Standard Notes or Joplin: which note-taking app?

Your notes live in Google Keep? That’s one more thread tying them to your Google account, along with your emails, your photos and the rest. Good news: note-taking is one of the simplest services to replace. Two open source options stand out, with two opposite philosophies.

The match in one table

Criterion	Standard Notes	Joplin
Price	Free (unlimited notes). Paid plan for the advanced editors	Free. Joplin Cloud from €2.99/month
Encryption	End-to-end, by default	End-to-end, available
Source code	Open, independently audited	Open
Sync	Included, all platforms (web included)	Your choice: Nextcloud, Dropbox, OneDrive, your server
Import	Google Keep, Evernote, text files	Evernote (ENEX)
Getting started	Five minutes	Sync setup to plan for

What Standard Notes does better

Encryption without thinking about it. All your notes are encrypted end-to-end from the free plan up: even the servers cannot read them. The code is open and independently audited. You install, you write, that’s it.

It’s also the most direct replacement for Google Keep. The import works from Keep, Evernote or plain text files, and learning it takes five minutes. Since its acquisition by Proton in April 2024, the app remains open source and independent, with a stated mission: to last one hundred years. For notes you want to keep for a lifetime, I like that promise.

What Joplin does better

Freedom. Your notes are stored in Markdown, a text format that stays readable without the app. And you choose where they sync: Nextcloud, Dropbox, OneDrive or your own server. Nobody decides for you. With Standard Notes, Markdown and the spreadsheet require the subscription; with Joplin, Markdown is the native format, free.

Joplin is also more complete day to day: built-in to-do lists, attachments, and a web clipper to save web pages. All of it without paying anything if you host the sync yourself, or with Joplin Cloud from €2.99/month. On the flip side, the interface has aged a little and the initial setup takes a moment.

Verdict

Choose Standard Notes if you’re leaving Google Keep and want encrypted notes with zero setup. It’s my default recommendation, and the right choice for sensitive uses, from journalists to lawyers.

Choose Joplin if you already have a Nextcloud or a server of your own, or if free Markdown and control over sync matter more to you than encryption by default.

Either way, your notes leave the Google account and become yours again. The detailed profiles: Standard Notes and Joplin, and all the alternatives to Google Keep.