We build CraftNote, a bot-free AI meeting note taker, so we're not a neutral party here — but we'll be direct about what CraftNote actually is: an AI transcription and summarization tool for meetings, lectures, phone calls, and uploaded recordings. It is not a general-purpose notebook app. Evernote is the opposite: a long-standing personal knowledge management tool for saving articles, clipping web pages, and organizing free-form notes, which added an AI Transcribe feature to its top tier fairly recently. If you're comparing these specifically for meeting notes, the gap is wide in CraftNote's favor; if you want a lifetime archive for everything you read and save, that's a job Evernote does and CraftNote doesn't attempt. Evernote's own pricing page doesn't render plan prices directly for automated tools, so paid-tier figures below are cross-checked against multiple current third-party pricing trackers as of 2026-08-26 — flagged where that applies.
Overview
CraftNote
CraftNote is a bot-free AI note taker on iOS, Android, Mac, Windows, and the web. It records directly from your device for meetings, lectures, in-person conversations, and phone calls, and also transcribes uploaded audio, video, PDFs, YouTube links, and podcasts, producing transcripts, summaries, and speaker-labeled notes.
Evernote
Evernote is a notebook and web-clipping app, now on Starter, Advanced, and Teams plans after a 2025 rename from Personal/Professional. Its free plan is limited to 50 notes, 1GB storage, and sync to a single device. AI features — an AI Assistant, semantic search, AI Transcribe, AI Edit, and AI Cleanup — are only included on the Advanced tier.
Feature Comparison
| Feature | CraftNote | Evernote | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| Core product type | Purpose-built AI meeting note taker: live capture, transcription, and summarization of conversations. | General notebook and web-clipping app for saving, organizing, and searching free-form notes and articles. | ― |
| AI meeting transcription | Core feature on every tier, including free — live recording with transcription and summaries. | AI Transcribe exists only on the Advanced plan (roughly $20.83/month billed annually, $249.99/year), not on Free, Starter, or as a live-meeting feature. | ✓ |
| Free plan | 2 hours of recording + 10 uploads/imports per week, ongoing, no lifetime cap, plus 100+ language support. | 50 notes, 1GB storage, sync limited to a single device, no AI features included at all. | ✓ |
| Web clipping and article saving | Not offered — CraftNote isn't built for saving web pages or articles. | Industry-leading web clipper: full pages, simplified articles, or annotated screenshots. | ✓ |
| Speaker identification | Speaker diarization with renameable labels, persistent across recordings. | No concept of speakers — Evernote isn't built around conversation audio. | ✓ |
| Search depth | Search across transcripts and note content. | Search extends into text inside images, PDFs, and handwritten notes — a genuinely deeper search feature for a general archive. | ✓ |
| Paid pricing | $9.99/month, or $8.33/month billed annually ($99.99/year), one flat tier with unlimited notes/transcripts. | Advanced plan: roughly $24.99/month billed monthly, or about $20.83/month billed annually ($249.99/year) — third-party sourced, unlimited notes and storage. | ― |
| Device sync | Full sync across iOS, Android, Mac, Windows, and web on every plan, including free. | Free plan syncs to 1 device only; paid plans (Starter and up) unlock multi-device and unlimited sync. | ✓ |
Who Should Pick Which?
Choose CraftNote if…
Anyone who needs to capture and understand conversations — meetings, lectures, phone calls, in-person discussions — as transcripts and summaries, without a bot joining the call and without a lifetime cap on free usage.
Choose Evernote if…
People who want a general digital filing cabinet: clipping articles, saving web pages, scanning handwritten notes, and searching across everything they've ever saved, independent of meetings or conversations.