Documents and notes

Bear Pro alternatives

2 open-source projects that already do this job. Free to use - not free to run, which is what the numbers on the right are for.

The full assessment →

The projects

bangle-io/bangle-io1,228AGPL-3.0Web WYSIWYG note-taking app that saves notes locally in Markdown.Open on GitHub vnotex/vnote12,886LGPL-3.0Native desktop Markdown note-taking application with notebooks, editor, and organization features.Open on GitHub

What you give up either way

Cross-device iCloud sync across macOS/iOS (Apple cloud integration)
Polished native macOS/iOS UI and platform-specific optimizations
Built-in OCR search for images/PDFs (Pro feature)
App Store distribution and existing brand/community
Encrypted notes integrated with platform keychain (unless explicitly implemented)

An open-source project doing the core job proves a replacement is possible. It does not prove it matches Bear Pro, and it does not prove anyone has run it for a month. How we decide.