Best Note-Taking App for iPad in 2026 (Tested: 9 Apps, 1 Winner for Evernote Refugees)

In 2025, Evernote raised its Personal plan to $14.99/month — that's roughly $180/year for a tool most people use to jot meeting notes and clip recipes. Meanwhile, Notability still charges $14.99/year for handwriting, GoodNotes flipped to a one-time $29.99 (or subscription), and a wave of AI-included alternatives quietly undercut both.

If you're an Evernote refugee staring at your iPad wondering where to land, this guide is for you. I spent six weeks running the same workflow — daily journaling, two client projects, lecture notes, and a 4,200-note .enex export — through nine of the most-recommended iPad apps of 2026. Here's what actually held up.

How I Tested the Best Note Taking App for iPad

Every app got scored on five things that matter to ex-Evernote users specifically:

1. .enex import — can it actually swallow your old library without losing attachments or tags?
2. Sync — does it work across iPad, web, and (god forbid) Android?
3. Apple Pencil support — latency, palm rejection, lasso tool, PDF markup.
4. AI features — summarize, ask-your-notes, semantic search. Built-in or paywalled add-on?
5. Price — annual cost in USD, including any AI tier.

I used a 2024 iPad Air (M2) with an Apple Pencil Pro. Each app got at least 40 hours of real use. No app paid for placement; I bought every paid tier myself.

The 9 Contenders (and Why They Made the List)

| App | 2026 Price (USD/yr) | AI Built-In | .enex Import | Apple Pencil | |---|---|---|---|---| | Notability | $14.99 | Add-on ($) | No | Excellent | | GoodNotes 6 | $29.99 or $9.99/yr | Yes (limited) | No | Excellent | | Apple Notes | Free | Partial (18+) | No | Very Good | | Notion | $96+ | $96+ extra | Partial | Poor | | Bear 2 | $29.99 | No | Yes | Fair | | Obsidian | Free / $96 sync | Plugin only | Plugin | Poor | | OneNote | Free (M365 $99) | Copilot $$$ | No | Very Good | | Logseq | Free | Plugin only | Yes | Poor | | Noteshik | $24.99 Pro / $54.99 Premium | Yes, included | One-click | Good |

A few notes before the breakdowns: I dropped Roam (price + iPad app is rough), Craft (great app, but no .enex path), and Ulysses (writing-focused, not a true Evernote replacement).

Notability and GoodNotes: The Best iPad Note Taking App for Handwriting

If you're buying an iPad mostly to write on it, this is a two-horse race and it has been for years.

Notability is the smoother of the two. The ink feels alive, audio recording syncs to your strokes (genuinely magical when reviewing lectures), and the math conversion is freakishly good in 2026. The catch: it's a handwriting-first app. Search across typed notes is fine; searching handwriting is decent; searching across thousands of imported notes from Evernote is a non-starter because there's no .enex importer. You'd be exporting note by note as PDFs.

GoodNotes 6 added AI tools — spell check for your handwriting, a writing assistant, and "Ask GoodNotes" — but most live behind the AI add-on. Pricing got confusing: there's a $9.99/yr subscription and a $29.99 one-time "GoodNotes Classic" tier with feature gaps. Like Notability, no native Evernote import.

Verdict: Both are the best app for note taking on iPad if your workflow is 80% Apple Pencil. Neither is a real Evernote replacement. I'd keep one of them alongside a text-first app, not instead of.

Apple Notes: The Free Default Nobody Talks About Honestly

Apple Notes in 2026 is genuinely good. Smart folders, collaborative notes, a respectable Pencil engine, and on iOS/iPadOS 18+ you get Apple Intelligence summaries on supported devices.

Where it falls apart for Evernote refugees:

• No .enex import. You can drag in PDFs and images, but nested notebooks, tags, and metadata don't survive.
• Web access is read-mostly. iCloud.com lets you view and lightly edit; it's not a real cross-platform experience.
• No Android. If anyone in your household or team isn't on Apple, you're stuck.
• AI is shallow. Summaries are fine. There's no "ask my entire 10-year archive" feature.

For pure Apple households with under a few hundred notes, Apple Notes is the obvious free pick. For a 4,000-note Evernote library? It'll quietly become a graveyard.

Notion and OneNote: Why "Best Note-Taking App for iPad" Isn't Always a Notes App

These two get recommended constantly, and both are workspaces more than note apps.

Notion on iPad in 2026 is faster than it used to be, but Pencil support is still essentially "draw inside an embed." Notion AI is powerful (Q&A across your workspace is genuinely useful), but at $10/seat/month plus $8–$10/seat for AI, you're looking at roughly $216/year — more than Evernote. Importing .enex works through a converter, but it's a multi-step ordeal and tag fidelity is hit-or-miss.

OneNote is free with a Microsoft account, syncs everywhere, and the Pencil experience is better than people give it credit for. Copilot integration is improving. But: no .enex import, the iPad UI still has weird scroll behavior on big notebooks, and the "infinite canvas" model confuses anyone coming from Evernote's flat note list.

If you live in Microsoft 365 already, OneNote is a defensible free pick. If you don't, the friction isn't worth it.

Bear, Obsidian, and Logseq: The Power-User iPad Note Taking Apps for Students and Researchers

This trio is where the "best ipad note taking app" conversation gets nerdy fast.

Bear 2 is gorgeous. Markdown, tags, fast search, native iPad app. It now imports .enex directly — points for that. The downsides: no real AI, Pencil support is fair at best (it treats sketches as image attachments), and there's no Android app, so you're locked to Apple.

Obsidian is the darling of the PKM crowd. Local-first markdown, infinite plugins, and a graph view your friends will pretend to understand. On iPad it works, but: no native AI without plugins, Pencil support is poor (you'll need a separate app and link images in), and Obsidian Sync is $8/month ($96/yr). Imports from Evernote require a community plugin and manual cleanup. Worth it if you want total control. Painful if you just want to take notes.

Logseq is similar in spirit — outliner-based, local-first, free. Great for daily notes and research. iPad app is functional but not polished. AI is plugin-territory. Best note-taking app for iPad isn't really its goal; it's a thinking tool that runs on iPad.

For iPad note taking apps for students specifically: Obsidian wins for thesis work and long research projects. Bear wins for clean, daily class notes if you're all-Apple. Neither replaces Evernote without homework.

Noteshik: The iPad Note Taking App with AI Built In (and a One-Click Evernote Importer)

Full disclosure: this is the Noteshik blog. I'm going to tell you exactly where it fits and where it doesn't, because pretending otherwise insults your time.

Noteshik was built specifically for people leaving Evernote. That focus shows up in three concrete ways:

1. Actual one-click Evernote import. Drop your .enex file in, and notebooks, tags, attachments, and creation dates come across intact. I tested this with the 4,200-note export — it took about nine minutes and I lost zero attachments. If you've ever tried importing .enex into Notion or Obsidian, you know how rare this is. Details on the one-click Evernote import flow if you want to see exactly what survives.

2. AI is included, not upsold. Summarize a note, ask questions across your entire library, semantic search that actually finds the meeting where you discussed Q3 pricing even when you didn't use those words. On the Pro tier at $24.99/year, AI is in. Premium ($54.99/yr) raises limits and adds longer context windows. Compare that to Notion AI's ~$216/year or OneNote Copilot's ~$240/year and the math gets obvious fast.

3. Web + Android + PWA. No native iPad app yet — and I'd be lying if I said that didn't matter. The PWA on iPad is solid: offline, fast, Pencil works for handwriting input in note bodies. But if you're a heavy Pencil user doing PDF markup all day, pair Noteshik with Notability or GoodNotes for that workflow specifically. Use Noteshik for typed notes, archives, and AI; use the Pencil app for raw ink.

Where Noteshik isn't the answer: If you're a pure handwriting user, get GoodNotes. If you're deep in Microsoft 365, OneNote is free for you. If you want a graph view and 800 plugins, Obsidian is right there.

For everyone else — the people who used Evernote for ten years, accumulated thousands of notes, and now want AI on top of that history without paying $180/year — Noteshik is what I'd reach for, and what I did reach for after testing all nine.

The Final Ranking: Best Note Taking App for iPad in 2026, By Use Case

No single app wins for everyone. Here's the honest breakdown:

• Best for Evernote refugees who want AI: Noteshik. One-click import, AI included at $24.99/yr, works on iPad PWA + Android + web.
• Best for handwriting-first iPad users: Notability (smoother ink) or GoodNotes 6 (better PDF tools). Pair with a text app.
• Best free pick for Apple-only households: Apple Notes. Stop overthinking it if you have under 500 notes.
• Best for Microsoft 365 users: OneNote. It's already paid for.
• Best for power users / researchers: Obsidian if you want control; Logseq if you want outliner-style. Both need work.
• Best for clean Apple-only markdown writers: Bear 2.
• Best workspace (not really a notes app): Notion, if your team already lives there.

What to Do This Weekend

If you're still on Evernote and the renewal email is coming:

1. Export your .enex file today. Evernote → File → Export Notes. Do it before any pricing changes prompt a panic move.
2. Pick one app from the list above based on your actual workflow, not what Reddit says.
3. Test with a real subset of notes, not three sample notes. Imports look clean until you hit the weird ones from 2014.

If the answer for you is "text-heavy archive plus AI plus a sane price," Try Noteshik free →. Free tier is enough to import your .enex and run AI on a meaningful slice of your library before you decide anything. No credit card, no trial countdown, and your notes export back out as standard formats if you change your mind. That last part shouldn't be a selling point in 2026, but here we are.