A mobile phone screen displaying the logo of Notion Sidney van den Boogaard/Shutterstock
If you've ever looked for a Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) tool to put your overflowing to-do list in order or manage a team project, you've probably come across Notion. Despite the long list of benefits and features the tool offers, it unfortunately isn't for everyone. If your issue is with the interface, that's a learning curve you can overcome with a Notion beginner's guide. However, you may need more than it can offer. For starters, in 2025 Notion still doesn't offer an offline mode. So, while it may suffice for home or office use, you may want real time access to your Notion database when you're traveling.
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Or perhaps you're after a smoother mobile or tablet experience. While Notion has dedicated apps for iOS and Android, I was tempted to delete the app from my device minutes after installing it due to its slow performance. Although Notion works fine for smaller databases or task tracking, it tends to lag and become sluggish with complex databases. Of course, waiting minutes for pages to load can quickly become a major productivity killer.
Notion is also far from the best tool for quickly jotting something down or capturing a thought on the go. After all, who wants to open a workspace, create a new page, set it up, and then write down their thoughts? So, whether you're seeking a Notion alternative for one of these reasons or another, the list below has you covered.I've personally tested each tool in the list over an extended period and filtered out any with consistently poor user ratings.
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Obsidian
Obsidian app seen in an iPhone screen Koshiro K/Shutterstock
Obsidian is among the most powerful knowledge-management tools out there. The tool can be installed from its website and is available on all major operating systems including Windows, Mac, and Linux, as well as Android and iOS. While powerful, Obsidian follows a rather unique approach. It relies completely on Markdown formatting, which is plain-text syntax that uses asterisks, hashtags, and other symbols. This means all notes you create in Obsidian are stored as MD files, making them easier to format and accessible in any Markdown editor of your choice.
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Unlike Notion, Obsidian notes can be accessed even without an internet connection. While Notion stores all data on its own cloud servers, Obsidian keeps your notes private in a "vault," which is a folder on your local file system, instead of a third-party server. You can also sync your files to a cloud storage of your choice. Obsidian is also built around its extensive selection of plugins, allowing you to customize your workspace to fit your needs. While it may not have as many built-in features as some apps, chances are you can add what you need by installing a related plugin.
What truly sets it apart from the competition is its graph-view feature, which visually displays your notes and their connections, making it easier to see relationships between ideas. While Obsidian offers two paid plans, Commercial and Catalyst, its free version is excellent and allows users access to unlimited vaults, themes, plugins, and more. Unfortunately, it took me longer to adjust to Obsidian and learn my way around it compared to Notion. So, you may want to consider another tool if you're avoiding Notion because of its steep learning curve.
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Microsoft OneNote
Microsoft OneNote app IB Photography/Shutterstock
If you use Notion primarily for freeform note-taking and jotting down ideas quickly, Microsoft OneNote may be worth trying. Thanks to its beginner-friendly interface, OneNote essentially solves Notion's learning-curve issue. OneNote is designed to work seamlessly offline, which means you can edit and create new notes without worrying about losing connection and hours of hard work. It's completely free and available on Windows, macOS, Android, iPhone, and the web. You can save your notebooks locally or sync them across devices using OneDrive to ensure you never lose your work.
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If ideas tend to hit you at strange times, like during an evening walk, OneNote's Sticky Notes feature, which lets you quickly jot down ideas or reminders without opening a full notebook, may become your favorite feature. Also like Notion, OneNote offers built-in and third-party templates for different needs. OneNote is easily the best tool out of this list for students using a stylus. You can use the Microsoft app to take both typed or handwritten notes, thanks to its stylus support. If you take a lot of math-heavy courses, you may know how frustrating it can be to add equations to most note-taking apps. OneNote simplifies this with handwriting-to-text conversion and even provides step-by-step solutions for math problems.
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In my opinion, Notion's biggest strength is its database system, which is a downside of OneNote that may disappoint you. The app is essentially just a digital notebook with a notebook-section-page hierarchy, meaning databases aren't natively supported like in Notion. While you can manually simulate a database using tables and tags, it's nowhere near as powerful as Notion's built-in system.
Anytype
Anytype on macOS Mahnoor Faisal/SlashGear
If Obsidian's offline-first nature drew you in, but you love Notion's block-based editor, Anytype might be a good option, especially if you value privacy. It stores data locally for offline access while using a block-based editor, giving you the best of both worlds. Like Notion, all you need to do to add a content block to your blank page is hit the "/" key. Additionally, when you launch Anytype for the first time, you'll notice that it doesn't ask you to create an account. That's because Anytype is completely anonymous. Instead of requiring personal information, it gives you a 12-word unique recovery phrase, which is your only way to access your vault, replacing traditional passwords.
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When it comes to customization, Anytype isn't too different from Notion. It offers templates — called "Experiences" — created by both the platform and community users and has categories like Education, Personal Growth, and Collaboration. Like Obsidian, Anytype features a graph view that helps you visualize how all pages — or "objects," as Anytype calls them — link together.
Since Anytype is a local-first application, it also runs much smoother than many Notion alternatives. This makes working with larger, more complex databases a breeze, something I've noticed even Notion struggles with. At the time of writing, Anytype lacks a web app but has native applications for Android, iOS, Linux, macOS (x64 and Arm), and Windows. It's also open-source, meaning its code is publicly available. Unlike Notion, though, Anytype doesn't have strong collaboration features and allows multiple users to work on the same page in real time. However, the team mentioned that collaboration features are in the works and will be introduced in the coming months.
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How we chose these tools
businesswoman working on laptop D3sign/Getty Images
Let's face it — the internet is overflowing with Notion alternatives. The issue with these alternatives is that very few deliver a well-rounded experience. Some struggle with performance when handling large databases, many still lack proper offline support, and some have yet to match Notion's capabilities.
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I've been a Notion user for a few years now, and while it exceeded my expectations at first, its shortcomings have become more apparent over time, which is why I explored alternatives myself. To narrow down my options, I first filtered out tools with consistently poor user reviews and ratings. From there, I tested each tool firsthand, evaluating performance, customization options, and offline functionality to see how they compared to Notion.