Notion AI alternatives: what to use now that it’s a Business-plan feature
Notion’s Free and Plus plans come with only a trial of Notion AI. The full version, meeting notes included, sits in the Business plan. Here’s what to use instead, and the one case where paying Notion is cheaper.
The short answer
If you write and organize on your own and want AI inside your notes, move to Craft: Plus is $8 a month, or $6.40 billed yearly, with 50 AI credits a month. If it was Notion’s AI meeting notes you wanted, Granola does that job, and its free plan keeps 30 days of meetings. Want Notion without any AI at all? Obsidian is free and doesn’t even ask for an account. If you only used Notion AI to tidy a paragraph now and then, keep free Notion and paste into the free ChatGPT or Claude. One case goes the other way: if your meeting notes have to land in Notion, Notion Business costs less than Notion Plus and Granola’s paid plan together.
The tools in this take
Notion AIAI inside the Notion notes app. Summarizes pages, drafts writing, and answers questions about your notes.Free trial · Beginner-friendly
GranolaMeeting notepad for Mac and Windows. You type brief notes during a call; it expands them afterward. No bot joins the meeting.Free · Beginner-friendly
ChatGPTThe chatbot most people start with. It answers questions, drafts emails, plans trips and makes images, and you can talk to it out loud.Free plan · from $8/month · Beginner-friendly
ClaudeChatbot from Anthropic for writing, analysis and long documents. Free plan; Pro is $20 a month, or $17 a month billed yearly. No image or video generation.Free plan · from $17/month · Beginner-friendly
In this take
Side by side
| Tool | Best for | Free? | What it costs | Skip if |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Craft | Notes and docs with AI built in, on your own | Yes: 1,500 blocks, 15 AI credits | Plus $8/month, or $6.40/month billed yearly (50 AI credits a month) | Your team lives in shared Notion databases |
| Granola | AI meeting notes with no bot in the call | Yes, with 30 days of history | Business $14/month per person: unlimited history, Notion integration | You rarely have meetings |
| Obsidian | Notion without any AI | Yes, no account needed | Free; Sync $4/month billed yearly ($5 monthly) | You want a ready-made team wiki |
| Mem | Notes an assistant reads and follows up on | Yes: 25 new notes a month | Plus $9/month (50 new notes a month); Pro $29/month | You write more than a couple of notes a day |
| ChatGPT or Claude | Occasional rewrites, pasted in by hand | Yes | Free plans are enough for this | You want AI that searches your whole workspace |
| Notion Business | Teams who want Notion’s agent and meeting notes in one place | Free and Plus get a limited trial | $20 per member a month on Notion’s pricing page | You’re one person who mostly writes |
Checked October 23, 2026 on each maker’s own pricing page. Notion’s page has a monthly and yearly switch and says yearly saves up to 20%, so check which one you’re looking at. Craft and Obsidian yearly prices are shown per month.
What changed, and when
Notion’s pricing page lists its AI features on the Free and Plus plans as a limited trial: Notion Agent (chat, writing, autofill and translation), AI Meeting Notes and research mode. The full versions come with Business, at $20 per member a month on that page. Custom Agents cost extra even there: free to try, then $10 per 1,000 Notion credits a month.
The change isn’t new, but people keep running into it. Notion used to sell AI as an add-on of about $10 a month on any plan. It retired that add-on for new Free and Plus customers in May 2025, according to Fello AI and PrimoNotes; people who already paid for it kept access.
Craft if you write alone and want AI inside your notes
Craft is the closest swap if you like Notion’s pages: documents built from blocks, shared with a link, synced across devices. Its pricing page caps the free Starter plan at 1,500 blocks and 1 GB, with 15 AI credits. Plus removes the limits and gives 50 AI credits a month for $8, or $6.40 a month billed yearly.
Two catches. Craft doesn’t say on that page how much one AI credit buys, so heavy AI users can’t tell in advance whether 50 is enough. And Plus is for one person: a shared space needs Family ($15 a month, or $12 billed yearly, for 2 to 6 accounts). When someone on r/Notion asked for cheaper alternatives, Craft and Capacities were the names that came back, though the Craft fan in that thread was also offering a referral link.
Granola if it was the meeting notes you wanted
AI Meeting Notes is one of the features Notion keeps for Business. Granola does the same job without sending a bot into your call: its pricing page describes bot-free capture from your device’s audio. The free Basic plan writes AI notes and keeps 30 days of history. Business, at $14 a month per person, keeps everything and adds integrations, Notion included.
Do the math before you switch. If your notes need to end up in Notion, you’d pay for Notion Plus ($10) and Granola Business ($14): $24 a person on the prices each page shows. Notion Business is listed at $20 and already includes AI Meeting Notes. For that one use, staying with Notion is the cheaper move. More options are in our guide to AI meeting note takers.
Obsidian if you wanted Notion without the AI
Some people want the opposite: a notes app with no AI pushed at them. Obsidian’s pricing page says it’s free without limits, with no sign-up. You pay only for the add-ons: Sync, to keep a phone and a computer in step, is $4 a month billed yearly or $5 monthly, and Publish, to put notes on the web, is $8 a site billed yearly.
The catch is that syncing between devices is the paid part. If you write on a laptop and read on a phone, budget the $4 or set up your own syncing.
Mem if you want an assistant that follows up
Mem reads the notes you write and pulls out tasks and projects to track for you. Its pricing page gives the free plan 25 new notes and 25 messages a month. Plus is $9 a month for 50 of each and 10 hours of voice recording. Pro, at $29, adds a custom routine and one connection to Gmail, Slack or Todoist.
The catch is the note cap. Fifty new notes a month on Plus is under two a day, and Notion’s free plan gives one person unlimited pages. Mem suits a light note-taker who wants follow-ups, not someone who keeps everything.
The free route
If Notion AI was how you fixed a sentence or summarized a page, keep free Notion and use the free ChatGPT or Claude next to it: copy, ask, paste back. What you give up is AI that can search across your whole workspace and answer from it, which is exactly the part Notion now charges Business for.
What we’d do
On your own and writing every day: Craft Plus. Meetings are the job: Granola free, and Notion Business only if the notes must live in Notion. No AI wanted: Obsidian. AI only now and then: free Notion with a free chatbot in another tab.
Related reading on ShipRadar: our Notion AI page, best AI meeting note taker and AI tools for organizing notes.
Sources
Published October 23, 2026. This is ShipRadar’s editorial opinion. Claims are paraphrased from the sources above; we don’t invent quotes, ratings or numbers.