Alternatives to Bear
Bear: A Markdown notes and writing app for Mac, iPhone and iPad that organises notes with tags and syncs through iCloud. Here are 10 other products that do a similar job. Of these, 8 have a free plan, 1 sells for a one-off price.
- UpNote
A tidy note app with notebooks, tags and offline sync across phone and computer, plus a web clipper.
One-off payment · Notes and knowledge · Individuals and families
- Dotflowy
Outliner for organizing notes, to dos and ideas as nested bullets, with Workflowy import, OPML or Markdown export and a free tier.
Since 2026
Free plan · Notes and knowledge · Individuals and families
- Memoriq
Collects your Claude, ChatGPT, Grok and Gemini conversations in one searchable archive that is encrypted on your device.
Since 2026
Free plan · Notes and knowledge · Individuals and families
- Minutes
Transcribes meetings, calls and voice memos on your own machine into markdown files that your AI assistant can search.
Free · Notes and knowledge · Individuals and families
- Notelane
Free iPhone and iPad editor that keeps your markdown notes as ordinary .md files in any folder or cloud service you select.
Free · Notes and knowledge · Individuals and families
- AI Gist
An app for saving AI prompts as templates, filling in their variables and copying the result, with data kept on your device.
Free · Notes and knowledge · Individuals and families
- NormalNotes
Quick Markdown note app for Apple devices that starts on a daily page and works directly with Obsidian vault files.
Since 2026Updated 3 months ago
Notes and knowledge · Individuals and families
- Notes Plus
A notes app for Mac and Windows modelled on Apple Notes that saves every note as a plain Markdown file in your folders.
Since 2026
Free · Notes and knowledge · Individuals and families
- Basic Memory
Keeps notes and decisions in Markdown files that AI assistants and your team can read and update over MCP.
Free plan · Notes and knowledge · Developers
- StrataSpace
Markdown document editor where teams and AI agents like Claude and ChatGPT write together live, with presentations and blog publishing.
Since 2026
Free plan · Documents and e-signature · Developers