Pick Google Keep if your notes are short and stand on their own, like grocery lists, gift ideas and reminders you share with family. Pick OneNote if your notes grow into projects that need notebooks, sections, PDFs and offline access on a computer. Both are free, so the real question is what happens to a note after you write it down.
Keep makes quick capture simple and sharing one list with one person easy. OneNote takes a little more setup, but it gives you a proper filing system and full apps on Windows, Mac, iPhone, iPad and Android.
Keep and OneNote side by side
| Google Keep | OneNote | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free with a Google Account | Free with a Microsoft account |
| Cloud storage | Not on Google's list of what uses your 15 GB | Uses your 5 GB of free Microsoft storage |
| Organization | Labels (up to 50), colors and pins | Notebooks, sections and pages |
| Apps | Android, iPhone and iPad; web browser on computers | Windows, Mac, iPhone, iPad, Android and web |
| Offline on a computer | No | Yes, on Windows and Mac |
| Files and PDFs | Images, drawings and audio | Attachments and PDF printouts on Windows, Mac, iPhone and iPad |
| Sharing | One note at a time, and collaborators can edit | Whole notebooks, with view or edit access |
What each app costs you
Everyday note-taking costs nothing in either app. Keep comes free with any Google Account, with apps for Android, iPhone and iPad. OneNote is free with a Microsoft account, and you don't need a Microsoft 365 subscription to use it.
Storage is where they part ways. Your 15 GB of free Google storage is shared by Gmail, Drive and Photos. Keep isn't on Google's list of services that count against it, and Google's over-quota restrictions don't apply to Keep. OneNote saves notebooks to OneDrive, so they share the 5 GB of free Microsoft storage with your OneDrive files and Outlook.com attachments. Go over that limit and you can't upload, edit or sync new files, which matters if you attach a lot of PDFs to your notes.
Paid plans are optional. A Microsoft 365 Personal or Family plan raises your Microsoft storage to 1 TB. The AI extras mostly need a paid plan or specific hardware: Keep's Help me create a list button works on Android with Google AI Pro, Google AI Ultra or a Pixel device, and Copilot in OneNote needs a Microsoft 365 subscription that includes Copilot, with home users getting it only in the Windows app. Neither AI feature should decide which app you use for ordinary notes.
Loose notes or a real filing system
Keep treats every note as its own card. You sort cards with labels, colors and pins, with a ceiling of 50 labels, and there are no notebooks, folders or nested levels. That suits lists and passing thoughts, but a semester of class notes turns into one long feed you have to filter.
Short notes still get some polish. On Android and the web, Keep can format text in bold, italic, underline and heading styles, though the iPhone and iPad app can't show that formatting. Checklist items can be dragged into a new order or indented under another item on any device. If your notes eventually become Google Docs or Slides, Keep fits in neatly: on a computer, a Keep side panel lets you drag a note straight into the file, and More > Copy to Google Docs turns a note into a new Google Doc.
OneNote works like a binder. A notebook holds sections, and each section holds pages, so a college course can get its own notebook with a section per subject and a page per class. The same structure carries across Windows, Mac, the web and mobile, and our walkthrough on using OneNote for notes and organization covers how to set it up.
Capturing ideas in a hurry
Keep is built for quick capture, especially on Android. The Quick capture widget starts a note from your home screen, and the Single note widget pins a note or list there, so you can tick off items without opening the app. Those widgets are Android-only, so iPhone owners miss Keep's handiest shortcut.
OneNote has its own quick entry points. On Windows, press Windows + Alt + N to open a Quick Note in a small window, keep it visible with View > Always on Top, and file the page into a section later. On Android, the capture bar on the OneNote home page takes text, voice, ink or a photo.
For saving things from the web, both have a browser add-on. The Google Keep Chrome extension saves a highlighted passage, an image or the whole page to a note. The free OneNote Web Clipper for Edge and Chrome captures a full page, a region, an article as editable text or a range of PDF pages, then files the clip in the notebook section you pick, which pays off for research you plan to revisit.
Macs, iPhones and Windows PCs
Keep has apps for Android, iPhone and iPad, but on a Mac or Windows PC it runs in a web browser at keep.google.com. Offline access works in the phone and tablet apps, not on a computer, and a desktop shortcut doesn't change that. If you write notes on a laptop without Wi-Fi, Keep is the wrong choice.
OneNote works offline on both desktop platforms. On a Mac, notebooks you've opened and synced stay available as a cached copy, and your edits sync when you reconnect. Windows handles cloud notebooks the same way, keeping a local copy for offline editing and merging your changes once you're back online. Windows also offers local notebooks that live only on your PC, an option no other version of OneNote has.
Backups are automatic on both computers, daily by default on Windows and weekly on a Mac. On Windows, make sure you're using the app simply named OneNote, which has a File menu at the top. The older OneNote for Windows 10 app reached end of support on October 14, 2025 and now opens notes read-only, so follow Microsoft's steps for moving to OneNote on Windows if you still have it.
PDFs, photos and search
Keep notes hold text, lists, images, drawings and audio recordings. You can add several photos to one note and draw on top of an image, and search finds words inside photos, such as the text on a receipt, as long as it's in English. Search filters also narrow results by note type, label, color or the person you shared with.
OneNote is the better home for files. On a Mac, iPhone or iPad, you can insert a PDF as a printout, which places each page in your notes as an image you can write over, or add a file as an attachment. The Windows app goes further with Insert > File Printout, which drops a printout of other file types, such as a Word file, onto the page. Attachments are copies, so later changes to the original don't carry over.
Search in the Windows app covers typed text, handwriting and images, and with Audio Search turned on it even finds spoken words in recordings. You can also lock any section with a password in OneNote on Windows, Mac, iPhone and iPad, while the web version can only unlock sections. Locked sections are left out of search, and nobody, Microsoft included, can recover a forgotten password.
Sharing lists, notebooks and reminders
Keep shares one note at a time. Add someone as a collaborator and they can edit that note, list or drawing, while your other notes stay private and your labels, colors and pins stay visible only to you. To let someone read a note without editing it, send a copy through another app, and remember that deleting a shared note you own deletes it for everyone.
OneNote shares whole notebooks saved in OneDrive or SharePoint, with view or edit access. A link to one section still opens the entire notebook, so move anything private into a separate notebook first. That makes OneNote better for a family recipe binder or a team project than for a single grocery list.
Reminders work differently too. Keep reminders now live in Google Tasks and Calendar, notifications come from the Tasks or Calendar app rather than Keep, and location-based reminders are gone. In OneNote, the Windows app can flag a line as an Outlook task with a reminder, while ordinary OneNote tags don't create reminder notifications.
Our verdict
For most people who want a home for grocery lists, gift ideas and quick reminders, Google Keep is the better pick. It's simple, costs nothing, and sharing one list with a partner takes a few taps. Android owners get the most from it because of the home screen widgets.
Choose OneNote when your notes are building toward something, such as a course, a home renovation or a research project. Notebooks, PDF markup, offline editing on Mac and Windows, and section passwords make it the stronger tool once notes pile up. Plenty of people use both, with Keep on the phone for capture and OneNote on the computer for anything worth filing.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I move my Google Keep notes into OneNote?
There's no direct import, so move notes by hand. On a computer, open a note and choose More > Copy to Google Docs, then copy the text from the new Google Doc into a OneNote page; on Android, tap Action > Send and pick Copy to Google Docs or Send via other apps. For a full archive, Google Takeout exports your notes, attachments and labels, although that export doesn't import straight into OneNote.
Does Google Keep work on a Mac?
Yes, in a browser such as Safari, Chrome or Firefox at keep.google.com. It won't work offline there, so use the iPhone or iPad app when you need notes without a connection.
Can I recover an earlier version of a Keep note?
On a computer, open the note and choose More > Version history to download an earlier version as a text file. Only text changes are kept, so earlier images aren't included.
Can I get my notes out of OneNote later?
Yes. The Windows app exports a page, a section or a whole notebook, and the Mac and mobile apps save individual pages as PDFs. OneNote for the web can export an entire notebook, but only from a personal OneDrive account.
