I am gonna be honest. Notion is a great productivity tool, and I have been using it for years. But as much as I love Notion, I know that it’s not the perfect fit for everyone. The good news is that there are many Notion alternatives on the market.

Over the last year, I spent 500+ hours testing more than 100 productivity tools.

Now, using this experience and knowledge, I have decided to put together my list of the best Notion alternatives for 2026.

Let’s dive in!

Best Notion alternatives in 2026 (Quick Picks)

How We Selected The Best Notion Alternatives

Notion is one of the most versatile productivity tools, but it isn’t the perfect fit for everyone. Some users need stronger project management features, better offline support, more privacy, or more advanced note-taking features.

While we use standardized testing frameworks for categories like project management and note-taking apps, we cannot compare apples to oranges.

That’s why the scores you see throughout this article come from category-specific testing frameworks and reflect how well each tool performs within its intended category and use case.

Therefore, I selected these Notion alternatives based on the following criteria:

Comparing the top Notion alternatives

In-Depth Look at the Best Notion Alternatives for 2026

Let’s break down the 7 best Notion alternatives for 2026!

Coda

Rating: 4.5 out of 5.

4.5/5

Coda is an all-in-one collaborative workspace for individuals and teams. It integrates note-taking, task management, project management, document management, and team collaboration features into one platform

Full Coda review Visit Coda

Best overall Notion alternative

Review Summary

• Best for:

Teams and individuals who want a powerful all-in-one workspace with strong automation

• Not ideal for:

Offline-first workflows or users needing a desktop app for Windows

• Where Coda beats Notion:

Powerful docs + databases

• Where Notion still wins:

Coda lacks a dedicated Windows desktop app, unlike Notion

Coda is probably the closest alternative to Notion. It has quite similar features for note-taking. However, it has more advanced project management features, and it is a more user-friendly app than Notion, with a shorter learning curve.

Testing Coda in everyday use

It was a surprise to me, especially its project management features. Its ease of use, wide range of display options, and customization possibilities make Coda a perfect choice.

Coda blends documents, spreadsheets, and apps into a single flexible workspace known for powerful formulas and automation features.

It has many templates for specific use cases, so you can speed up the document creation process. Also, I appreciated that it has powerful note-taking capabilities.

During my Coda.io review, I discovered that Coda is a powerful alternative for building custom apps, with robust database and formula capabilities.

I had only two issues with Coda. First, it does not have a desktop app for Windows that you can access even without an internet connection. Secondly, the Enterprise plan is quite pricey.

Overall, my experience with Coda was 10/10, and I highly recommend it to individuals and small teams.

Who Coda is a good fit for

Who Coda is not ideal for

Main features

Pricing structure

The Free plan includes essential features such as unlimited doc size for unshared docs, collaborative docs, tables, charts, kanban boards, forms, and automation. The free version is ideal for individuals or teams that want to test whether Coda suits the whole team.

The Pro plan is $10 per month and is ideal for small businesses or individuals who need advanced features. This plan includes a 30-day version history, hidden pages, custom domains, branding, icons, and AI credits.

If you want unlimited automation, version history, and AI credits, you should go with the Team plan, which costs $30 per month. Using Coda’s Team plan, you will access the folder access, which can be crucial for teams.

Lastly, Coda offers an Enterprise plan for large businesses with custom pricing.

Coda’s pros and cons

To make your decision easier, here are the main reasons you might choose or skip Coda.

What I Loved

What Could Be Better

Coda vs Notion

If you want a deeper look at how Coda compares to Notion, check out my full side-by-side comparison covering features, pricing, ease of use, and my experience with both apps.

Notion VS Coda

Notion vs Coda

Why is it the best Notion alternative overall?

If you are looking for a tool that is very similar to Notion, with a more user-friendly user interface and a shorter learning curve, even for your team, Coda is a perfect choice.

Its feature set and advanced project management tools make Coda a great Notion alternative.

Read my full Coda.io Review: Here’s What Surprised Me! (2026)

Xtiles

Rating: 4 out of 5.

4.2/5

Xtiles is a visual note-taking app that lets you organize notes and manage your projects and tasks. Xtiles refers to itself as the baby of Notion and Miro, as it uses tiles for note-taking. This Notion alternative was designed for individuals, creators, teams, and people with ADHD.

Full Xtiles review Visit Xtiles

Best Notion alternative for visual note-taking

Review Summary

• Best for:

Best for individuals, teams, and visual thinkers who want to organize ideas, notes, and projects using a flexible tile-based workspace

• Not ideal for:

Advanced project management and knowledge base management

• Where Xtiles beats Notion:

Beautiful UI and easy-to-use functions

• Where Notion still wins:

Notion has a more robust feature set ideal for more use cases

Xtiles is a visual workspace where you can organize notes and manage your projects and tasks. People refer to Xtiles as the baby of Notion and Miro, and it is somewhat true.

Xtiles lets users build dashboards with visual tiles, making it a more visually appealing option. With Xtiles, you can access your notes offline as well. You can use this note-taking app for personal or business purposes.

How Xtiles performed in my daily workflow

The other main difference between Notion and Xtiles is the user interface and learning curve. Xtiles is a visually appealing app that offers many ways to visually organize your notes. But most importantly, it is a very simple app with a short learning curve compared to Notion.

Although Xtiles is an easy-to-use note-taking app, it offers great flexibility for organizing your notes and tasks. And the best thing is the whole organization process on a visual board similar to Miro.

However, don’t expect Xtiles to have such extensive note-taking capabilities as Anytype or even Notion. Xtiles is not the app that you will use to create complex knowledge management centers, visualize relations, and more.

If we compare it to Notion, Xtiles has significantly fewer use-cases and can’t compete with the feature-set of Notion, at least not yet. But if we consider only the note-taking and collaboration features, Xtiles can be a competent Notion alternative.

Who should choose Xtiles over Notion?

Who should stick with Notion instead?

Feature Breakdown

Pricing explained

The free plan includes unlimited blocks, projects, free templates, one workspace to share, three personal workspaces, unlimited storage (5MB/file), and five pages per project. The free plan is ideal for individuals, mainly for personal use.

The Plus plan is $15 per month per user. In addition to the features included in the free plan, it offers unlimited personal spaces and pages, premium templates, unlimited storage, recurring task features, and Google Calendar integration. The starter plan is ideal for individuals who use Xtiles for daily work and need more powerful capabilities to enhance their note-taking experience.

Furthermore, Xtiles offers the Family plan at $25 per user per month. With this plan, an additional three family members can access the Plus plan’s features.

Lastly, there is a Team plan for $35 per month per team, which is a generous price for small teams. It includes personal onboarding, no member limits, and all the Plus features.

Xtiles’ strengths & weaknesses

Here are the areas where Xtiles stood out the most and where it still needs improvement.

Xtiles’ strengths

Xtiles’ weaknesses

Xtiles vs Notion

I also compared Xtiles vs Notion side by side, including their features, pricing, learning curve, and ideal use cases.

Xtiles VS Notion

Xtiles vs Notion

Why is it the best Notion alternative for visual note-taking?

Xtiles is a simple but effective Notion alternative for note-taking and even project management. It offers an easy way to organize tasks and notes and has a user-friendly interface.

Read my full Xtiles Review: Is It The Best Notion Alternative In 2026?

Backlog by Nulab

If you’re managing software projects or working with a tech-heavy team, Backlog by Nulab is a strong Notion alternative. It combines project management, task tracking, documentation, and built-in version control—so teams can plan work, track issues, and collaborate without switching tools.

Visit Backlog

Best for software development teams

Review Summary

• Best for:

Best for developer teams combining documentation, task management, and other software development tools in one place

• Not ideal for:

Individuals and non-tech-heavy teams

• Where Backlog beats Notion:

Centralizing functions for software developers in one place

• Where Notion still wins:

Notion is a more versatile app covering more use cases

While we did not prepare a dedicated review article for Backlog, we also tested it extensively (find the screenshot below). When testing and selecting the top alternatives to Notion, Backlog didn’t come to mind first, as it’s not a traditional all-in-one app.

However, when testing its capabilities, we surprisingly found it to be quite a competent Notion alternative for tech-heavy teams. Nevertheless, outside of this niche, there are more suitable alternatives on this list.

My hands-on experience with Backlog

After using Backlog for several weeks, I found it surprisingly adaptable—even for non-technical work sometimes.

While developer-focused features like Git and bug tracking may be more meaningful to engineering teams, Backlog’s project organization and documentation tools make it valuable for a wide range of tech-focused businesses.

Overall, it delivers a smooth experience and keeps projects structured without adding unnecessary complexity.

Who should use Backlog

Who should NOT use Backlog

Capabilities & Tools

Pricing structure

Backlog offers one free plan and four paid plans—each with flat pricing rather than charging per user.

You can use the Free plan, up to 10 users, 1 project, and limited storage. Enough for small teams testing the app.

The Starter plan is $35/month and works up to 30 users, 5 projects, 1GB storage, and subtasking.

The Standard plan is $100/month and includes no user limit, 100 projects, 30GB storage, Gantt/Burndown charts, and issue templates.

Finally, it offers an Enterprise plan with custom pricing for organizations needing advanced security and administration.

Highlights & drawbacks of Backlog

Before replacing Notion with Backlog, these are the pros and cons I think you should know about.

Backlog’s highlights

Backlog’s drawbacks

Why is it the best Notion alternative for developer teams?

Backlog brings together documentation, task management, and software development tools in one place—making it a powerful Notion alternative for engineering and product teams.

It’s simple to use, designed for collaboration, and its flat pricing makes it an especially cost-effective solution for growing organizations.

Taskade

Rating: 4.5 out of 5.

4.3/5

Taskade is an AI-powered productivity tool for task, work, project management, and note-taking. While its note-taking capabilities are more limited compared to Notion, it has more solid features for automating your workflows, projects, and task management.

Full Taskade review Visit Taskade

Best Notion alternative for AI-powered task management

Review Summary

• Best for:

Professionals and small teams that need AI-powered task management, automation, and lightweight project workflows

• Not ideal for:

Advanced project management or deep note-taking systems

• Where Taskade beats Notion:

AI agents & automation

• Where Notion still wins:

Notion is clearly superior for note-taking & creating a knowledge base

Taskade is an interesting Notion alternative. While its note-taking capabilities are more limited than Notion’s, it offers stronger automation features for workflows, projects, and task management.

In 2026, Taskade launched vibe-coding features as well, but since you are looking for features similar to what Notion offers, I will not cover those below.

What it’s like to use Taskade in the long term

I had a great experience with Taskade during testing, and I think it is the best Notion alternative for task management and automation.

I was skeptical of the AI features, including the agents, but they proved me wrong. Taskade also has great real-time collaboration tools, and I especially enjoyed the chat feature.

To wrap it up, Taskade is a feature-rich Notion alternative. However, unlike Notion, Taskade has a laser focus on AI automation rather than note-taking or creating a second brain.

When Taskade makes the most sense

When you should stay with Notion

Real-World Features

Free plan & paid options

Taskade offers a generous Free plan that allows you to explore the platform and test its core capabilities. It includes one AI agent, and you can invite one teammate and organize projects into one workspace. You will receive 3,000 AI credits (one-time) to build one AI-powered app.

The Starter plan is designed for individuals who want to use Taskade more seriously.

It will get you unlimited workspaces, premium AI models, 100+ integrations, and 10,000 AI credits, enough for around 10 apps. It includes up to 3 AI agents, and you can invite up to 3 team members.

The Pro plan is designed for professionals and power users who rely on Taskade daily. It includes unlimited AI agents and workspaces, and you can invite up to 10 team members. The 50,000 AI credits that you get on this plan can make about 50 apps.

The Business plan expands Taskade’s capabilities for organizations. It includes everything in the Pro plan, plus 3x the AI credits and apps, unlimited team members, a custom domain, and API access.

For large organizations, Taskade offers an Enterprise plan with custom pricing.

One more thing worth mentioning is that you can buy top-up credit packs if you run out of AI credits. This way, it is easy to scale AI usage without upgrading your entire plan.

Pros and cons of Taskade

To summarize my experience, these are the biggest wins and compromises of switching away from Notion to Taskade.

Taskade’s pros

Taskade’s cons

Taskade vs Notion

I also compared Xtiles vs Notion side by side, including their features, pricing, learning curve, and ideal use cases.

Notion VS Taskade

Notion vs Taskade

Why is it the best Notion alternative for AI-powered task management?

Taskade is a practical Notion alternative for those who are looking to automate workflows and tasks with AI-powered solutions. Thanks to its recently released vibe coding features, you can create your own workflows.

Read my full review: Taskade Review: I Nearly Spit Out My Coffee (2026)

ClickUp

Rating: 4.5 out of 5.

4.3/5

ClickUp is project management software designed to help teams organize tasks, collaborate effectively, and manage multiple projects. Besides its advanced project management features, collaboration capabilities, and note-taking capabilities, AI tools make ClickUp a solid Notion alternative.

Full ClickUp review Visit ClickUp

Best Notion alternative for complex project management

Review Summary

• Best for:

Teams that need advanced project management features

• Not ideal for:

Users looking for simplicity or a lightweight experience

• Where ClickUp beats Notion:

ClickUp offers more robust project management, task management, and team collaboration features than Notion

• Where Notion still wins:

Notion is a more advanced app for note-taking and knowledge management

ClickUp is one of the best Notion alternatives for project management. It is an incredibly versatile app and can work as a central hub for project coordination and collaboration.

My experience with ClickUp after 3+ months of daily use (real workflows)

I used ClickUp daily for 3 months to manage real workflows, and I found it to be one of the most feature-rich project management apps. It effectively combines project management, note-taking, AI note-taking, and collaboration into one platform.

And during my ClickUp review, I experienced that it combines these tools with high flexibility, making it a well-rounded choice for more complex project management workflows.

That said, this flexibility comes with a learning curve. It takes time to fully understand how everything works, and I experienced occasional performance issues, for example, when we used the whiteboards with my team.

The mobile app also feels less polished compared to the desktop version.

When to consider switching from Notion to ClickUp?

When to use Notion instead of ClickUp?

Key Features

Pricing options

ClickUp offers four pricing plans. The free plan covers 60MB of storage, unlimited tasks, unlimited members, collaborative docs, and many views. Considering other tools, ClickUp has an extensive free plan and is ideal for individuals.

The Unlimited plan is $7 and excellent for small teams who need unlimited storage, integrations, folders and spaces, chat messages, and others. 

If you want more features and higher security, you need to go with the Business plan. It is a good choice for medium-sized businesses, as it comes with tools for timesheets and workload management.

Finally, ClickUp offers an Enterprise plan as well for larger teams at custom pricing. They also provide a demo here so you can check whether ClickUp is the right project management tool for you.

It’s also worth noting that ClickUp’s AI features are offered as a separate add-on. ClickUp Brain, AI Notetaker, Super Agents, and other AI-powered workflows are not automatically included in the base plans.

Strengths & limitations of ClickUp

If you are considering using ClickUp instead of Notion, these pros and cons should help you make a decision more quickly.

Strengths of ClickUp

Limitations of ClickUp

ClickUp vs Notion

For a more detailed breakdown, check out my full ClickUp vs Notion comparison covering everything from note-taking and project management to ease of use and customization.

Notion VS ClickUp

Notion vs ClickUp

Why is it the best Notion alternative for project management?

ClickUp is a great Notion alternative for project management at a reasonable price. It is ideal for any size of business and offers the full tool stack to effectively organize tasks, projects, and data in a centralized place.

Read my full review: My Honest ClickUp Review After Using It For +3 Months (2026)

AppFlowy

AppFlowy is an open-source AI-driven workspace to bring projects, wikis, and teams together. It has a similar layout to Notion, and it is an easy-to-use app. Thanks to its collaboration, document, and project management features, it is an ideal Notion alternative that you can access with offline mode as well.

Visit AppFlowy

Best open-source Notion alternative

Review Summary

• Best for:

Privacy-focused users and small teams who want an open-source Notion alternative with offline access

• Not ideal for:

Teams needing advanced automation, deep integrations, or enterprise-grade collaboration features

• Where AppFlowy beats Notion:

Open-source flexibility, local-first data control, and offline functionality

• Where Notion still wins:

More integrations, templates, and functions

Similar to Backlog, while we tested AppFlowy, we did not prepare a dedicated review article on it, but it made a good impression on us.

Its focus on data privacy, speed, and offline functionality made it a serious contender for those who need an open-source alternative to Notion.

My hands-on experience with AppFlowy

I had a positive experience with AppFlowy. It was easy to navigate its pages and find the key features.

AppFlowy offers a straightforward solution for organizing tasks and projects. It is particularly useful for small teams thanks to its pricing structure.

I particularly found the auto-fill option outstanding during review, which uses AI to turn databases into actionable insights.

When it comes to the AI capabilities, AppFlowy supports top-tier models (GPT, Claude) for generating drafts, expanding on topics, and extracting insights. However, you can access these for internet-based workflows.

If you prioritize 100% data privacy and want to work offline, AppFlowy’s Local AI feature (LAI) supports open-weight models, but you can run them through third-party apps.

Who will benefit most from AppFlowy

Who should skip AppFlowy

Key Functions

Plans & pricing

The free plan includes one collaborative workspace for up to two members, unlimited pages & blocks, 5 GB storage, 10 AI responses, Intelligent search, real-time collaboration, and a mobile app.

The Pro plan includes all these features, and you can use it for up to 10 workspace members for $10 per member per month.

AppFlowy also offers self-hosted plans starting at $1/month.

Pros and cons of AppFlowy

After spending days testing this Notion alternative, these were the key strengths and weaknesses I found.

Pros of AppFlowy

Cons of AppFlowy

Why is it the best open-source alternative to Notion?

Unlike Notion, which stores all data on its own servers, AppFlowy offers local-first usage and robust self-hosting. This gives users far more control over their data and eliminates many of the privacy concerns that come with proprietary, cloud-only tools like Notion.

Anytype

Rating: 4 out of 5.

4/5

Imagine Anytype as a combination of Notion and Obsidian. It adopted object-based note-taking, which makes it easier to connect ideas and notes. While some people love it, others find it too complex. It has a fantastic community behind it and could become the best Notion alternative in the future for note-taking.

Full Anytype review Visit Anytype

Best Notion alternative for complex project management

Review Summary

• Best for:

 Individuals who want to build a safe knowledge base and visualize connections between notes

• Not ideal for:

Users looking for a simple note-taking app with a short learning curve

• Where Anytype beats Notion:

Anytype offers more advanced note-taking capabilities than Notion, resulting in almost endless options for creating a knowledge base and connecting your notes

• Where Notion still wins:

Notion is an all-in-one app ideal for many use cases, while Anytype is niche software for a relatively small user base that doesn’t mind the extremely long learning curve and works for significantly fewer use cases

Anytype is a powerful all-in-one workspace that combines notes and databases into a single platform. Compared to Notion, it offers more robust note-taking capabilities, and you can access it offline on your devices, including your mobile, using its offline mode.

Anytype offers maximum data ownership & privacy. It has a local-first approach that supports on-device end-to-end encryption, and you are the only one with the key to the notes.

It is also worth noting that this is a quite complex note-taking app with a steep learning curve.

My take on Anytype after using it for months (and trying to figure out how it works)

I am not going to lie; Anytype is a complex app and requires a significant investment. Even after helping more than 20,000 people to learn how to use Anytype, I can’t say it for sure, I completely know this note-taking app.

Anytype introduces an object-based approach to note-taking, and while it offers real-time collaboration, it is currently better for personal use.

However, it is one of the best Notion alternatives since it offers a safe place where you can take notes. Anytype implements a decentralized model that emphasizes privacy and security, which makes it one of the most privacy-focused note-taking apps.

Lastly, it has more advanced features for managing and organizing your notes than Notion and most of the note-taking apps.

Who will benefit most from Anytype

Who should stick with Notion

Top features

Free and paid plans

Anytype offers four plans.

The free plan includes 1 GB of network space, three shared spaces, and three space members per shared space. Using the free plan, you can sync your devices, get backup storage, and even collaborate in small groups.

The builder plan provides a unique name for you: 128 GB of network space, three shared spaces, 10 Editors per shared space, unlimited viewers per shared space, and priority support. This plan works great for small teams.

The co-creator plan is quite similar to the builder plan. However, this plan offers 256 GB of network space and a shorter unique name. This plan is ideal for teams.

Lastly, Anytype offers business plans upon request, where you have the option to determine the size of the network space, number of editors, or shared spaces, and gives unlimited Viewers per shared space. This plan could be fit for bigger teams.

Wins & Trade-Offs

Here’s a quick breakdown of what this Notion alternative does really well and where it could improve.

Pros of Anytype

Cons of Anytype

Anytype vs Notion

If you’re still not sure whether to give this Notion alternative a chance, check out a more detailed breakdown below where I compare Anytype to Notion.

Anytype VS Notion

Anytype vs Notion

Why is it the best Notion alternative for privacy-focused note-taking?

Anytype is currently the safest note-taking app on the market, and it has an extensive free plan that is sufficient for individuals. With this note-taking app, you can store all your data in a safe place, and it provides almost infinite options for data organization.

Considering all these aspects, Anytype is the best free Notion alternative for individuals who need a safe note-taking app.

Read my full Anytype Review: The Best Note-Taking App In 2026?

Summary: Best Notion alternatives in 2026

Notion is a fantastic productivity tool overall, and it is hard to beat. But, if you need something else, I think these are the best Notion alternatives in 2026. These Notion alternatives offer a feature-rich set and affordable pricing.

And most importantly, I also had a positive experience with them when testing these tools.

Related articles:

• Evernote Vs Notion: An Easier Decision Than You Think (2026)
• Best 6 OneNote Alternatives In 2026 | 100+ Personally Tested Tools

I hope I was able to find the best alternatives to Notion. As always, I will keep updating this list to ensure it reflects reality.

Why you can trust our reviews

At thebusinessdive.com, our team tests, reviews, and compares hundreds of productivity apps every year — from project management tools to note-taking apps. We dive deep into real-world use cases to help you find the right tools that actually improve your workflow, not just add noise.

Our mission? No fluff, no shortcuts—just honest, hands-on insights from productivity pros.

Discover how we stay transparent, read our review methodology, and let us know about any tools we missed.

Frequently asked questions

What are the best Notion alternatives?

If you are not sure if one of the Notion alternatives in the list can help your daily work, check out these options:

• Capacities: One of my favorite Notion alternatives that just barely missed this list. It provides journal pages for quick capturing of daily tasks.
• Airtable: Airtable is often compared to a powerful spreadsheet, excellent for users needing robust database and visualization features.
• Trello: Trello is best for teams who prefer a simple, straightforward Kanban board for visual task management, and don’t need advanced project management tools.
• Monday.com: Monday.com focuses on visual project tracking, work management, and automation, making progress easy to see.
• Asana: Personally, it’s not my favorite, but Asana is a popular choice for managing large-scale projects with features for multiple project views.
• Confluence: Confluence is designed to be a collaborative workspace for teams, ideal for wikis and technical documentation within the Atlassian ecosystem.
• Evernote: Evernote offers powerful search functionality, easy organization via notebooks and tags, and reliable cross-platform syncing. Although it is extremely expensive, it is an okay Notion alternative for note-taking.
• Slite: Slite is strong for teams needing to build an internal wiki, focusing on knowledge management and collaboration.

Is there anything better than Notion?

Notion has undoubtedly become one of the most popular productivity tools. However, there are some capable Notion alternatives that have similar features with even more advanced features. For me, the best overall Notion alternative is Coda.

Related article:

• 7 Best Note-Taking Apps For 2026 | +2 Years Personal Testing

What is better, Notion or Xtiles?

Both Notion and Xtiles are great productivity tools. Xtiles is ideal for people who need a simple note-taking tool that offers a visual representation. It is a powerful tool for creating visually engaging content, whether it is about project management or complex workflows. Although it does not have as many collaboration features as Notion, Xtiles is a cost-effective solution for teams.

If you are looking for a more versatile app that you can use for note-taking, project, task, and database management, Notion is a better alternative. It has a minimalist design with robust collaboration features.

Is Obsidian better than Notion?

Overall, Obsidian is a more powerful app than Notion for personal note-taking. While it is a complex app with a long learning curve, it offers many possibilities to organize your notes and brainstorm ideas. And most importantly, you can do it safely.

Nonetheless, if you are looking for an app for note-taking, project, task management, or team collaboration, Notion is a way better tool than Obsidian. Obsidian is simply not ideal for team collaboration or managing projects within a team.

Related article: Notion Vs Obsidian: Side-by-Side Comparison (2026)

Does Notion or Coda have better project management tools?

If we consider the project management features, Coda is a more powerful productivity tool. It offers more views, customization, and automation features than Notion.

Disclosure: I only recommend products I would use myself, and all opinions expressed here are our own. This post may contain affiliate links that, at no additional cost to you, may earn a small commission. Read the full privacy policy here.

Aron Kantor

Hey there! I am Aron, the founder of Thebusinessdive. I have been testing productivity apps for almost three years now. I reach 25.000 -50.000 people monthly with the mission to help you find the perfect productivity apps. Subscribe to my YouTube channel, newsletter, and social media to hear more about the best productivity tools. Let’s dive in!

thebusinessdive.com

The post Best 7 Notion Alternatives In 2026 | 100+ Personally Tested Tools appeared first on .

So, how well does it deliver on that?

While it does go beyond note-taking by connecting meetings, emails, and chats, it still falls short in a few key areas, especially when it comes to privacy and feature access.

In this Read AI review, I’ll walk you through what it’s actually like to use the tool, from core features to pricing and privacy red flags.

Let’s dive in!

Verdict

Here’s the quick verdict if you don’t want to read the full review:

Tested with our review & scoring methodology Real-world testing Unbiased evaluation

How We Test AI Note-Takers

To keep our reviews and final scores fair and consistent, we evaluate every AI note-taking tool using a standardized testing framework built on real-world usage and hands-on experience.

Our scoring breakdown after testing 20+ AI note-takers:

Want a detailed breakdown of how we test each category?

Learn exactly how we test tools → Review methodology

Short on time? Here’s a quick overview of Read AI

What is Read AI?

Read AI is an AI-powered meeting assistant developed by the company Read AI, a relatively new player in the productivity space.

The platform records, transcribes, and generates automated meeting summaries for major video conferencing tools like Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams. Beyond basic note-taking, it adds layers such as meeting insights, engagement tracking, and communication feedback.

It supports more than 25 languages, including major global languages like English, Spanish, French, German, and Chinese. It can automatically detect the language used in your meetings and generate transcripts and summaries accordingly.

Read AI has gained popularity largely among individuals and small teams looking to automate documentation and get more value out of their calls.

At the same time, user feedback around privacy, pricing transparency, and overall reliability has been mixed, which is something worth keeping in mind from the start.

My experience with Read AI

Overall, my experience with Read AI was a bit split. The core features work well. Transcription is accurate, summaries are easy to skim, and I found myself actually using playback and search to go back to specific parts of meetings instead of rewatching everything.

The whole system feels like it’s trying to turn meetings into something searchable and reusable, not just recorded.

At the same time, not everything is equally useful. Some features, like recommendations or parts of the analytics, were more like extras than something I’d rely on regularly.

The interface also took some time getting used to, and ongoing privacy concerns about Read AI may discourage some of you. But I will show you later everything you need to know about its safety and privacy.

Why Read AI got a 3.1 / 5 score

Read AI performs well when it comes to transcription, summaries, playback, and search, and it does a good job of turning meetings into something searchable and reusable. It also goes beyond basic note-taking with features like coaching, recommendations, and a personalized feed.

Where it loses points is in privacy concerns, limited collaboration features, and the fact that some important capabilities are locked behind higher-tier plans. The free version is especially restricted, which makes it harder to recommend as a full solution.

Who Read AI is a good fit for

Who Read AI is not ideal for

Read AI’s key features

Let’s take a deep dive into the key features I tried during my Read AI review!

Meeting Transcription

At its core, it works as a meeting assistant, and Read AI joins meetings, records them, and generates transcripts.

It integrates with Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams, so once it’s set up, it can capture meetings with minimal manual input. The transcripts are generally accurate, with speaker labels and timestamps that make it easy to follow conversations and revisit specific moments.

What sets it apart from basic transcription tools is the added layer of context. Read AI enriches transcripts with summaries, action items, key questions, and audience reactions.

So, instead of going through the entire recording, you can identify at a glance where key decisions or important discussions actually happened.

When it comes to transcription accuracy, it scored around 85% during my testing, which is solid but well behind tools like Fellow or MeetGeek that can reach 95% or even more.

That said, the experience still depends on the quality of the meeting itself. In longer or more chaotic calls, speaker identification can get inconsistent, and not all highlighted moments are equally useful.

AI Summaries

One of the main reasons to use a tool like Read AI is to avoid going through full meeting recordings. Instead, you get AI-generated summaries and highlighted key moments right after the call.

The summaries are structured and easy to scan. They usually include a general overview of the meeting, main discussion points, and action items.

Read AI also identifies key moments based on engagement and reactions, and surfaces them as highlights. This should help you focus only on the most important parts of the conversation. However, the quality is somewhat inconsistent.

For straightforward meetings, like status updates or short calls, the summaries are clear and useful. But in longer or more complex discussions, they can feel a bit generic and sometimes miss important context.

The highlighted moments are helpful, but not always perfectly aligned with what you would personally consider “key.” Some are genuinely useful, while others are less relevant.

Even though this feature saves time, it still requires a quick review to be sure you didn’t miss anything important.

File Uploads

In addition to recording live meetings, Read AI also allows you to upload existing audio or video files and generate transcripts, summaries, and insights from them.

This can be useful if you want to analyze past calls, interviews, or recordings that weren’t captured through the platform.

However, this is also where I ran into one of the more frustrating limitations.

During my testing, I used the Enterprise free trial, but the file upload feature was still locked behind a paywall. That means I couldn’t actually test how well it works in practice, which is disappointing considering it’s a fairly important use case.

This made it harder to fully evaluate the platform and raised some questions about how much value you can access before committing to a paid plan.

Meeting Playback

While summaries help you understand what happened in a meeting, Read AI’s playback features focus on how you revisit it.

Instead of going through full recordings, you can jump directly to specific parts of the meeting using interactive playback. The transcript, highlights, and video are synced, so clicking on a moment takes you straight to that point in the recording.

This is one of the more practical features, especially if you prefer watching over reading. It works particularly well when you already know what you’re looking for and just need to jump to the right moment.

However, its usefulness still depends on how well those moments are identified in the first place. If the highlights miss the mark, the playback experience becomes less efficient.

AI Search & “For You” Feed

One of the more ambitious parts of Read AI is how it handles information after your meetings are done.

Instead of just storing transcripts and summaries, it lets you search across them using natural language. You can ask questions and get direct answers pulled from past meetings, along with references to where that information came from.

In addition to that, Read AI offers a personalized “For You” feed that surfaces relevant insights, summaries, and updates based on your recent activity. The idea is to bring important information to you, instead of making you dig through past meetings.

In practice, this is where Read AI starts to feel more like an AI workspace than just a meeting tool.

That said, the experience is still evolving. The search works well for straightforward queries, but it can struggle with more complex or vague questions. The “For You” feed is useful, but not always essential, and its value depends on how actively you use the platform.

Overall, this feature has a lot of potential, especially for people who handle a high volume of meetings, but it doesn’t fully replace manually reviewing important conversations yet.

Personalized Coaching

Read AI goes beyond transcription and summaries by offering insights into how you communicate during meetings.

It tracks metrics like talk time, pace, interruptions, and overall engagement, and presents them in a way that’s easy to review after each call. You also get sentiment analysis and feedback on how others reacted during the conversation.

For roles like sales, recruiting, or leadership, these insights can be valuable for improving communication and spotting patterns over time. However, they’re not essential for every user, and their value increases the more intentional you are about improving your communication.

Recommendations

One feature that sets Read AI apart is its ability to suggest ways to improve your meeting efficiency over time.

Based on past calls, it generates recommendations related to participation, structure, and overall efficiency. For example, it might suggest reducing the number of participants, adjusting meeting length, or encouraging more balanced discussion for higher meeting productivity.

Smart Scheduler

Read AI also includes a built-in scheduling feature that helps you book meetings.

You can create and share scheduling links, allowing others to book time directly in your calendar based on your availability. This works similarly to tools like Calendly.

What makes it different is that Read AI doesn’t just suggest available time slots. It also analyzes your past meetings and recommends times that are more likely to lead to better engagement and more productive conversations.

Collaboration tools & Workspaces

Read AI includes collaboration features through shared workspaces, where you can store and access meeting notes, transcripts, and recordings with your team.

You can share meetings, organize content, and distribute summaries through tools like Slack or email. For basic use, this works fine and keeps everything in one place.

However, this is also where Read AI starts to become limited.

The collaboration layer is quite simple and doesn’t go much beyond sharing and viewing content. There’s no real depth when it comes to working together on meetings, such as detailed commenting, structured feedback, or more advanced permission controls.

Because of this, Read AI is much more suitable for individual use or small teams than for larger, collaboration-heavy environments.

Read AI integrations

You can connect Read AI with various third-party applications, including communication tools, CRM systems, and knowledge platforms.

It integrates with tools like Slack, Gmail, HubSpot, and Notion, and also supports automation through Zapier, which allows you to connect it with thousands of other apps and workflows.

Nevertheless, access to integrations is somewhat limited. Some of the more advanced integrations, such as CRM and automation tools, are only available on paid plans, which means the free version gives you access to only the basics.

User interface

I had mixed impressions of Read AI’s user interface.

It looks clean at first, but navigation can feel a bit cluttered once you start using it more. Most features are placed in a sidebar, and you often need to scroll to access everything, which makes it harder to get a clear overview.

Overall, it’s usable, but the layout and navigation make the learning curve slightly longer than it needs to be.

Security and privacy risks

One of the biggest concerns with Read AI isn’t what it does, but how it does it.

Because it connects directly to your calendar and meeting tools, Read AI can automatically join meetings, record conversations, and generate reports. While this requires permissions, in practice it can still be intrusive, especially if other attendees are not fully aware that a bot is present or recording.

This is where most of the privacy concerns come from, and it’s something I kept seeing mentioned in user discussions as well. Some users on Reddit report that Read AI joined meetings without their knowledge or was automatically added to calls even when they didn’t have an account, while others had trouble removing it once it was connected.

A lot of those posts also sound genuinely frustrated, which says a lot about how strongly people feel about this issue.

There are also broader concerns about permissions and data access. In some threads, users describe the tool as overly aggressive in requesting permissions or being enabled through indirect onboarding flows, which can lead to people unknowingly giving it access to their meetings.

To be fair, this isn’t unique to Read AI. Most AI note-takers that join meetings as bots come with similar trade-offs. Still, if you’re working with sensitive information or external clients, it’s something you’ll want to think through in advance.

In my experience, the tool is useful, but it does require a certain level of trust. And whether that feels acceptable or not will really depend on how you and your team prefer to handle meeting privacy.

Read AI pricing plans

Read AI offers four pricing plans.

Its Free plan includes up to 5 meetings per month, along with basic transcription, summaries, search, and coaching features. It’s a solid starting point, but it comes with clear limitations, especially when it comes to integrations and uploads.

Its Pro plan starts at $15 per user per month when billed annually. With this plan, you get unlimited meetings, premium integrations, and up to 100 file uploads per month, making it more suitable for individuals and small teams.

The Enterprise plan costs $22.50 per user per month with annual billing. It adds features like video playback, highlights, priority support, and increases file upload limits to 200 per month.

Lastly, the Enterprise+ plan costs $29.75 per user per month when billed annually. It includes advanced features like SSO and SAML, HIPAA compliance, custom data retention, and up to 300 file uploads per month, but typically requires a minimum number of users.

Pros and cons I found during my Read AI review

Here, I summarize the pros and cons I found throughout my Read AI review.

Pros of Read AI

Cons of Read AI

Related articles:

• Best 9 AI-Note Takers | My Top Picks After +2 Years Testing (2026)
• Gong Alternatives for 2026 | Save +$30,000 With These Tools
• 6 Best Meeting Recording Apps 2026 | 2+ Years Testing

Read AI alternatives

Check out these Read AI alternatives:

Wrap up: Read AI review

We’ve reached the end of this Read AI review, and I hope this helped you decide whether this is the right AI note taker for you.

Overall, Read AI handles transcription, summaries, and meeting insights well, and it does a good job of positioning itself as an AI copilot that connects your meetings into one system.

However, based on my experience and what I’ve seen from other users, I wouldn’t recommend Read AI. It’s just not worth the security and privacy risks.

The market is full of AI note-takers right now, and many of them offer similar core features without raising the same level of privacy concerns. Because of that, it’s hard to justify choosing Read AI unless its specific features really stand out for your use case.

As always, I will update this Read AI review over time so you have the most up-to-date information about this AI meeting assistant.

Why you can trust our reviews

At thebusinessdive.com, our team tests, reviews, and compares hundreds of productivity apps every year — from project management tools to note-taking apps. We dive deep into real-world use cases to help you find the right tools that actually improve your workflow, not just add noise.

Our mission? No fluff, no shortcuts—just honest, hands-on insights from productivity pros.

Discover how we stay transparent, read our review methodology, and let us know about any tools we missed.

Frequently asked questions

Is Read AI free to use?

Yes, Read AI offers a free plan, but it is quite limited. You get up to 5 meetings per month with basic features like meeting transcripts, meeting summaries, and not- taking, which is enough for light users but not for those handling multiple meetings.

Read AI also has four pricing plans in total, and most advanced features like video playback, integrations, and higher upload limits are only available through paid plans or a paid subscription, especially under the Enterprise plan with annual billing.

What is better than Read AI?

It depends on your needs, because Read AI positions itself as an AI copilot, not just a note-taking tool.

Compared to other AI notetakers, it offers more advanced features like sentiment analysis, engagement insights, and cross-platform search across Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, and other popular video conferencing tools.

However, some users prefer AI alternatives that are simpler, more focused on meeting transcription, or offer better team collaboration and fewer privacy risks, especially for internal teams or sales teams handling sensitive virtual meetings.

Does Read AI use your data?

Read AI states that your data is protected, not sold, and only used to provide the service, with options to control or delete your Read AI account data. It also follows standards like SOC 2, GDPR, and HIPAA compliance in higher-tier plans.

However, some concerns exist around permissions and privacy risks, since the AI meeting assistant connects to calendars, meeting recordings, and other tools, which can give it broad access to sensitive data and previous calls if not carefully managed.

Jovana Simić

Hey! I’m Jovana, a content writer who loves writing, researching, and testing new productivity apps. With a background in philosophy, I bring a thoughtful but no-bullshit approach to everything I do. Let’s connect on Linkedin!

The post Read AI Review 2026: Is It Safe to Use? (My REAL Test) appeared first on .

As Taskade works as a task, work, and project management tool but also as a note-taking app, it might seem tricky at first. But do not be afraid; in this Taskade review, I will share this productivity app’s key features, pricing, my experience, and its pros and cons.

Let’s dive in!

Verdict

Here’s the quick verdict if you don’t want to read the full review:

Tested with our review & scoring methodology Real-world testing Unbiased evaluation

How We Test Project Management Tools (and how flexible tools like Taskade are evaluated)

To keep our reviews & final score for each project management app fair and consistent, we evaluate every tool using the same testing framework based on real-world usage, feature depth, and overall value.

Our scoring breakdown after testing 20+ project management apps:

Want a detailed breakdown of how we test each category?

Learn exactly how we test tools → Review methodology

Since tools like Notion, Coda, and Taskade are not traditional project management apps, we also evaluate how well they can be adapted into project management systems, including flexibility, structure, and scalability.

Short on time? Here’s a quick overview of Taskade

What is Taskade?

Taskade is an AI-powered productivity tool for task, work, project management, and note-taking. Over the past year, Taskade has shifted from a pure productivity app toward an AI-first workspace and app builder.

One thing is sure: it has a strong focus on team collaboration, and I will show these later. With Taskade, you can automate tasks, research, and collaborate with your team members in real time.

Taskade is a special AI tool. It allows you to create custom AI agents for specific workflows, train them by giving instructions or uploading files, and even generate full workflows or systems with AI.

My experience with Taskade

To be honest, when I first saw the user interface during my Taskade review, I was a little bit skeptical. It did not look like a tool for work. But after a few hours, it totally changed.

It was easy to navigate, and I discovered almost every feature in a few hours. I especially loved the way they integrated the automation and the AI agents.

With the current feature set, Taskade offers a unique experience to manage your projects, tasks, and notes with your team members in a centralized place.

Ultimately, I had a pleasant experience with this AI-productivity tool.

Why Taskade got a 4.3 / 5 score

Taskade lacks advanced reporting (3/5), and its project management features (3.5/5) are far more limited than those of dedicated project management apps.

However, it offers outstanding collaboration features (5/5) and an intuitive UI (5/5), and its AI agents can automate numerous day-to-day processes.

Who Taskade is a good fit for

Who Taskade is not ideal for

Taskade’s features

Here, I collected Taskade’s features!

Project management software

Taskade is a lightweight project management software. The reason why I say that it is a lightweight project management app is that it does not have advanced project management tools like time tracking features. Also, it is not a complex project management app compared to other apps.

However, it has many valuable features to make your project management workflows faster and simpler while enhancing productivity and team collaboration. With your AI agents, you can make the project planning much shorter, as it can structure the tasks, offer potential sub-tasks, set up reminders based on your timeline, etc.

Besides AI agents, automation is also useful in project management. Taskade’s automation allows you to streamline repetitive tasks by setting up a wide set of real-time triggers (task added/updated, comments, external feeds like YouTube/RSS) and chained actions.

You can design custom workflows and integrate them with Google Sheets, Slack, or WordPress.

Let me give you some examples of how the automation works. You can create a rule for sending Slack notifications if there is a new comment for your tasks in Taskade. Or, it can automatically create a task after a meeting is scheduled in Calendly.

This was my favorite feature during my Taskade review, as you can customize the rules of automation in detail. So, when adding a next step when an action is triggered, there are many options from which you can choose, like sending it to another app or sending a notification to project managers.

Let’s move on to the task management features!

Task management

Taskade is a task management software that allows you to manage multiple projects and tasks effectively. When I said that Taskade is a lightweight project management app, it is not true for task management, as it has solid features.

You can easily add and assign tasks to your team members. With one click, you can create task lists and give due dates, tags, and notes to each task.

The AI agents are also quite helpful when creating multiple tasks. They can help break projects and complex tasks into sub-tasks and are great for brainstorming what other tasks you should consider.

Note-taking

Taskade can also work as a note-taking app. Nevertheless, compared to note-taking apps like Notion, Obsidian, Anytype, or Xtiles, Taskade lacks advanced note-taking capabilities.

While Taskade works well for simple notes, it doesn’t offer some features that dedicated note-taking tools do, such as relational databases and more sophisticated knowledge-management systems.

But to be honest, Taskade was not originally designed as a traditional note-taking tool. It uses a task-based structure where most content can easily be turned into actionable items, connected to projects, or automated with workflows.

And this approach comes in handy when it comes to meeting notes. You can instantly create tasks, summaries, and organized lists from your meeting notes using Taskade. Utilizing Taskade’s AI capabilities in these workflows can really enhance productivity.

Let’s take a look at these AI features!

AI agents

In short, Taskade’s AI agents aren’t simple chatbots. They can store short- and long-term memory, be trained on workspace data, orchestrate as multi-agent teams, and you can pick from multiple LLM providers depending on the task.

You can tailor your AI agents to your specific needs by adding sources from which it can work and giving instructions.

You can create AI agents for project management, content creation, data analysis, and so on. When creating your AI agent, you need to describe precisely the scope of activities it is responsible for. Do not worry. Taskade will pre-fill the instructions for many AI agents, and you can amend them if you want.

After, you need to choose from the commands. For example, I created an AI assistant for project management, and I could choose from these commands:

Furthermore, you need to add the tools it should use. It can get its content from any website, or you can select some specific website from which it should provide you with input.

At this point in my Taskade review, I nearly spit out my coffee. I had not seen similar features in any of the productivity tools before. The AI assistants are just too powerful.

What this means in practice is that you can create multiple agents and let them assist with different parts of your workflow. For example, one agent can help with project planning, another can generate content ideas, while another can analyze documents or summarize research.

With these capabilities, Taskade allows you to build small AI-powered systems around your projects rather than just using AI for simple prompts.

AI App Builder (Genesis)

One of the biggest recent additions to Taskade is its AI app builder called Genesis.

Instead of manually creating tasks, workflows, and dashboards, you can simply describe what you want, and Taskade generates the entire structure for you. For example, you can ask it to create a CRM system, a content marketing workflow, an SEO dashboard, a project management workspace, or even an internal knowledge base.

Within seconds, Taskade generates tasks, workflows, automations, and even AI agents that power the system.

During my testing, this was very different from traditional productivity tools. Instead of building everything step by step, you can start with an AI-generated structure and then customize it.

Of course, these AI-generated setups are not perfect and usually require some adjustments. Still, they can save a significant amount of time when creating new workflows or internal systems. If you frequently build dashboards, workflows, or project structures, this feature can noticeably speed up the whole process.

Views

You can choose from numerous view options, including list, board, table, timeline, mind map, org chart, calendar, and Gantt Chart views. My favorite one is the mind mapping feature.

Mind maps help you view the whole project from a bird’ s-eye view. You can change between the views dynamically with a click.

Chat with your docs

If you click on the “+” button, you can add files to your projects. Taskade supports almost all file formats, from PDF to JPG and MOV.

You can interact with the uploaded files if you move the mouse cursor over the uploaded attachment and click the “ask AI” tab. It allows you to ask questions about the document, summarize it, etc. So, this feature ultimately helps you digest documents faster.

Templates

Taskade offers numerous templates for task management, project management, mind maps, team management, etc. They can save you massive time, as you no longer need to start from scratch when creating a new project.

You can publish and clone apps from Taskade’s community gallery, or fork AI templates to jumpstart projects.

Collaboration tools

Taskade AI offers a shared space for teams to communicate, collaborate, and manage their projects. This app is full of collaboration features.

You can easily share your workspaces and projects with your team members. To share your whole workspace, click here and share its link or send it in an email. You can also change the permission level. So, it is possible if you want your team members only to view and not edit your content. If you want to share your project, just click on the three dots next to your project, and you will have the same options.

After you share them with your team members, you can chat with them next to every project. It is a practical solution that the chat and the project you work on are on the same page.

When you click on the chat, you can decide if you want to chat with Taskade AI & your team, only with your team, only with Taskade AI, or with one of your AI agents.

Moreover, Taskade has robust features when it comes to real-time collaboration. You can assign tasks to your team members, edit your projects together, and create a knowledge management center for your company.

Taskade’s user interface

Taskade has a user-friendly and intuitive interface with a beautiful design. Also, it has quite a short learning curve, and you can quickly learn to utilize almost all the features.

I also enjoyed the way how Taskade structures its pages and functions. Essentially, you can find almost all the features on the page you are working on. So, you can access the team chat, AI features, different views, and other projects on the same page without feeling that it is packed.

You can find Taskade among the mobile apps as well, whether you use Android or iOS.

Taskade’s integrations

During my Taskade review, I discovered that it offers a wide range of integrations. You can connect Taskade with Zapier, which allows you to integrate Taskade with more than 8000 third-party apps.

Furthermore, you can use automation with many popular apps like Gmail, Slack, Google Forms, WordPress, MailChimp, Webflow, Calendly, and more. There’s also a large gallery of 1,000+ AI-powered templates and a community gallery of cloneable apps to speed setup.

Taskade’s pricing

Taskade offers several pricing tiers depending on how extensively you want to use its AI features, automation, and collaboration tools.

Free plan

Taskade offers a generous free plan that allows you to explore the platform and test its core capabilities.

It includes one AI agent, and you can invite one teammate and organize projects into one workspace. You will get 3,000 AI credits (one-time) that allow you to make one AI-powered app.

Starter plan

The Starter plan is designed for individuals who want to use Taskade more seriously.

It will get you unlimited workspaces, premium AI models, 100+ integrations, and 10,000 AI credits that can make around 10 apps. It includes up to 3 AI agents, and you can invite up to 3 team members.

This plan is typically enough for freelancers or creators who use AI features regularly but don’t need large-scale automation.

Pro plan

The Pro plan is designed for professionals and power users who rely on Taskade daily.

It includes unlimited AI agents and workspaces, and you can invite up to 10 team members. The 50,000 AI credits that you get on this plan can make about 50 apps.

This plan is ideal for freelancers, creators, and small teams that want to automate parts of their workflow.

Business plan

The Business plan expands Taskade’s capabilities for organizations. It includes everything in the Pro plan, plus three times more AI credits and apps, unlimited team members, a custom domain, and API access.

This plan is suitable for companies that want to use Taskade as a centralized workspace for projects, documentation, and workflows.

Enterprise plan

For large organizations, Taskade offers an Enterprise plan with custom pricing.

It includes advanced security features, SSO authentication, and enterprise-level administration controls.

One more thing worth mentioning is that you can buy top-up credit packs if you run out of AI credits. This way, it is easy to scale AI usage without upgrading your entire plan.

Taskade’s pros and cons

Now, let’s check the pros and cons I explored during my Taskade review!

Taskade’s pros

Taskade’s cons

Taskade alternatives

If you are still not sure whether Taskade is the right tool for you, check these alternatives:

Compare Taskade vs alternatives

Taskade VS ClickUp

Taskade vs ClickUp

Notion VS Taskade

Notion vs Taskade

Taskade VS Coda

Taskade vs Coda

Related articles:

• Notion Vs Taskade: Side-by-Side Comparison (2026)
• Taskade Vs Coda: Side-by-Side Comparison (2026)
• Asana Vs ClickUp: This will save you $300 (2026)
• Asana Vs Notion: Avoid paying an extra $300 (2026)
• Taskade vs ClickUp | An Unfiltered Comparison (2026)

Wrap-up: Taskade review

Overall, Taskade is a fantastic tool for remote teams and people working with others. It offers a unified workspace where you can work with multiple team members in real-time.

If you are looking for lightweight project management software with outstanding AI capabilities and automation for an affordable price, I highly recommend Taskade to try.

Why you can trust our reviews

At thebusinessdive.com, our team tests, reviews, and compares hundreds of productivity apps every year — from project management tools to note-taking apps. We dive deep into real-world use cases to help you find the right tools that actually improve your workflow, not just add noise.

Our mission? No fluff, no shortcuts—just honest, hands-on insights from productivity pros.

Discover how we stay transparent, read our review methodology, and let us know about any tools we missed.

Frequently asked questions

Is Taskade a good app?

Taskade AI is a great app for managing your projects, tasks, and workflows. It is particularly an excellent choice for remote teams.

Is Taskade completely free?

Taskade has a free plan that includes basic features. The free plan is ideal for personal use or people who just want to try it.

Is Taskade better than Notion?

It depends. While Notion is a better note-taking app, Taskade has more advanced AI capabilities and project management tools. As both productivity tools constantly launch new features, I am excited to see which will have the upper hand in the future.

Is Taskade safe to use?

Taskade is a safe app to use. It deploys Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) via Google Sign-In and is further reinforced with Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) for enhanced protection. Also, they provide SAML and SCIM support for paid customers to provide even more advanced protection.

Disclosure: I only recommend products I would use myself, and all opinions expressed here are our own. This post may contain affiliate links that at no additional cost to you, I may earn a small commission. Read the full privacy policy here.

Aron Kantor

Hey there! I am Aron, the founder of Thebusinessdive. I have been testing productivity apps for almost three years now. I reach 25.000 -50.000 people monthly with the mission to help you find the perfect productivity apps. Subscribe to my YouTube channel, newsletter, and social media to hear more about the best productivity tools. Let’s dive in!

thebusinessdive.com

The post Taskade Review: I Nearly Spit Out My Coffee (2026) appeared first on .

During this time, I have also tested 20+ project management and note-taking tools, which gave me a clear perspective on where Notion truly stands—both as a note-taking app and as a flexible project management solution.

In this review, I’ll combine my personal experience with direct comparisons to other tools, so you can clearly see Notion’s strengths, weaknesses, and whether it’s the right fit for your workflow.

Let’s dive in!

Verdict

Here’s the quick verdict if you don’t want to read the full review:

Tested with our review & scoring methodology Real-world testing Unbiased evaluation

How We Test Project Management Tools (and how flexible tools like Notion are evaluated)

To keep our reviews & final score for each project management app fair and consistent, we evaluate every tool using the same testing framework based on real-world usage, feature depth, and overall value.

Our scoring breakdown after testing 20+ project management apps:

Want a detailed breakdown of how we test each category?

Learn exactly how we test tools → Review methodology

Since tools like Notion, Coda, and Taskade are not traditional project management apps, we also evaluate how well they can be adapted into project management systems, including flexibility, structure, and scalability.

Short on time? Here’s a quick overview of Notion

What is Notion?

Notion is like a Swiss army knife; you can use it for many purposes. It provides a centralized workspace where you can organize your thoughts, notes, tasks, projects, and documents in one single app. Personally, I use Notion to write scripts, track projects, and organize learning.

You can create pages for almost every purpose, such as reading lists, meeting summaries, goals, etc. Every item on a page is customizable; you can easily drag and drop items and insert pictures or videos.

It is also a great app with numerous team collaboration tools. You can invite your team members to work on pages in real-time, create and assign tasks and projects to others, and much more.

My experience after 2+ years of daily use

After using Notion daily for over two years, it has become a must-have tool for me to keep my notes and projects organized, even while constantly testing other alternatives.

While there are tools with more advanced note-taking or project management features, Notion’s flexibility and all-in-one approach make it an ideal choice for anyone who wants to avoid using separate tools for notes, projects, email, and more.

That said, it does come with a learning curve, especially compared to simpler tools. But if you invest the time, Notion can easily replace 4–5 tools and become the backbone of your entire workflow.

Why Notion didn’t score higher (and where it loses points)

Notion earned a strong overall score thanks to its excellent customization (5/5), integrations (5/5), user interface (4.5/5), and pricing (5/5). In my experience, you get this flexibility even with the free plan, which makes it powerful if you need a no-budget setup to manage notes and projects.

However, the lower scores in project & task management (4/5), automation (2.5/5), and reporting (3/5) reflect its biggest limitations. Don’t expect it to become a robust project management software; it lacks advanced automation and reporting tools, and you’ll need to invest time in setting up workflows before it becomes truly efficient.

These trade-offs, combined with limited offline and password support, are the main reasons it doesn’t score higher. While Notion is extremely versatile, it’s not the best choice if you need advanced project management or note-taking features.

Who Notion is a good fit for

Who Notion is not ideal for

Let’s take a closer look at the features to see why I reach this conclusion.

Notion’s key features

Here, I collected all the essential features I found during my Notion review.

Note-taking app

Notion is one of the most popular note-taking tools, and it is not an accident. Just to give you a background on how this app works: You can have multiple workspaces in which you structure your notes and basically everything. For example, you can have a workspace for personal or work-related items. The workspaces include your pages.

The Notion pages are the fundamentals of your workspaces. You can use them for notes, projects, tasks, and so on. There are no strict rules on how you structure your pages or what information you want to include in them.

For instance, in my Notion’s workspace, there are pages dedicated to self-development, money plans, YT scripts, admin info, and notes. Now, let’s go back to note-taking!

Notion is a sophisticated text editor that allows you to easily add and organize different types of content called blocks. When writing your notes, you can add headings, sub-pages, bullet points, and tables without touching your mouse.

In your notes, you can insert images, bookmarks, videos, code, kanban board, and more by simply hitting the “/” button on your keyboard. I especially love the embedded functions. Notion offers multiple embedded forms like YouTube videos, Google Docs, Google Maps, Miro, and more.

Notion is incredibly useful for note organization and knowledge management. You can tag notes with custom keywords, add teammates, set a due date, etc. You can access all your notes with your sidebar on the left.

Overall, Notion is a solid note-taking app, but it lacks some advanced features to connect your notes compared to some dedicated note-taking apps I tried, like Obsidian or Anytype.

Project management tool

Notion also works as a lightweight task and project management software, where you can plan and execute your projects with your team. Let’s start with the project management features.

With Notion, you can visualize your projects’ workflows in different formats, from calendars to boards. Depending on the format you choose, Notion allows you to use progress bars to show how your project is moving forward.

You can also create charts or visualize dependencies to see when one task is blocking another and avoid bottlenecks. Such data visualization options help a lot in project tracking.

When checking your projects, you can utilize filters to show only the tasks assigned to you or the urgent ones.

Notion’s task management features have everything that you need. You can break your projects into manageable tasks and add status, assignee, or due dates.

Nevertheless, if you need in-depth reporting features or automation, you’ll need to set them up yourself. For automation, you can connect Notion with third-party apps, and the reporting needs to be updated manually. Therefore, I can only give 2.5 stars for automation and 3 stars for reporting.

As for the pure project management features, I think 4 out of 5 stars is justified for Notion’s project and task management features. While it lacks a few advanced features and takes longer to set up projects manually than dedicated project management apps, it still provides the features most teams need.

Templates

Whether you want to use Notion for project or task management, you do not have to spend hours creating the proper form for you or your team. This is where you can use the templates.

Notion currently has more than 20,000 free templates from which you can browse. This is an insane number. Just to give you an example: if you want to create a to-do list, you can choose from almost a thousand templates.

Utilizing the templates, you do not have to go through the time-consuming process of creating pages to track your projects or tasks. With a few clicks, you can insert a template you like, and you just need to add the databases.

Collaboration features

You can share workspaces and pages with others. Here, you can customize access levels so others can comment, edit, view, or all of them.

Furthermore, you can create pages and publish them on the web. Once it’s done, anyone with the link can view the page’s content and see contributor names and emails.

Moreover, when managing projects, you can assign tasks to your team members, add comments, and enable simultaneous editing, mentions, and granular permissions.

Ultimately, I give 4.5/ 5 for collaboration for Notion. It’s because it offers significantly more team features than note-taking apps but a bit fewer than project management tools.

Notion AI writing assistant

Notion’s AI writing assistant is one of Notion’s AI features. It can greatly improve your writing by detecting errors and correcting misspelled words and incorrect grammar. But it can do much more.

In the bottom left corner of Notion, you can access the AI assistant feature that answers your questions, gives you summaries, translates your page, finds action items, and helps you improve your writing. Basically, it works like a built-in ChatGPT.

But it can do more than just work with text. The AI writing assistant’s feature can help you gather information from various file types, including PDFs and images.

Overall, these tools help you to become more efficient when taking notes. However, it’s worth noting that Notion AI is not included in the standard plans and requires a separate paid add-on.

For individuals or teams who heavily rely on AI for daily workflows, this can be justified, but for casual use, the additional cost may feel unnecessary.

Wikis & knowledge management

Team members often struggle to find the information they need. Using Notion, you can create your own knowledge library. These hubs can help your team members find and understand the information they need to do their jobs.

Imagine how powerful it could be when onboarding new employees or just wanting to have organized databases where your team members can access the information they need to do their jobs.

Calendar

You can connect your Google Calendar with your existing Notion workspace, so you will be able to see your meetings and appointments in your Notion calendar. Notion’s calendar is synced with your entire workspace, so you can make references to specific pages in the meeting invite.

Notion Calendar is available for iPhone and Android devices and integrates with Google Calendar and Apple iCloud, while Outlook support is still pending.

Ultimately, Notion’s integrated calendar helps you to centralize your calendar management, notes, and project management tasks in a centralized app.

AI meeting notes

Notion recently released its AI note-taker for Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet calls. Basically, it joins your calls without a bot and transcribes & summarizes them.

It is a useful AI feature for your calls, as it can turn your conversations into insights and action items in your Notion workspace.

Notion’s integrations

During my Notion review, I realized this is one of the note-taking apps with the most integrations. You can connect Notion with many other tools. First of all, you can connect it with Zapier, which will give you access to more than 8000 apps.

Besides the Zapier integration, you can integrate Notion with more than 100 other apps including Asana, ClickUp, Dropbox, Google Drive, or Jira.

Notion’s user interface

Notion’s user interface is simple. It has a minimalist design with white space, clear typography, and subtle colors as the focus. Even if you are a first-time Notion user, you will be able to quickly navigate the pages, as you will find all the important information on the sidebar.

As you can see, Notion has many features. This is the only thing that might feel overwhelming at first. Even though I have used Notion for more than 2 years, I have not fully explored its features or potential.

When working in Notion, you will quickly realize that it uses a block system that works like Lego. It transforms all the content into movable, customizable pieces, which gives you the flexibility to move these blocks around.

Notion’s pricing plans

Notion has a free plan and three paid plans.

The free plan includes a collaborative workspace, basic forms and sites, Notion Calendar and Mail. It also supports databases with subtasks, dependencies, and custom properties. Based on my experience, Notion’s free version is totally sufficient for individuals to organize their notes and projects.

The plus plan is $10 per seat per month. It has unlimited collaborative blocks, unlimited file uploads, charts, custom forms and sites, and basic integrations. The plus plan is ideal for small teams and individuals who work a lot with others.

The business plan costs $20 per seat per month. It offers features such as granular database permissions, private teamspaces, domain verification, conditional form logic, and premium integrations. Business users also get access to Notion AI features, including AI meeting notes. I recommend the business plan for bigger teams that want to utilize more advanced features.

Finally, Notion has an enterprise plan as well with custom pricing. By choosing the enterprise plan, you will receive a dedicated success manager, advanced integrations, and advanced security and control features, among other things.

Keep in mind that, while Notion AI is included in the price of Notion’s Business and Enterprise plans, there is only a trial usage on Free and Plus plans.

For users who rely heavily on documentation and structured workflows, the pricing still makes sense, especially if Notion replaces several other tools.

Notion’s pros and cons

Let’s see the pros and cons I found during my Notion review!

Pros of Notion

Cons of Notion

Notion alternatives

Here are some of the best Notion alternatives:

Compare Notion vs alternatives

See how Notion stacks up against other alternatives

Notion VS ClickUp

Notion vs ClickUp

Notion VS Monday

Notion vs Monday

Notion VS Asana

Notion vs Asana

Notion VS Coda

Notion vs Coda

Notion VS Taskade

Notion vs Taskade

Todoist VS Notion

Todoist vs Notion

Notion VS Motion

Notion vs Motion

Xtiles VS Notion

Xtiles vs Notion

Notion VS NotebookLM

Notion vs NotebookLM

Evernote VS Notion

Evernote vs Notion

Anytype VS Notion

Anytype vs Notion

Final thoughts: Notion review

Even before my Notion review, I knew that it was a fantastic note-taking app. But honestly, it is much more than “just” a note-taking app.

Related article:

• 7 Best Productivity Apps I Use In 2026 | 100+ Tools Tested
• 18 Best Slack Integrations You Are MISSING In 2026
• 15 Best AI Tools | 200+ Apps Tested By A Skeptical (2026)

One of the standout features of Notion is its versatility in organizing information. Notion users can create databases, projects, Kanban boards, and more, all within the same platform. It can effectively replace many other apps, which makes it a must-have app for my tool stack.

With its wide range of collaboration features and affordable pricing, I highly recommend Notion for teams as well.

Why you can trust our reviews

At thebusinessdive.com, our team tests, reviews, and compares hundreds of productivity apps every year — from project management tools to note-taking apps. We dive deep into real-world use cases to help you find the right tools that actually improve your workflow, not just add noise.

Our mission? No fluff, no shortcuts—just honest, hands-on insights from productivity pros.

Discover how we stay transparent, read our review methodology, and let us know about any tools we missed.

Frequently asked questions

Is Notion worth it in 2026?

In 2026, Notion is still a great tool that you can implement in multiple workflows. For example, note-taking, project and task management, generating summaries or to-do lists, or fixing spelling.

It has affordable pricing, especially if you consider how many apps it can replace for this money, whether you’re using it as part of a personal plan or within a team setup.

What is the disadvantage of Notion?

The biggest disadvantage for me is that this note-taking app has no offline mode. It would be awesome if I could reach my notes without an internet connection.

Also, you can not protect your pages with passwords. As my notes include sensitive data, I would feel safer if I could protect them with a password.

What is better than Notion?

Notion is an outstanding app for note-taking. However, if you want to try out other apps, I recommend trying Xtiles, Anytype, Evernote, Taskade, or Coda. They are all great note-taking apps and can improve your productivity.

Related article:

• Best 7 Notion Alternatives In 2026 | 100+ Personally Tested Tools
• 7 Best Note-Taking Apps For 2026 | +2 Years Personal Testing

Is Notion really free?

Notion has a generous free plan. It covers a collaborative workspace, basic forms and sites, Notion Calendar and Mail.

It also supports databases with subtasks, dependencies, and custom properties. Based on my experience, Notion’s free version is totally sufficient for individuals to organize their notes and projects.

Aron Kantor

Hey there! I am Aron, the founder of Thebusinessdive. I have been testing productivity apps for almost three years now. I reach 25.000 -50.000 people monthly with the mission to help you find the perfect productivity apps. Subscribe to my YouTube channel, newsletter, and social media to hear more about the best productivity tools. Let’s dive in!

thebusinessdive.com

The post My Honest Notion Review After Using It For +2 Years (2026) appeared first on .

In this ABBYY FineReader PDF review, I will show you everything you need to know about this OCR software and PDF editor. I tested its core features, including OCR, PDF editing, conversion, and workflow capabilities, to see how it actually performs in real use.

Let’s dive in!

Verdict

Here’s the quick verdict if you don’t want to read the full review:

Tested with our review & scoring methodology Real-world testing Unbiased evaluation

How We Test PDF Editors

To keep our reviews and final scores fair and consistent, we evaluate every PDF editor using a standardized testing framework built on over 3 years of hands-on experience testing these tools in real-world scenarios.

Our scoring breakdown after testing 30+ PDF editors:

Want a detailed breakdown of how we test each category?

Learn exactly how we test tools → Review methodology

Short on time? Here’s a quick overview of ABBYY FineReader PDF

What is ABBYY FineReader PDF?

ABBYY FineReader is a document processing tool that combines OCR technology with PDF editing features. The software is developed by ABBYY, a company known for its long-standing expertise in OCR technology.

Over the years, FineReader has built a strong reputation as one of the most reliable tools for recognizing text and preserving document structure, especially when working with complex layouts.

It is primarily designed for professionals and businesses that regularly work with scanned documents or large volumes of files.

My real-world experience with ABBYY FineReader PDF

During my Abbyy FineReader review, the tool handled standard scanned documents without issues, supported multiple languages, and preserved layout better than most tools I tried.

On top of that, the whole workflow was very practical thanks to its well-thought-out UI.

However, I expected more. Since it’s so heavily focused on OCR, I thought the accuracy would be close to perfect.

It was good, but not flawless, and experienced similar or even better accuracy with Tenorshare PDNob and EaseUS PDF Editor.

When it comes to pricing, it is not the cheapest tool out there, but it makes sense for what you get. The Corporate plan especially stands out if you are dealing with large volumes and need automation.

Why ABBYY FineReader PDF scored 4.2 out of 5

ABBY FineReader PDF performed great when we tested the OCR functions and the document conversion tools. As for other features, it delivered good results but not outstanding ones.

Where ABBYY FineReader PDF loses points is its pricing, which is mostly due to the lack of a free version and its high price.

When to choose ABBYY FineReader PDF

When you should skip ABBYY FineReader PDF

Key functions

Stick here, because I will show the key features I tried during my ABBYY FineReader review.

OCR (Optical character recognition)

If you are dealing with scanned PDFs and want to turn them into editable text, it does a really solid job. In my tests, it handled standard scanned documents without mistakes, even with non-Latin scripts like Cyrillic.

The key thing here is to select the correct language (and script, if needed) because ABBYY supports 201 OCR languages, including natural, and even artificial and formal languages, which is far beyond what most competitors offer.

When it comes to converting image files into text, the experience was similar. If the image quality is decent, it can extract text quite reliably, regardless of the language. That is exactly what you would expect from a tool that positions itself as one of the strongest OCR software solutions on the market.

It also does a good job of keeping the original formatting and layout, which is a big deal when you are working with documents that include columns, tables, and complex structures.

One thing I genuinely liked is the integrated image preprocessing editor. You can deskew pages, straighten text lines, fix trapezoid distortion, adjust brightness and contrast, remove color marks, crop, rotate, and basically clean up everything before running OCR.

You also get a lot of control over how your OCR results look. If you notice any mistakes or want to change formatting or layout, you can fix it inside the same editor. And if you are working with sensitive documents, you can even redact content right there. Finally, you can choose between different output modes like Exact copy, Editable copy, or Formatted text.

However, this is where I expected more. Even after editing the image and using all those preprocessing options, the OCR results were not always as accurate as I hoped. I still ran into formatting issues, misplaced highlights, and occasional recognition errors. From my experience, the accuracy is around 80%.

That said, ABBYY FineReader earned its place on my list of best OCR software, but it was only enough for third place, as EaseUS PDF Editor and Tenorshare PDNob offered higher accuracy.

That said, ABBYY FineReader still stands out in one important area: workflow efficiency. It allows you to process large volumes of documents, handle multiple OCR tasks at once, and quickly convert scanned files into editable formats. So, while it’s not necessarily perfect in accuracy, it’s great for handling OCR at scale.

PDF reading

ABBYY FineReader also works as a solid PDF reader for everyday use.

The reading experience itself is pretty standard, but it covers everything you actually need. You can zoom in and out, switch between different viewing modes, and quickly move between pages.

It also allows you to search within documents and add bookmarks.

PDF editor

This feature is located under the edit content tab. From here, you can click on any text block and start making changes.

When selecting a text box, you can modify the content, adjust formatting, and reposition it within the document. The editing panel lets you change font types, sizes, alignment, and spacing, so you have full control over how your content looks.

Besides editing existing text, you can also add new text boxes to your PDF. Just choose the add text option, place it anywhere on the page, and customize it as needed.

Inserting pictures is supported as well. Once added, you can move and adjust them directly within the editor.

Annotation tools

ABBYY FineReader also includes the essential tools you need to annotate PDF documents.

There are options to highlight, underline, and strike through text, as well as to draw and insert text. You can also add comments, notes, and stamps, which can be useful when reviewing documents or collaborating with others.

When you add annotations, you can easily customize them. You can adjust colors, modify comments, or move them around the document as needed.

Compare documents

ABBYY FineReader also includes a document comparison feature, which is something you do not see in most PDF tools. This feature can be of great use for contracts, legal documents, or any situation where you need to track revisions.

To use it, just upload two versions of the same document, and the tool automatically analyzes and highlights all differences between them. This includes changes in text, formatting, and structure. Differences are highlighted directly in the document, so you do not have to manually scan through pages or compare files side by side.

PDF organization

Before organizing or processing pages, you can quickly fix common scan issues like incorrect orientation, skewed pages, or low-quality resolution using the built-in image enhancement tool. It also offers automatic corrections and options like smoothing characters, which can improve the overall readability of your document before running OCR.

Furthermore, you can organize a document page-by-page or by selecting multiple pages. If you want to switch their places, you can just drag and drop them. Also, you can delete, insert pages, swap, extract, and split them if you want. There is also a convenient option to remove blank pages.

I particularly liked the crop option. It allows the same crop size across the entire document while still adjusting the position of the cropping frame for each page individually.