Note Taking Applications For iPad, Sorted By Job

Goodnotes will not install unless your iPad is running iOS 18.6 or later. Noteful, which does a lot of the same things, asks for 14.3.

Four years of operating system between two apps that turn up in the same search, and not one roundup of note taking applications for iPad mentions it. If you're reading this on an iPad you've had a while, that single line decides more than any feature comparison will.

Short answer before the detail. This search returns five different kinds of product wearing one name, and picking well means deciding which kind you want first. Handwriting notebooks like Goodnotes and Notability. Document research tools like LiquidText and MarginNote. Planners like Penbook. Drawing apps like Concepts. And plain note apps like Apple Notes and OneNote, which are free and already on the device. Everything below came off the US App Store and each vendor's own site on 29 July 2026.

Five Products, One Search Term

Here's the split I'd make before looking at any individual app, because the categories want different money and solve different problems.

Most disappointment in this category comes from buying across that table by mistake. Somebody wants to annotate a textbook, buys a notebook app, and finds the PDF experience adequate rather than good. Somebody wants a diary, buys a research tool, and drowns.

The categories aren't equally crowded either. Six apps compete on handwritten notebooks and one competes on drawing, which tells you where the money is.

Which Of These Will Even Install

This is the table I actually wanted when I started, and I couldn't find it anywhere, so I pulled every figure off the store listings myself.

Goodnotes is 972.7 MB. Apple's own Notes app is 2.7 megabytes, which is a difference of about three hundred and sixty times for two apps that both let you write on a page with a pencil.

I don't think that comparison is quite fair, since Notes leans on frameworks already sitting in the operating system while a third-party app ships its own everything, brushes and templates included. It's still a number worth seeing if your iPad is the 64GB one, because a note app taking up a gigabyte before you've written anything is a real constraint on a device people keep for six years.

The requirement column is the sharper one though. Goodnotes and CollaNote both demand 18.6, so an iPad that stopped receiving updates a couple of versions back cannot run either. Noteful runs on 14.3.

The Notebooks, Where The Competition Is

Six apps, same idea, and the differentiation is thinner than the marketing suggests.

Goodnotes and Notability are the two everyone names and I've done the tier-by-tier version of that fight in the Notability versus Goodnotes comparison, so I won't repeat it. The interesting ones here are the smaller three.

Noteful has 22,749 ratings at 4.8, one in-app purchase at $5.99 for a lifetime unlock, and its listing describes a custom ink engine it calls InfiniteStroke plus notebooks synced through iCloud that are "encrypted via account-based keys". That's a specific security claim, published, from a small company, which is more than most of the big ones offer on their store page.

CollaNote sells a Lifetime Premium at $13.90 and its whole pitch is people. Real-time collaboration with what the listing describes as unlimited participants, plus an AI Pen feature added in December 2025 that you trigger by squeezing an Apple Pencil Pro and circling an area. Thirteen ninety, once, for group work.

MyScript Notes is the handwriting-recognition specialist, formerly Nebo, and its description claims recognition across 66 languages. Its in-app purchase list is a mess of legacy entries, with two things called Full version at $14.99 and $9.99 and three separate Full Access prices at $1.99, $7.99 and $24.99. Whatever your store offers you, it's one of those.

The Document Tools Are Not Note Apps

LiquidText and MarginNote both rank for this search and neither is really a note taking application, which is worth saying plainly before somebody spends money.

MarginNote 4 describes itself as "The PDF study tool for deep readers. One excerpt is a PDF highlight, a mind map node, and a flashcard." That's a study system, not a notebook. It's got 710 ratings at 4.5, while MarginNote 3, the previous version, sits at 5,047 ratings and was last updated in November 2025. A sequel with a seventh of its predecessor's ratings is either very new or not fully adopted, and I can't tell you which from outside.

LiquidText is the expensive one and it's expensive in a way that surprised me. Its in-app purchase list runs from $5.49 for a monthly student rate up to $189.99 for LiquidText Unlimited billed yearly. That upper figure is more than five times what Goodnotes Pro costs for a year, and it's a research tool rather than a general note app, so the audience is a specific person doing a specific job.

MarginNote's listing also mentions something none of the others do, which is that going offline makes it fall back to Apple Intelligence rather than a cloud model, so the notes stay on the device. For anyone marking up material they'd rather not upload, that's the detail I'd chase.

Who Still Sells You The App Outright

Subscriptions took this category, but not completely, and the survivors are worth listing because they're what you want if you hate renewals.

Nine of the fourteen apps I looked at will still sell you something permanent. That's a healthier picture than the discourse suggests, and the cheapest of them costs less than a month of most planning tools.

Concepts is the one I'd single out for structure rather than price. It sells small permanent unlocks alongside a subscription, so a $1.99 shape library or a $3.99 objects pack buys one capability forever. Almost nobody prices software that granularly any more.

Matching The App To The Person

No ranking, because ranking across five categories is where these articles go wrong. Just who I'd hand each to.

OneNote deserves a second look from anyone who dismissed it. A million and fifty-five thousand ratings at 4.7, free on iPad, free on Windows, free on Android, and Microsoft's own page describes voice transcription as part of it. The subscription being advertised alongside it buys Office, not OneNote.

Why I Sort Things Before Comparing Them

I've shipped seven digital products of my own, priced between $29 and $49, and the hardest decision on every single one was not the content. It was which shelf the thing belonged on.

A guide to writing books and a guide to publishing books look nearly identical from outside, and the person who wants one is frequently annoyed to have bought the other. I got that wrong at least once, in the sense that I described a product by what was in it rather than by the job it did, and the people who'd have loved it never worked out that it was for them.

That's exactly what's happening on this results page. Fourteen apps, five jobs, and the titles all say notes. So the sorting step above isn't me being tidy, it's the step that decides whether you're happy in three months, and it costs nothing to do first.

I should be straight that I don't handwrite on a tablet myself. My notes are plain files next to the projects they belong to. So I've got no opinion worth having on how a Noteshelf pen feels compared to a Goodnotes one, and I'd be suspicious of anyone who says a spec sheet settles that.

Questions People Ask

How many note apps do I actually need? One, almost always. The exception is somebody who both writes notes and marks up long documents, because those genuinely are different products and no app on this page does both well.

Is the free version of any of these enough? Apple Notes, yes, comfortably. Freenotes is free and carries ads, weighs 664.5 MB, and sells a Remove Ads purchase at $29.99. The paid apps' free tiers are mostly demos, capped at three or five items.

Why does Goodnotes need such a new iOS? Their store listing says 18.6 or later and doesn't explain why. My guess is newer system frameworks, and it's only a guess. The practical effect is that an older iPad can't run it, and Noteful or MyScript Notes will.

Do I need an Apple Pencil for these? For the notebook and drawing ones, yes, and several are close to pointless without one. The stylus side, including which apps use the Pencil Pro's newer inputs, is in the iPad with Apple Pencil guide.

Which one is best? Wrong question for this search, and the decision-first version with the ranked picks is in the best note taking program for iPad piece.

Should I buy a different tablet instead? Possibly, and the hardware maths is separate from the software maths. That's in the take notes on tablet breakdown, where the accessory prices do something strange.

Do I need a tablet app at all? Plenty of people don't, and the free cross-platform options are covered in the good app to take notes guide, which is written for somebody picking their first one.

Where I'd Start

Open Apple Notes and use it for two weeks on real work. It's free, it's 2.7 MB, and it holds the best rating in this entire set.

Then name the thing it wouldn't do, in one sentence, out loud. That sentence maps to exactly one row of the category table at the top, and buying inside that row is a much smaller decision than choosing from fourteen apps. If nothing comes to mind, you're done and you've saved yourself a subscription. The wider cost picture, once note apps join three other tools on the card statement, is in the productivity apps breakdown, and there's a device-agnostic version of the same question in the digital note taking app survey.