An Evernote alternative that can't raise the rent
Updated August 2026
Evernote taught a generation to keep everything in one trusted place — then capped the free plan, raised the subscription, and reminded everyone the place was rented. Locus is the opposite arrangement: your notes as plain files on your own Mac, free, with no account to hold them hostage.
The Evernote exodus isn't about features — the product still does what it always did. It's about terms. The free plan now holds about fifty notes on one device; prices have climbed year over year; and the notes themselves live in a cloud whose rules you don't set. Every renewal is a renegotiation you can only lose. Locus starts from the opposite premise: a notebook is something you own — files on your Mac, readable forever, with no meter running and no landlord to negotiate with.
Locus vs. Evernote, honestly
| Locus | Evernote | |
|---|---|---|
| Where notes live | Plain files on your Mac | Evernote's cloud servers |
| Account required | Never | Yes |
| Free plan | Everything, free while in development | Capped hard — ~50 notes, one device |
| Price direction | No subscription to raise | Raised repeatedly in recent years |
| Works offline | Always — offline is the only mode | Paid feature on mobile; desktop caches |
| Editor | Blocks — to-dos, tables, toggles, code | Rich text, classic and capable |
| Web clipper | No — an honest gap | Yes, still the best reason to stay |
| Search inside PDFs & images | No — text search only | Yes, OCR — genuinely good |
| Mobile apps | No — Mac only | Yes |
| Export / exit | Markdown, HTML, PDF anytime | ENEX — needs conversion elsewhere |
| Version history | 60 snapshots per page + daily backup | Paid feature |
Where Evernote wins, it really wins: the web clipper, OCR inside PDFs and images, and mobile apps. This page is for people whose Evernote was mostly their own words.
The feel of the switch
Evernote's editor stayed in the rich-text era; Locus writes in blocks. Type / for headings, to-dos, tables, toggles, callouts, and code with syntax colors; Markdown expands as you type; @-mentions link pages, and backlinks remember the context around every mention. Notebooks-and-tags becomes a tree of pages you can see — with covers and icons where stacks used to be. And the exit stays open permanently: any page, or the whole workspace, exports to Markdown, HTML, or PDF. The philosophy is laid out in local-first notes; if you're comparing several exits, the best Notion alternatives roundup covers the same field from a different door.
Migrating your notes
Export each notebook as ENEX from the desktop app, convert to Markdown with a free tool like yarle (attachments and images come along), then File → Import in Locus and point it at the folder — each note arrives as a page with native blocks, ready to reorganize into a tree. Ten years of notes usually takes an evening, and the result is a notebook no one can reprice.
Questions people ask
Why are people leaving Evernote?+
Three compounding reasons: the free plan was cut to roughly fifty notes on a single device, subscription prices have risen repeatedly since the change of ownership, and the product's center of gravity moved away from the fast, trustworthy notebook people signed up for a decade ago. None of it is illegal — but a notes app that can reprice years of your notes is a landlord, and people are tired of renting.
What is the best free Evernote alternative?+
Depends on what Evernote was doing for you. For web clipping and research capture, a free tier of a cloud tool (or Obsidian with its clipper) serves best. For notes as documents you own on a Mac — the diary, projects, drafts side of Evernote — Locus is free with no caps, no account, and your notes as files. For plain-text purists, Obsidian and Logseq are free and file-based.
How do I get my notes out of Evernote?+
Export each notebook as ENEX (File → Export Notebook on desktop). ENEX is Evernote's own XML, so most apps need a conversion step: free tools like yarle convert ENEX to clean Markdown folders with attachments intact. Locus then imports that Markdown folder with File → Import — each note becomes a page with native blocks. Do the export now even if you migrate later; it's your notes' insurance policy.
What will I miss most after leaving Evernote?+
Honestly: the web clipper and OCR search. Evernote remains excellent at swallowing the web and finding words inside scanned documents, and Locus doesn't do either — it's a writing tool, not a capture archive. If your Evernote was mostly clipped articles and receipts, a different successor fits better. If it was mostly your own words, you'll likely miss nothing.
Is Locus really free where Evernote isn't?+
Yes, and structurally so: there are no servers to fund, so there's no subscription to sell and no free-plan wall to move. Locus is free while in development, your notes are files on your own disk, and export to Markdown, HTML, or PDF is always one menu away — the price can't quietly change under your notes.