext through a cloud folder you already use | NoNo published audit | macOS, Windows | $59/year planned, not on sale |
| Standard Notes | Yes | Standard Notes sync account, with an offline copy | YesApp and server, audits listed | Web, desktop, mobile | Free plain text; Productivity $90/yr; Professional $120/yr |
| Notesnook | YesSame on free and paid | Notesnook sync, or a sync server you host | YesGPLv3 | Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS, web | Free; Essential $19.99/yr; Pro $69.99/yr |
| Joplin | PartialOff until you enable it; covers sync, not the local copy | Sync target you choose: Joplin Cloud, Nextcloud, Dropbox, OneDrive or your own server | YesAGPL-3.0-or-later | Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS | App free; Joplin Cloud Basic 28.69 euros/yr |
| Apple Notes | PartialLocked notes, or notes with Advanced Data Protection; shared notes only if every participant has it | iCloud | No | iPhone, iPad, Mac; iCloud.com in a browser | Free with an Apple device |
| Obsidian | PartialSync only; local vault is plain Markdown | Markdown files on your disk | No | Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android | Free; Sync $4/month billed yearly |
| Evernote | No | Evernote's servers | No | Mac, Windows, iPhone, Android, web | Free plan capped at 50 notes, one notebook, one device; paid plans above it |
Sources for this secure note taking app table: standardnotes.com/plans and the Standard Notes source and audit pages, read 8 September 2026; notesnook.com/pricing, read 8 and 27 September 2026; joplinapp.org/plans and Joplin's end-to-end encryption help, read 28 September 2026; support.apple.com/102651, read 1 October 2026; obsidian.md/pricing, read 27 September 2026; Evernote's plan and download pages as recorded on the encrypted Evernote alternative comparison. The NotePrivate price is planned, not live.
Roundups rank secure notes apps by feature count. This NotePrivate comparison goes app by app on the trade-off you only find in the help centre, with the source named in the same card.
Standard Notes encrypts every note with XChaCha20-Poly1305 according to its plans page, publishes its app and server source, and lists third-party audits by Cure53, Trail of Bits and Shackle Labs between 2017 and 2022. The free plan is end-to-end encrypted with offline access and per-note password protection, but it is plain text only, and NotePrivate's Standard Notes comparison found the notes are encrypted on your own disk only once you set an Application Passcode. Rich text, Markdown, spreadsheets and folders sit on Productivity at $90 a year. The Standard Notes plan split, set against NotePrivate, is covered on its own page.
Notesnook's pricing page says free or pro, you get the same level of privacy, so its free tier is end-to-end encrypted too, with unlimited notes and a 50MB monthly allowance for attachments. Essential is $19.99 a year and Pro is $69.99 a year. Notesnook publishes client and server under GPLv3 with a self-hostable sync server, runs on Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS and the web, and its App Store listing, titled Notesnook: Encrypted notepad, ranks near the top of this search. If you need a phone app and a $0 budget, Notesnook beats NotePrivate.
Joplin's help page says end-to-end encryption works on all its apps but has to be enabled manually on one device first, then synced to the rest, and that the master key password cannot be recovered. Joplin's encryption specification says notes are encrypted during synchronization, before they reach the sync target, so the notes on your own computer are not encrypted by it. The app is free and open source under AGPL-3.0-or-later, and Joplin Cloud Basic is 28.69 euros a year with 2 GB of storage. NotePrivate has no switch to forget, and its vault is encrypted on disk from the first note. The Joplin alternatives with encryption on by default page goes deeper.
Apple's iCloud data security overview lists Notes under standard data protection as encrypted in transit and on the server with keys stored by Apple. Locked notes are end-to-end encrypted, and your notes become end-to-end encrypted once you switch on Advanced Data Protection, except a shared note whose other participants have not turned it on too. Apple's support page lists what the note lock skips: notes with tags, PDFs, audio, video or iWork documents, and shared notes. There is no Windows app. The Apple Notes alternatives compared on who holds the keys page covers the move.
Obsidian is free, and its pricing page describes Sync at $4 a month billed yearly with end-to-end encryption. The vault on your computer, though, is a folder of plain Markdown files, so anyone sitting at your open laptop can read every note, and so can any community plugin you install. If the local copy is the part that worries you, the encrypted Obsidian alternative page shows where NotePrivate closes that gap.
Evernote ranks for this search with a page called Secure Note Taking for Business, built around encryption, access controls, meetings and team workflows. Those controls keep outsiders out; they do not keep Evernote out, because Evernote does not end-to-end encrypt notebooks. Its free plan is capped at 50 notes in one notebook on one device. For a team that needs shared notebooks and permissions, Evernote does a job NotePrivate does not attempt.
NotePrivate stores your notes as an encrypted vault on your Mac or Windows PC, with the master key wrapped by a key derived from a password that never leaves the machine. It opens and searches offline, needs no account, locks itself on idle and on sleep, supports Touch ID on Mac, and can keep a single note locked after the vault is open. Rich text, Markdown, code, checklists, spreadsheets and one-time codes are all in one planned $59 a year plan, and the NotePrivate private notes app overview lists every feature. The catches: no phone app yet, no team features, closed source, no published audit, and not on sale.
Every secure note taking app detail above comes from the vendor pages named in the table sources and from the SERP for this search, read between 8 September and 7 October 2026. Features and prices change, so check the vendor's site before moving years of notes.
The right secure note taking app mostly depends on where you write. Here is the NotePrivate shortlist per device, using only the platform lists and prices from the comparison table, repeated here so each answer stands on its own.
Notesnook or Standard Notes, both end-to-end encrypted by default with iOS apps. Apple Notes works too if you turn on Advanced Data Protection, or lock the notes that matter. NotePrivate has no iPhone app yet; the iPhone companion is still in progress.
Notesnook, Standard Notes or Joplin, all of which ship Android apps. Notesnook is the free pick with encryption on from the start, and Joplin is free once you enable encryption yourself. NotePrivate has no Android app.
NotePrivate if you want notes encrypted on the PC itself with no account, because Windows Notepad and Sticky Notes have no password and BitLocker stops protecting files once you sign in. Notesnook, Standard Notes and Joplin also run on Windows. The NotePrivate encrypted notes setup for Windows covers what BitLocker does and does not do.
NotePrivate if the Mac is where you write and you want the vault encrypted on its disk, with Touch ID so you are not retyping a long password. Apple Notes with Advanced Data Protection on is the free option if every device you own is Apple. Standard Notes and Notesnook both have Mac apps.
Notesnook free, Standard Notes free, or Joplin. Each costs $0 and each publishes its source, with Joplin needing encryption switched on and Standard Notes free limited to plain text. NotePrivate is neither free nor open source: it is planned at $59 a year and its code is closed.
Pay for the thing you would actually use. Standard Notes Productivity at $90 a year buys rich text, spreadsheets and folders; Notesnook Pro at $69.99 a year is the top tier above a free plan that is already encrypted; NotePrivate at a planned $59 a year buys every note type in an encrypted local vault with no account. If a free tier already does your job, keep your money.
These four questions show up on the search results page for a secure note taking app. Straight answers, with NotePrivate named where it fits and named out where it does not.
HIPAA compliance belongs to how a practice handles patient information, not to an app on its own, and a vendor that stores patient data for a covered entity needs a business associate agreement with it. NotePrivate makes no HIPAA compliance claim. NotePrivate keeps notes encrypted on your own Mac or Windows PC rather than on a NotePrivate server, but if you handle patient records at work, use the tool your practice already has an agreement for and ask your compliance lead before patient details go into any notes app.
Yes in Apple Notes, one note at a time. On iPhone or iPad open Settings, tap Apps, tap Notes, then Password; on a Mac open Notes, choose Notes then Settings, and set a password next to Locked notes. Then open a note, tap or click the More button and choose Lock Note. Apple's support page says the lock skips notes with tags, PDFs, audio, video or iWork documents, and any note you share. Windows Notepad and Sticky Notes have no password at all, and OneNote can password protect a section. NotePrivate puts one password on a whole encrypted vault on Mac and Windows, and can keep a single note locked after the vault is open.
Only as secure as the place the AI runs. End-to-end encryption protects a note while it is stored and synced, but an AI feature that summarises or searches your text on a server has to receive that text in readable form. Before you switch on an AI feature in any notes app, check the vendor's documentation for where the processing happens and whether your text is kept. NotePrivate has no AI features, and its OCR, which makes text in images and PDFs searchable, runs on your own device.
Yes. Windows Notepad has no password and no encryption, but several note apps encrypt by default: Notesnook lists itself on the App Store as an encrypted notepad, and Standard Notes encrypts even its free plain text plan. NotePrivate is an encrypted notepad and notes app for Mac and Windows that keeps every note in a vault on your own disk, opened only by your password. NotePrivate is planned at $59 a year and is waitlist only.
A comparison written by one of the apps in it should say where that app loses. These are the NotePrivate gaps, stated plainly.
NotePrivate runs on macOS and Windows, and the iPhone app is still in progress, with no Android app. If your notes start on a phone, Notesnook or Standard Notes is the secure answer today.
NotePrivate is closed source with no published third-party audit. Standard Notes publishes its source and lists its audits, and Notesnook and Joplin publish their source, so if verifiable code is the bar, NotePrivate does not clear it.
NotePrivate is one person's encrypted vault, with no shared notebooks, comments or team permissions. Evernote's business pitch and Notion's workspaces exist for that job; NotePrivate does not compete there.
Evernote is not end-to-end encrypted, so your notebooks sit on Evernote's servers in a form Evernote itself can read. Evernote's own secure note taking page is written for businesses and covers encryption and access controls, which keep outsiders out rather than keeping the provider out. If the provider being unable to read your notes is the requirement, Standard Notes, Notesnook, or NotePrivate on Mac and Windows meet it and Evernote does not.
Partly. Apple's iCloud data security overview lists Notes under standard data protection as encrypted in transit and on the server with keys stored by Apple, so Apple can read them. Notes you lock with a password are end-to-end encrypted, and your notes become end-to-end encrypted once you turn on Advanced Data Protection, though a shared note stays that way only if everyone sharing it has turned it on too. Apple Notes has no Windows app, only iCloud.com in a browser, which is where NotePrivate fits instead.
Both encrypt every note end to end by default and both publish their source code. Standard Notes publishes its app and server source and lists third-party audits by Cure53, Trail of Bits and Shackle Labs between 2017 and 2022, so it has the longer published audit history. Notesnook publishes its client and server under GPLv3, lets you self-host sync, and keeps the same encryption on its free plan. NotePrivate is behind both on this question because it is closed source with no published audit.
No to both. NotePrivate is closed source and has no published third-party security audit. NotePrivate encrypts the vault with a master key wrapped by a key derived from your password, and that password never leaves your device, but you are taking that on the company's word. If auditable code is your requirement, Standard Notes, Notesnook or Joplin is the better pick.
If the encryption is real, the notes are gone. Joplin says its master key password cannot be recovered, and NotePrivate has no reset link because no copy of your key exists on a server. An app that can email you a reset link and then show you your old notes is an app whose provider can read them. Keep the password in a password manager before the notes pile up.
No. NotePrivate is waitlist only. It is planned at $59 a year with every feature included, on macOS and Windows, and joining the waitlist is the one thing you can do today.
Keeping dated entries rather than notes? The encrypted journal apps compared by NotePrivate run the same tests on Day One, Apple Journal and the rest.
NotePrivate keeps your notes encrypted on your Mac or Windows PC with a key only you hold. It is not on sale yet. Join the waitlist and you will hear the day it opens.
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