Standard Notes
Standard Notes is an open-source, end-to-end encrypted note-taking app that stores nothing readable on its servers — your data is ciphertext from device to cloud and back. The trade-off is a free tier locked to plain text only, a dated interface, and rich formatting features that cost $90 per year to unlock.
SRG Bottom Line
One-Line Verdict: Standard Notes is the right tool for freelancers who handle genuinely sensitive material — journalists, legal consultants, therapists, security researchers — and need ironclad encryption that has been independently audited; everyone else will find it too bare-bones on the free tier and too expensive at $90/year for features that come free in Obsidian or Joplin.
What is Standard Notes?
Standard Notes is an open-source, end-to-end encrypted note-taking application available on Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, and Android. Founded by Mo Bitar and launched in 2017, it uses XChaCha20-Poly1305 encryption — one of the strongest available — applied on-device before anything reaches Standard Notes’ servers.
The company’s zero-knowledge architecture means Standard Notes literally cannot read your notes, even if compelled by a court order or breached by attackers. The codebase is publicly audited, and automated daily encrypted email backups are included even on the free tier. The platform markets itself explicitly toward writers, journalists, and legal professionals who need notes that stay private unconditionally.
At Smart Remote Gigs, I ran Standard Notes through a two-week evaluation covering real freelance workflows: drafting client-facing documents, storing sensitive contract notes, and testing the free tier honestly against what it actually lets you do. The security credentials are real. The usability story is more complicated — and the paywall placement will frustrate anyone who arrives expecting a fully-featured free tier just because encryption is the headline feature.
🚀 Key Features for Freelancers
XChaCha20-Poly1305 End-to-End Encryption (Free)
Every note, tag, and metadata item is encrypted on your device before it leaves. The encryption has been independently audited. For freelancers storing client contracts, health information, legal strategy notes, or source identities, this is a qualitatively different level of protection than Notion, Evernote, or Apple Notes — all of which can be read by the platform and are subject to subpoenas.
Unlimited Device Sync + Offline Access (Free)
Unlike Obsidian’s free tier, which requires a paid Sync add-on or manual iCloud setup for multi-device use, Standard Notes syncs across all devices for free with no cap on the number of devices. The sync is consistent and reliable — multiple reviews specifically call out that it “just works” without configuration friction.
Super Note Type — Markdown, Rich Text, Checklists, Code, Spreadsheets (Productivity Plan)
The Productivity plan ($90/year) unlocks the Super note type, which consolidates all rich formatting into a single editor: Markdown, rich text, checklists, inline images, code blocks with syntax highlighting, and full spreadsheets with formula support. This is the feature that turns Standard Notes from a secure text box into a usable writing and research environment — but it costs $7.50/month effective.
Automated Daily Encrypted Email Backups (Free)
Standard Notes automatically emails you a daily encrypted backup of your entire vault. This is a genuinely unusual free-tier inclusion and a meaningful safety net for freelancers who can’t afford to lose client notes, project records, or sensitive correspondence — no manual export discipline required.
Encrypted File Storage — 100GB (Professional Plan)
The Professional plan ($120/year) adds 100GB of encrypted cloud storage for photos, videos, and documents, no individual file size cap (tested up to 2GB), offline file access, and automatic local backups of all files. It also covers up to 5 accounts under a family sharing model — meaningful if you’re splitting costs with a partner or collaborator.
Web Clipper + Daily Notebooks (Productivity Plan)
The web clipper saves full pages as encrypted notes directly into your vault. Daily Notebooks creates a structured journaling system with one note per day automatically. Both are locked behind the Productivity plan but are genuinely useful for freelancers doing research, competitive analysis, or client intake documentation.
🗣️ Voice of the Street: “I store client contracts, source notes, and medical documents in Standard Notes. It’s the one app I trust not to hand my data to anyone. The sync has never failed me across Mac, Windows, and iPhone.” – u/privacy_first_writer, Reddit
⚖️ Pros & Cons
✅ The Good:
- The only note-taking app in this category with independently audited, zero-knowledge XChaCha20-Poly1305 encryption — Standard Notes genuinely cannot read your content
- Unlimited device sync and offline access are free, with no account tier, no device cap, and no configuration required — a better free sync deal than Obsidian
- Automated daily encrypted email backups are included at zero cost, providing passive vault protection without any user action
- Open-source codebase, independently audited, and actively maintained — this isn’t security theater; the architecture has been verified
- Refund policy is genuinely generous: 14 days on Productivity, 90 days on Professional — one of the most confident return windows in the note-taking category
❌ The Bad (The Catch):
- The free tier is plain text only — no Markdown, no rich text, no checklists, no folders, no themes, and only 5 days of note revision history; it’s less functional than Apple Notes, which is free
- Markdown, rich text, code blocks, checklists, and folder organization all require the Productivity plan at $90/year — features that are free in Obsidian, Joplin, and Logseq
- The interface looks and feels dated compared to Notion, Obsidian, or Notesnook; there has been no major UI refresh and the aesthetic gap versus modern competitors is noticeable
- No bidirectional linking, no graph view, no knowledge management capabilities — Standard Notes is a secure note store, not a PKM system; comparing it to Obsidian for knowledge work is the wrong frame
- No AI features whatsoever, natively or via plugins — in 2026 this is a meaningful gap for freelancers who use AI writing assistance inside their notes workflow
💰 Pricing Breakdown (Is it worth it?)
The free tier delivers on exactly one dimension: it gives you unlimited, encrypted, synced plain-text notes on every device you own, for free, forever. That is genuinely valuable and more than competitors like Obsidian offer without a paid add-on. But if you arrive expecting to write in Markdown, organize into folders, or add a checklist — you cannot do any of that without paying $90/year. That paywall placement is the most common complaint across Reddit, Capterra, and G2, and it’s a fair one.
The Productivity plan at $90/year ($7.50/month effective) is the real minimum viable subscription for anyone doing actual freelance work in the app. The Professional plan at $120/year adds 100GB encrypted file storage and family sharing for 5 accounts — at $24/year per person when shared, it becomes the best-value encrypted notes + file storage combination in the market.
Plan | Price | Limits/Credits | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|
Standard (Free) | $0/year | Plain text notes only, unlimited devices, unlimited sync, offline access, 5-day note history, daily encrypted email backups, 2FA, no folders, no themes, no Markdown | Freelancers who only need encrypted plain-text capture — journalists jotting source names, legal consultants logging case facts — and nothing more |
Productivity | $90/year ($7.50/mo effective) | Super note type (Markdown, rich text, checklists, code, spreadsheets), folders, web clipper, Daily Notebooks, 2FA authenticator, 1-year note history, 14-day full refund | Writers, researchers, and consultants who need proper formatting and organization alongside Standard Notes’ encryption credentials |
Professional | $120/year ($10/mo effective) | Everything in Productivity + 100GB encrypted file storage, no file size cap, offline file access, local file backups, family sharing up to 5 accounts, unlimited note history, hardware security key support, 90-day full refund | Freelancers with large document libraries, media files, or those splitting the cost with 2–5 household or team members to get the per-person price below $25/year |
⚔️ The Kill-Matrix: Standard Notes vs Competitors
Standard Notes wins the encryption argument decisively — but Joplin gives you most of the privacy protection for free, and Obsidian gives you a dramatically more capable knowledge system once you accept that your notes aren’t server-side encrypted.
Feature | Standard Notes | Obsidian | Joplin |
|---|---|---|---|
Free Tier | Plain text only, unlimited sync, E2E encrypted | Full app, all plugins, unlimited notes — no sync across devices without add-on | Full app, Markdown, notebooks, attachments — sync requires third-party or paid Joplin Cloud |
Entry Paid Price | $90/year (Productivity) | $48/year (Sync only) | $48/year (Joplin Cloud Basic) |
End-to-End Encryption | Yes — zero-knowledge, independently audited, always on | No — local files; Sync is E2E encrypted in transit but not zero-knowledge | Yes — built-in E2E encryption, enabled per-device |
Markdown on Free Tier | No — Productivity plan required ($90/year) | Yes — full Markdown support, free | Yes — full Markdown support, free |
Knowledge Management (Linking, Graph) | None | Yes — bidirectional links, graph view, Canvas, Dataview | None |
AI Features | None | Via third-party plugins only | None natively |
Interface Quality | Functional, dated | Clean, highly customizable | Functional, utilitarian |
Best For | Journalists, legal freelancers, anyone with genuinely sensitive notes who needs audited zero-knowledge encryption | Solo knowledge workers building a long-term connected thinking system | Privacy-conscious users who want free E2E encryption with Markdown and flexible sync options |
SRG Verdict
Standard Notes earns its place in one specific scenario: you handle genuinely sensitive professional content — source identities, privileged legal notes, client health information, confidential financial records — and you need encryption that has been independently verified and cannot be bypassed even by the company itself.
For that use case, nothing in this category competes, and the $90/year Productivity plan is a reasonable professional expense. But for the majority of freelancers at Smart Remote Gigs — writers, developers, designers, consultants who want organized, searchable notes across devices — Standard Notes is the wrong tool.
The free tier’s plain-text-only restriction feels punitive next to Joplin (free Markdown + E2E encryption) and Obsidian (free everything, just configure your own sync). If privacy matters but audited zero-knowledge encryption isn’t a hard requirement, Joplin delivers 80% of Standard Notes’ security story at zero cost with Markdown included.
If you genuinely need the encryption credentials and are billing professionally, buy the Productivity plan and don’t think twice about it. Everyone else: use Obsidian.
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