Open Source Alternatives to OneNote

Switching from OneNote to Joplin mainly addresses two things: OneNote stores notes in a proprietary binary format inside OneDrive, and getting years of notes back out intact is difficult, while Joplin stores each note as a plain Markdown file you control directly or sync to a service of your choice, including self-hosted options. Joplin’s notebooks (with sub-notebooks) map onto a similar organizing idea as OneNote’s notebook/section/page hierarchy, though it doesn’t replicate OneNote’s true free-form page canvas — Joplin’s pages are linear Markdown documents, not a surface where text, ink, and images can be placed anywhere. Anyone relying heavily on OneNote’s stylus handwriting input or tight Outlook/Teams integration will find Joplin a more structured, text-first tool rather than a drop-in replacement.