Second Brain vs Evernote
Honest comparison for 2026

When to choose Second Brain over Evernote

• You consume videos, social media, and podcasts — not just text and web articles
• You want AI to auto-organize your content instead of manual tagging
• You want to chat with your knowledge base using multiple AI models
• You want semantic search that finds content by meaning, not just keywords
• You want Visual Boards for spatial thinking and content connections

When Evernote might be the better choice

• You need offline access to your notes
• You rely on document scanning and OCR for physical documents
• You use email forwarding to save emails as notes
• You prefer a traditional, straightforward note-taking experience

A day in the life: Evernote vs Second Brain

You're a solopreneur researching competitors. Throughout the week you clip a few web articles about industry trends, save some screenshots of competitor pricing pages, and take meeting notes after calls with potential partners. In Evernote, this works exactly as expected — everything goes into notebooks, gets tagged, and is searchable by keyword. Evernote has been doing this well for years.

But then you watch a TikTok where someone breaks down a brilliant marketing strategy in 60 seconds. You find a YouTube interview where an industry leader shares insights you need to remember. A LinkedIn carousel about pricing psychology is making the rounds. Evernote can't help here — it doesn't understand video or social content. Your options are taking screenshots, manually transcribing key points, or just hoping you'll remember which TikTok it was when you need it later.

In Second Brain, all of this goes into one knowledge base — the articles, screenshots, TikTok, YouTube video, and LinkedIn post are all searchable, connected, and chattable. You can ask "What pricing strategies have I saved?" and get answers pulling from the YouTube interview and LinkedIn carousel alike, with citations back to the original sources.

Then take it further with Visual Boards: open an infinite canvas and lay out all your competitor research spatially. Spin up multiple AI chat nodes — one analyzing pricing strategies, another comparing feature sets, a third brainstorming your positioning. Add Notion-like pages right on the board to draft your competitive analysis as you discover insights. Everything stays visible: your sources, your AI conversations, and your notes, all in one workspace you can see at a glance. Evernote gives you notebooks and tags. Visual Boards give you a spatial, multi-threaded thinking environment where you can work with AI and your content simultaneously.

Pricing at a glance

Evernote's free tier has become increasingly limited — 60MB monthly uploads and syncing to just 1 device. Evernote Personal costs about $15/month and Professional runs roughly $18/month. For a traditional note-taking app without AI chat capabilities, that's a significant monthly cost. The pricing has been a growing pain point for long-time users who remember when Evernote's free tier was far more generous.

Second Brain starts at $6/month with access to all top AI models (Claude Opus, GPT, Grok, Gemini), unlimited content types, semantic search, and cloud sync across devices. For the price of Evernote Personal, you could run Second Brain's Pro plan with significantly more AI capability and broader content support. The pricing gap is significant — and it widens further when you consider what each dollar actually gets you in terms of AI features and content type support.

Who switches from Evernote to Second Brain — and why

Long-time Evernote users who feel the app hasn't kept up with how people actually consume content today. The common trigger: realizing they're copy-pasting video transcripts and taking screenshots of social media posts just to have some record in Evernote of what they watched. Second Brain eliminates this workaround entirely — paste a link to a TikTok, YouTube video, or LinkedIn post, and the AI processes it automatically. No manual transcription, no screenshots, no workarounds.

What you give up: Evernote's mature document scanning with OCR for handwritten notes, email forwarding that turns emails into notes, and reliable offline access. If you deal with physical documents frequently — scanning receipts, business cards, or handwritten meeting notes — Evernote still has a genuine edge there. Second Brain is built for the digital-first knowledge worker whose content comes from the internet, not a scanner.

Frequently Asked Questions