Buy once instead of Notion
- Notion costs
- $120a year. Plus plan, the standard individual paid tier — $10 per member per month billed yearly, or $12 billed monthly. Their pricing
- Ways out
- 6apps that do the same jobs
- Cheapest to buy
- $14.99Typora, which pays back in 1 month
- Cost nothing
- 2freeware or open source
Read the catch on each before you switch. A one-time price is not automatically the better deal, and we say so where it is not.
 ObsidianLocal-first markdown vault, free with no feature gates | FreeFreeware | Multi-device sync is $48 a year unless you wire up iCloud or git yourself |
 ZettlrMarkdown writing app built around citations and Pandoc | FreeOpen source | Export beyond HTML needs Pandoc, and PDF needs a LaTeX install on top |
 TyporaLive-preview markdown editing for $14.99, three activations | $14.99This version | A major version jump like 1.x to 2.x can require paying again |
 AgendaDate-based notes where unlocked features stay unlocked | $34.99Lifetime tier | The one-time unlock covers today's features plus one year of new ones, not everything after that |
 DEVONthink 4Research database for documents, mail and scans that stays yours | $99Paid upgrades | Updates stop after a year unless you pay to extend; the version you have keeps working forever |
 TinderboxExpensive, perpetual, and unmatched for notes that have to do work | $289Paid upgrades | A year of upgrades is included, then a new version costs $98 or $83 a year to stay current |