Coffee vs Apple Notes: is a paid Markdown editor worth it?

Checked November 2026 against the Notes User Guide for Mac. I make Coffee, so read this with that in mind. Coffee isn't affiliated with Apple.

For most people, Apple Notes is enough, and you should stay with it unless you have a specific reason to move. It comes with your Mac, iPhone and iPad, it syncs through iCloud, and you can share a note and edit it together. Coffee is worth paying for only if you want your writing to be Markdown files in a folder, or you need to check what AI tools change in them.

That's an unusual thing to read on the blog of a paid app, but these two aren't really competing for the same job. Notes is where you put things. Coffee is for documents you keep working on as files.

At a glance

Compared	Apple Notes	Coffee
Price	Comes with your Apple devices. 5 GB of iCloud storage is free, and more is paid	€3 a month, €29 a year, or €79 once
Platforms	Mac, iPhone, iPad	Mac only, macOS 15 or later
Your notes	Inside Notes, in iCloud or on your Mac	One `.md` file per note, in a folder you choose
Sync	iCloud	None of its own. Use iCloud Drive or similar
Working with others	Sharing of notes and folders, in near real time	No collaborative editing. A change from someone else arrives through Git or a synced folder
Markdown	Import, export and copy on recent macOS	The file itself is Markdown
Audio	Recording and transcription, with some requirements	None
Sums	Math Notes	Calculations beside the line

Where Apple Notes is better

It's already there, at no extra cost. There's nothing to buy, install or set up. Coffee costs money after 14 days, and for a shopping list that makes no sense.

Every Apple device. A note you start on the Mac is on your iPhone when you leave the house. Coffee has no iPhone or iPad app at all, and that alone rules it out for a lot of people.

Working together. You can share a note or a folder by link, choose who can edit, and see changes in near real time. It needs upgraded iCloud notes, and live updates need two-factor authentication and iCloud Keychain. Coffee has no collaborative editing, so this is a clear win for Notes.

More than text. Notes takes pictures, videos, PDFs and other files, and can record audio and show a live transcript on a Mac with M1 or later, in supported languages. Coffee is for text, tables and images.

Tags and Smart Folders. Type # and a word to add a tag, and build Smart Folders from tags, mentions, checklists or dates. Coffee has tags in a note's front matter, and no equivalent of a Smart Folder.

Quick Notes and formatting without syntax. Notes has Quick Notes, and a toolbar for formatting, checklists and tables, so nobody has to learn any Markdown.

Notes and Markdown

This has changed recently, and older advice about it is out of date. On macOS 26 and later, Notes can export a note as Markdown and import Markdown files. The current guide also has Edit > Copy as Markdown, and it says that pasting Markdown turns it into formatted headings and lists. The macOS 15 version of the page mentions only PDF export.

So you're no longer stuck, and if you occasionally need a .md file, Notes may do all you need. Do try it on a real note first, because Apple's page doesn't say how attachments or unusual formatting come through.

What this doesn't give you is a note that is a file. An import brings files into Notes, into a folder called Imported Notes, and an export writes a copy, with the steps describing one note at a time. If you edit the copy elsewhere, your note in Notes doesn't change. There's more on this in moving from Apple Notes to Markdown.

Where Coffee is different

Your notes are files. Every note is a .md file in a folder you pick, so any other editor can open it, and Git, scripts and AI tools can work on it directly. There's no export step. See the piece on plain local files for the details, including what Coffee keeps outside your folder.

Reviewing edits from outside. When Claude, Cursor or anything else edits a file, Coffee shows each change since you last read the note, to keep or undo one at a time. See how that works.

Writing in Markdown. You can work in the finished page, in the code, or side by side, and what you type is what's saved.

PDF templates. Notes can export a PDF. Coffee adds three templates, a title page and page numbers. See the PDF guide.

Propose a change. In a Git repository, Coffee can send one note to a new branch and open a pull request, for people who'd rather not learn Git.

Questions about your notes. On macOS 26 with Apple Intelligence, Ask answers questions from your notes, with the model running on your Mac.

Sums in both

Notes does sums too. Type an expression and an equals sign, and the answer appears in the note. You can define variables and use them further down. It needs upgraded iCloud notes or notes stored on your Mac.

Coffee takes a different route, with plain words and no equals sign, and the answer is drawn beside the line rather than saved in the file. It covers currencies, time zones and dates as well as arithmetic. Try it here:

Trip budget.md

This runs on the same rules as the app, with sample exchange rates. Coffee uses current ones. Go on, change a number.

There's a fuller comparison in the piece on calculators in notes.

Locking notes

Both can lock a note, with different rules, so check them against what you plan to lock.

Notes uses your Mac login password or a separate password, with Touch ID as an option. You can't lock Quick Notes, notes shared with others, notes with tags, or notes with video, audio, PDF or document attachments. If you lose the password, Apple can't help you get those notes back.

Coffee locks a private note with Touch ID, using a key in your Keychain, and gives you a recovery key. The file on disk is encrypted, and search, Spotlight, Quick Look and AI apps over MCP can't read it. The file name is the note's title, so that's still visible, and anyone with the recovery key can read everything. If you lose both the key and the recovery key, nobody can open the note.

Choose Apple Notes if

You want your notes on iPhone and iPad
You share notes with family or colleagues and edit together
You keep audio recordings, scans and attachments with your notes
You don't need Markdown, or only need a .md file now and then
You don't want to pay for a notes app, which is a perfectly good reason

Choose Coffee if

You work on a Mac running macOS 15 or later, and that's enough
You want your documents to be Markdown files in a folder you control
AI tools or Git touch your documents, and you want to check each change
You want PDF templates and sums in plain words
You're happy to pay for those things, and to keep Notes for everything else

Using both is entirely reasonable. Nothing about Coffee needs you to give up Notes for the quick things on your phone.

Questions

Is Apple Notes free?

Notes comes with your Mac, iPhone and iPad, with no separate charge. Syncing uses iCloud, which includes 5 GB of free storage, and larger amounts need a paid iCloud+ plan.

Can Apple Notes export Markdown?

Yes, on recent versions. Apple's guide for macOS 26 describes File > Export as > Markdown, and the current guide uses File > Export To. The guide for macOS 15 lists only PDF.

Does Apple Notes save notes as Markdown files?

Its guide describes Markdown as something you import, export or copy, and doesn't describe notes as .md files. In Coffee, each note is a .md file on disk.

Can I use Coffee to work with someone else on a note?

Not at the same time. Coffee has no collaborative editing. A change from someone else arrives through Git or a synced folder, and you can then review it. Apple Notes is the better choice if you edit together.

Can I use Coffee on my iPhone?

No. Coffee only runs on a Mac with macOS 15 or later.