OneNote vs. Craft: Which note-taking app should you use?

When it comes to digital note-taking, the tools you choose can make all the difference in how you capture, organize, and retrieve your ideas on your laptop. While Microsoft OneNote dominates the note-taking space with its feature-rich native apps and smooth integration with Microsoft 365, Craft aims to disrupt the productivity market as the newest entrant, with a unique and modern user interface and an all-in-one approach to replace multiple tools in your workflow.

In this post, we will dive into both platforms and compare them based on multiple factors, including their strengths and weaknesses, to help you pick a digital notebook that suits your needs best.

Cross-platform availability

Let’s start with their availability across your devices. After all, you won’t want to lose access to your notes when you switch to another mobile or desktop platform. Both OneNote and Craft are available on Windows, Mac, web, iPhone, iPad, and Vision Pro.

That said, Microsoft’s solution edges out Craft due to a native OneNote Android app and web extension. Craft isn’t available on Android and doesn’t have a web clipper either.

User interface and notes editor

There is a stark difference between OneNote and Craft’s UI. Microsoft has stuck with a traditional interface where you can access notebooks, sections, and notes on the sidebar and use the top toolbar to edit your text and insert other elements. It’s a no-brainer setup and doesn’t require any learning curve.

Craft follows Notion’s footsteps with a block-based editor that uses the Slash (/) command. You can also decorate a page with beautiful backgrounds, a cover image, and a blur effect. Simply put, your notes just look prettier in Craft than in OneNote. The slash command does take some time to get used to, but once you get the hang of it, you won’t want to go back to a standard toolbar.

Notes organization

With OneNote, you can create notebooks for different purposes, make sections, sub-sections, and insert pages. Craft lets you create spaces where you can add folders and sub-folders to organize your documents efficiently.

You can pin and star your favorite documents for easy access in Craft. Both solutions actually lack the tags that Evernote pioneered a long time ago. As for securing your notes, you can password-protect a specific section in OneNote to keep prying eyes away. Craft misses out on this crucial privacy feature.

Templates library

It’s an easy win for Craft here. Craft has an excellent template library with self-improvement, teams, meetings, students, documentation, and other categories. You won’t have a hard time finding a relevant template to get started.

OneNote’s template library looks outdated in comparison. There are only a handful of options to choose from. However, unlike Craft, you can find and use third-party templates from the web, too. Read our dedicated post to try the top OneNote templates. Microsoft needs to revamp their template library though, and make it available on all platforms.

Features

Let’s have a look at some of the standout features of both platforms. We will first start with OneNote.

Microsoft 365 integration

It’s no surprise here. OneNote has a remarkable integration with other Microsoft apps like Outlook, To-Do, OneDrive, and even the Windows Start menu (you can access your recent notebooks right from the Start menu of your PC). You can check and insert your Outlook meeting details, and even create Outlook tasks right from a OneNote page.

Drawing tools

While Craft offers inking tools, it’s limited to the iPad app only. OneNote is a step ahead, with robust drawing tools across all the platforms. You can use pen, marker, and highlighter on desktop apps, tablets, and 2-in-1 devices.

Web extension

If you frequently clip information from the web, use OneNote’s web clipper to save information directly into a relevant notebook. You can bookmark a webpage, clip a specific part, or save an entire website with a single click. Craft doesn’t have a web extension yet.

Let’s check out some of the noteworthy features of Craft.

Tasks, reminders, and calendar

With tasks, reminders, and a calendar, Craft can be your ultimate productivity hub. You can create tasks, add due date and time, and even write notes for a specific date in a calendar. It won’t replace a dedicated task management app, though. But it’s good enough for managing casual tasks.

Whiteboard

As the name suggests, a whiteboard is basically an infinite blank canvas to brainstorm ideas with team members. You can use shapes, sticky notes, text, pencil, arrows, and other tools to map out a plan and strategy. It’s a must-have feature for small teams using Craft.

Seamless sharing

Thanks to its sharing tools, Craft can be an ideal product for real-time collaboration with team members. You can invite team members with different permissions, assign tasks, give or receive reactions via emojis, and even add comments below blocks. You can also share a Craft page on the web with a secret link.

With a paid plan, Craft lets you use custom branding and domain for a personalized look as well.

AI integration and pricing

Craft comes with an AI Assistant, while OneNote has Copilot Pro to help you with your documents and notes. They both have the same set of capabilities, like summarize, create outline, instant translation, and more. Both of them use the latest GPT models as well. Copilot Pro is an optional add-on for $20 per month that unlocks the AI assistant across all the Microsoft 365 apps.

As for standard OneNote, it’s free to use. However, once you hit the 5GB OneDrive storage space, purchase one of the Microsoft 365 plans to get more storage. The pricing starts at $2 per month for 100GB.

Craft Plus plan starts at $10 per month, and in addition to the other pro features, it lets you make 500 AI assistant requests per month.

Choose your digital notebook

While both OneNote and Craft are note-taking apps on the surface, they couldn’t have been more different in their execution. OneNote plays it safe with a tried and tested UI, and leverages Microsoft 365 integration to one-up Craft.

Craft is obviously a more feature-rich solution with a whiteboard, web sharing, reminders, calendar, and a better template library. But it's unavailable for Android, the most popular mobile platform out there. That alone can be a deal-breaker for many. If you lean towards the former, check out our dedicated post to learn more about useful OneNote features.