GoodNotes is a dedicated handwriting app built around the iPad — beautiful ink, deep PDF annotation, and a paper-replacement workflow that students and pros pay for one-time or by subscription. OneNote is Microsoft's free-form canvas that runs everywhere Microsoft does — Windows, Mac, iPad, Android — and is bundled free with any Microsoft account. GoodNotes wins on iPad handwriting depth and PDF tooling; OneNote wins on cross-platform reach, price, and integration with Microsoft 365.
| Feature | G GoodNotes 6 | O OneNote |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | $9.99/yr or ~$29.99 one-time | Free with Microsoft account |
| Best platform | iPad with Apple Pencil | Surface, then iPad / Android tablet |
| Handwriting depth | Industry-leading on iPad | Strong, especially on Surface |
| PDF annotation | Deepest in category | Basic PDF markup only |
| Paper templates | Broad (Cornell, planner, music, dot) | Limited built-in |
| Cross-platform | iPad, iPhone, Mac, Windows ltd, Android beta | Windows, Mac, iPad, iPhone, Android, web |
| Offline support | Strong (iCloud cache) | Strongest (full notebooks sync locally) |
| Team collaboration | Limited shared notebooks (beta) | Native sharing via OneDrive |
| Free tier | 3 notebook limit | Completely free |
| Search across handwriting | Yes, multi-language OCR | Yes, includes image OCR too |
| Audio recording | No | Yes (basic, not time-synced like Notability) |
| Best for | iPad students annotating textbooks | Mixed-OS users + Microsoft 365 teams |
GoodNotes' entire product is built around iPad handwriting.
The ink engine has been refined over a decade specifically for Apple Pencil, with stroke smoothing, pressure curves, and tilt response tuned for the way people write on a glass screen with a digital stylus. The zoom-write feature lets you write large in a corner box while the actual ink appears small on the main page — a learned-from-paper trick that no other major app has matched.
OneNote's handwriting is excellent but optimized for breadth, not depth. On a Microsoft Surface with the Surface Pen, OneNote is genuinely top-tier — Microsoft tunes Surface + OneNote together as a flagship combo. On iPad with Apple Pencil, OneNote handwriting is good but feels half a step behind GoodNotes. On Android with a stylus, OneNote works where most competitors don't. If you write on multiple kinds of devices, OneNote wins. If you write on iPad only, GoodNotes wins.
GoodNotes is the deeper PDF tool by a clear margin.
Import a 500-page textbook and GoodNotes handles it smoothly, lets you split-screen two PDFs side by side, includes laser pointer mode for presentations, supports rich stamps and hyperlinks, fills forms reliably, and searches across all imported PDFs including handwritten annotations. Students and lawyers who live inside PDFs all day overwhelmingly choose GoodNotes for this reason.
OneNote handles PDFs but treats them as printouts inserted into a page — useful for casual annotation but clunky for heavy document markup. Large PDFs slow OneNote down. Multi-PDF workflows require multiple sections. If PDFs are central to your work, GoodNotes is the right tool; OneNote is fine as a fallback inside a Microsoft-heavy workflow but not the primary choice.
OneNote is the most cross-platform note app in mainstream use.
Windows (two app variants, but converging on one), Mac, iPad, iPhone, Android, web — and every device gets a full local copy of every notebook. Sync is automatic through OneDrive. Open OneNote with no internet and everything is there. This single architectural choice makes OneNote the safer pick for anyone with mixed devices or unreliable connectivity.
GoodNotes ships on iPad, iPhone, Mac, Windows (limited app, primarily for viewing and light editing), and Android in beta. Sync uses iCloud by default or GoodNotes Cloud as an opt-in. The Mac app is full-featured but handwriting requires a connected drawing tablet — most Mac users treat the Mac app as a viewer for notes they wrote on iPad. For Windows-first or Android-first workflows, GoodNotes is not the right choice.
OneNote is free with any Microsoft account, full stop.
There is no OneNote subscription. If you already pay $9.99/mo for Microsoft 365 Personal (for OneDrive 1TB + Word + Excel + PowerPoint), OneNote is bundled. If you're a student with a school Microsoft 365 account, OneNote is included.
GoodNotes 6 charges $9.99/yr for the current subscription tier (with AI features and unlimited devices) or roughly $29.99 for a one-time perpetual tier. The free tier limits you to 3 notebooks but is otherwise fully featured. Over a 4-year horizon: OneNote = $0; GoodNotes subscription ≈ $40; GoodNotes one-time ≈ $30. OneNote wins on absolute cost in every scenario.
The non-price question: is GoodNotes' iPad handwriting depth worth $30-40 over four years compared to OneNote's free tier on the same device? For dedicated iPad note-takers, the answer is usually yes. For casual users, OneNote is the smarter zero-cost choice.
GoodNotes ships with the broadest paper template library in the category — lined, dot grid, blank, Cornell, planner pages, music staff, isometric, hexagonal grid, sheet music — and the GoodNotes community produces thousands more custom templates (digital planners, study workflows, bullet journal layouts). Power users routinely buy or download templates to build personalized workflows.
OneNote's template library is limited compared to GoodNotes, but the free-form canvas means you can lay out pages however you want without depending on templates. Insert tables, images, audio, and ink anywhere, drag them to position, and OneNote will accommodate. For users who think in terms of "a page that looks like this layout," GoodNotes templates win. For users who think in terms of "a canvas I shape as I go," OneNote's flexibility wins.
Neither app is built primarily for teams, but their team stories differ.
OneNote inherits Microsoft 365's sharing model — drop a notebook in a SharePoint site or shared OneDrive folder and your team has near-real-time co-editing access. For schools and corporations already using Microsoft 365, OneNote slots into existing collaboration infrastructure with zero setup.
GoodNotes added Shared Notebooks in beta in 2024 for limited team viewing, but co-editing remains constrained and the feature is not the core product focus. If your team needs to share lecture notes for a study group or annotation work for a small team, OneNote inside Microsoft 365 is the smoother path. For pure individual note-taking, GoodNotes' lack of team features is irrelevant.
GoodNotes and OneNote both treat the page as the primary unit — a notebook of pages, organized into notebooks. AFFiNE is a different shape: a workspace where docs, an infinite whiteboard, and databases live together, and where handwriting is one input mode among many. AFFiNE Whiteboard supports handwriting today, and our iPad UX plus stylus depth are being actively improved on the roadmap. We're honest about the gap — for daily 8-hour iPad handwriting users, GoodNotes is still the iPad-native champion. But if your handwritten brainstorm needs to become a doc that links to a database that powers a project, AFFiNE bridges that workflow without making you switch apps.