I want to start with the math. A $30 per year notes subscription does not feel painful in any single month, which is exactly why most people never cancel. Two years of Goodnotes buys a mid-range mechanical keyboard. Five years buys a used iPad. The renewal is automatic, the price is small enough to ignore, and the moment you stop paying attention, the cumulative cost starts to look embarrassing against the time you actually spend writing. The cancellation usually comes when somebody tries the alternative and discovers the alternative does enough of what they need. That is the framing I am pulling from a recent MakeUseOf comparison of Saber, a free open-source handwriting app, against Goodnotes, the polished incumbent.
A note before the comparison starts. Goodnotes and Saber are not the same product. Goodnotes has a Brush Pen that mimics watercolor pressure, a deeper template library, and OCR (optical character recognition, the feature that turns handwriting into searchable text) that actually works. Saber has none of those, and pretending otherwise would be dishonest. The interesting question is which features a typical note-taker actually uses, and whether the gap is worth $30 a year. For the author of the source comparison, the answer was no. Your answer might be different. That is the honest version of this review.
What the two apps charge you for
The Goodnotes subscription model is the more familiar shape. The annual fee is the front door. AI features sit behind another paywall. The cloud storage tier locks the rest of your files behind a vendor login. Each of those is defensible on its own. The cumulative shape is what makes the comparison worth doing, and the shape is the same shape every commercial notes app takes in 2026.
Saber skips the model entirely. The download is free. The source code lives on GitHub for anyone to read. There is no premium tier, no upsell, and no account required to open a notebook. The economic argument is the strongest point of the open-source side of the comparison, and it is not subtle. For a user who only needs the writing experience, Saber does enough of what they need at zero recurring cost.
A short list of what Saber skips that a commercial app charges for:
- Annual subscription, which compounds across years.
- Premium AI tier, which sits behind a separate paywall.
- Cloud storage tier, which locks existing files behind a vendor login.
- Account requirement, which is friction for users who just want to write.
- Premium tier upsells, which the source piece explicitly notes Saber does not have.
The flip side is the polish tax. Goodnotes has the better brush engine, the cleaner animations, the deeper template library, and the cleaner share-sheet integration with iOS. None of those are make-or-break features for meeting notes, but they are real differences for users who live inside the app for hours a day.
The encryption story that does not have a Goodnotes equivalent
The single most consequential difference is the privacy guarantee built into Saber’s file format. The app ships with a dual-password system: one password unlocks the application, a second password scrambles the note files before they ever leave your tablet. Any sync server, whether Saber’s official cloud, a self-hosted instance, or a folder you control, only ever sees scrambled data. The operator of the server cannot read your handwriting, because they do not have the encryption key. That is a structural guarantee baked into the file format, not a server-side promise.
Goodnotes’ cloud is convenient and reasonably well-trusted by individual users, but the same guarantee is not built into the file format. If privacy is a primary requirement, the comparison is over before it starts. For most users privacy is a secondary concern, but the feature is the kind of thing you do not appreciate until you actually need it.
The encryption is also auditable in the source code, which closes the trust-but-verify loop. Saber does not ask you to take the maintainers’ word for it. Anyone with the skills to read Haskell can confirm the encryption behavior is what the documentation claims it is.
What Saber does not have
Pretending the two apps are equivalent would be dishonest. Goodnotes has capabilities Saber does not, and if any of them matter to your workflow, Saber is the wrong choice.
The Brush Pen tool is the most visible one. Goodnotes’ brush responds to pressure in a way that makes sketching feel like sketching rather than writing with a marker. Saber ships with Fountain and Ball Pen and stops there. Goodnotes’ shape recognition and text-search layer also pull ahead when you have hundreds of pages of accumulated notes and you want to find something quickly. Goodnotes’ template library covers more layouts, with cleaner integrations for iOS and macOS Shortcuts, and the UI animations and icon design are simply better. This is a real difference if you live inside the app for hours a day.
If you depend on handwriting-to-text search across hundreds of pages, the subscription is the price of those features and it is fair. Saber does not have an equivalent, and the gap is unlikely to close by the next release cycle.
What migrating actually costs
The migration is not free, and the source comparison is candid about it. Goodnotes notebooks do not import into Saber as native files. You get PDF exports, which lose the searchable-text layer that Goodnotes’ OCR built over years of accumulated notes. For users with years of notebooks in Goodnotes, that loss is real. The migration is essentially a one-way door for the old notebooks, with a clean handoff for new ones.
Cross-platform support cuts both ways too. Saber runs on more devices than Goodnotes, which means your notebook follows you across hardware you have not bought yet. It also means the app behaves slightly differently on Android than on iPad than on Linux. Saber is good enough on each platform, not the polished choice on any one of them.
Trade-offs
The encryption story is only useful if you actually use it. If you set both passwords to the same string and store them in your browser password manager, you have the workflow but not the privacy benefit. The feature requires the same hygiene as any encrypted tool, which most casual users do not maintain. The privacy guarantee is real, but it is conditional on the user doing their part.
Saber’s lower polish is also a trade-off that compounds. A user who tries the app for a week and finds the bare interface friction-heavy will leave for Goodnotes and probably not come back. The first impression is the comparison, and Saber loses that comparison for some users. The honest version of this is that Saber is the right tool for a specific user, not for everyone who writes on a tablet.
The Goodnotes subscription is also defensible. For users who want the watercolor brush, the deeper OCR, the bigger template library, and the cleaner share-sheet integration, the subscription is the price of those features. Saber does not aim to undercut Goodnotes on those features. Saber aims to be the cheaper choice for users who do not need them. The two apps serve different users, and the comparison is most useful when you know which user you are.
What to actually do with this comparison
The source piece’s advice is the install-and-try approach. Put Saber on the same device next to Goodnotes, open a single notebook, and write in it for a real meeting or class period before making any decision. Screenshots undersell the experience because the interface looks bare, but in practice the app feels fast, and the encryption is the kind of feature you do not notice until you actually need it. That one hour of testing is worth more than another review aggregating other people’s opinions.
A week of side-by-side use usually surfaces the answer. Some users will find the missing Brush Pen and the thinner template library impossible to live without, and those users should stay on Goodnotes and pay the subscription. Other users will find the bare interface faster and the encryption worth the trade, and those users should cancel. For the author of the source comparison, the second answer was the clear one. For you, it might be the first. The only honest way to find out is to write in it for a week and let the answer settle on its own.