Comparison

Apple Reminders vs NotePlan

By Vyshakh Nair, Founder, Ultra Reminders · Updated June 7, 2026 · 8 min read
Part of the master guide: Apple Reminders vs Every Major To-Do App in 2026

Apple Reminders vs NotePlan is list-based tasks vs daily-note bullet journaling: NotePlan combines markdown notes, scheduled tasks, and time blocks per day, Reminders keeps tasks in lists.

The first time I opened NotePlan, I thought, "Oh, this is just a bullet journal on a screen." Three weeks in, I realized the daily-note model genuinely solves a problem Apple Reminders does not even pretend to address: where do you put the loose thoughts, meeting notes, and half-formed tasks that come up during a single day, all in one place. Apple Reminders forces a separation between "task with date" and "note about the task". NotePlan collapses that into one daily markdown file.

I tested both for six weeks on macOS 26.1 in spring 2026, with the same iCloud reminders feeding NotePlan and a habit of writing morning pages. Here is the honest read on where each tool earns its place.

Quick verdict

NotePlan wins if you keep daily notes and want time-blocking + tasks + markdown notes in one canvas per day. Apple Reminders wins if you mostly need dated tasks and your notes live elsewhere (Notes, Bear, Obsidian). For ADHD or AI-assisted daily planning that does not require you to keep journaling discipline, look at Ultra Reminders, which solves a related but different problem. If you're newly diagnosed with ADHD and trying to figure out whether journaling discipline is realistic for you, the ADHD type quiz is a useful starting point.

Side by side

Feature Apple Reminders NotePlan
Price Free (built-in) $14.99/year basic or $89.99/year Plus (subscription)
Platform iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch iPhone, iPad, Mac (no Watch app)
Tasks Yes (native) Yes (markdown checkboxes, syncs with Reminders)
Daily notes No Yes, one file per day, automatic
Markdown No (plain text notes) Native markdown, with templates
Time-blocking No Yes, inline in the daily note
Calendar integration Calendar app shows reminders Reads + displays Apple/Google/Outlook events
Recurring rules Basic plus custom interval Markdown syntax for recurrence
Wiki-style note linking No Yes, [[link]] syntax
Tags Yes (hashtag) Yes (hashtag, with autocomplete)
Smart lists / filters Yes Yes (saved searches, custom filters)
Backlinks No Yes
Theme + appearance Limited Highly customizable
Sync iCloud iCloud (file-based, plain markdown)
Apple Watch Yes, polished No native app
Sharing iCloud shared lists with @mention Limited, no native sharing
Templates Yes (basic) Yes (markdown templates with placeholders)

Where Apple Reminders wins

  • Free, built-in, no subscription. NotePlan basic is $14.99/year, Plus is $89.99/year. Apple Reminders is $0 forever.
  • Apple Watch. Reminders has a polished Watch app. NotePlan does not have a Watch app as of last we checked.
  • Siri capture. Native "remind me to..." goes into Apple Reminders. NotePlan can pull these in but you cannot Siri-capture into a daily note directly.
  • Action Button + first-party hardware integration. iPhone 15 Pro+ Action Button lands captures in Reminders. No third-party app gets this access.
  • iCloud shared lists with @mention assignment. NotePlan is single-user by design. No native sharing model for daily notes.
  • Apple Intelligence integration. Grocery auto-categorization, email-to-reminder, sorted Today view. NotePlan does not have AI surfaces at this depth.
  • Subtasks and sections. Reminders has both, native to the app. NotePlan uses markdown indentation which works fine but the visual treatment is plainer.
  • Family-friendly shared lists. Apple's shared lists are zero-friction. NotePlan is not built for households.
  • Lower lock-in to a paid tool. Apple Reminders is built into the OS. NotePlan needs an active subscription to keep most features working.

Where NotePlan wins

  • Daily notes as a first-class concept. Every day gets a markdown file. Meeting notes, task list, time blocks, journal entries all live together. Apple Reminders cannot do this; you would need Reminders + Notes + Calendar in three apps.
  • Time-blocking inline. You write 8:00 - 9:00 deep work on quarterly review in the daily note and NotePlan treats it as a time block. Drag to reschedule. Apple Reminders has no equivalent.
  • Native markdown. Headings, lists, links, code blocks, tables. Apple Reminders' notes field is plain text, no formatting.
  • Wiki-style linking. [[2026-05-14]] links to that day's note. [[Project Apollo]] links to a project file. Backlinks show you "where else did I mention this". Apple Reminders has no concept of this.
  • Markdown-based file storage. Your data is plain markdown files in iCloud or Dropbox. If NotePlan disappears tomorrow, your notes are still readable in any text editor. Apple Reminders is locked in iCloud's proprietary store.
  • Bullet-journal-style templates. Daily, weekly, monthly templates with placeholder variables. A "weekly review" template that stamps out the right structure every Sunday is genuinely useful for the journaling-minded.
  • Stronger meeting-notes workflow. Drag a calendar event into a daily note, NotePlan creates a heading with the event title and lets you type notes underneath. Apple Reminders cannot do this.
  • Saved searches across notes. Find all tasks tagged #waiting-for across every daily note in the last 30 days. Strong for review rituals.

"NotePlan made me realize the problem was not my task manager, it was that I had tasks, notes, and calendar in three different apps. One place per day fixed everything."
paraphrased from r/productivity, March 2026

"I love NotePlan, but the subscription tier confused me. Basic is fine until you want sync to Plus features, then you are at $90/year and questioning life choices."
paraphrased from r/macapps, January 2026

Pricing

Apple Reminders is free.

NotePlan moved to a subscription model a few years back. The basic plan is around $14.99/year, which covers local use and basic features. The Plus plan, which adds the AI features, cloud backup, sync across devices, advanced templates, and Pro support, is $89.99/year as of last we checked. Pricing has shifted over time, check the current NotePlan site.

Three-year total cost of ownership:

  • Apple Reminders: $0
  • NotePlan Basic: $14.99 x 3 = ~$45
  • NotePlan Plus: $89.99 x 3 = ~$270
  • Ultra Reminders: $35 one-time, lifetime, Mac only

NotePlan Plus is among the most expensive of any productivity tool over three years. The basic tier is more reasonable but locks out enough features (sync, AI, templates) that most heavy users end up on Plus. For other ways to combine notes and tasks, see Apple Reminders alternatives and Apple Notes vs Reminders for the lighter native combo.

Who should pick which

  1. You are a bullet-journal person who lives in daily pages. Pick NotePlan. The daily-note model is the whole pitch and nothing else does it this well.
  2. You take a lot of meeting notes and want them sitting next to your tasks for the day. Pick NotePlan. The drag-event-into-daily-note workflow is unmatched.
  3. You write in markdown all day and want your tasks in the same file. Pick NotePlan. Apple Reminders does not do markdown.
  4. Your day is mostly dated tasks (not notes) and you use Apple Notes for the rest. Stay with Apple Reminders. NotePlan would be overkill. The free bullet journal in Apple Reminders write-up shows how to fake the daily-note model on free tier if you want a taste.
  5. You have ADHD and the bottleneck is "I forget what I wrote in yesterday's notes". Look at Ultra Reminders. NotePlan is great if you have journaling discipline; if you do not, the daily notes pile up unread. Ultra's AI triage surfaces what matters without requiring you to keep up the journaling habit. The forget-what-I-wrote loop is closely tied to time blindness, the difficulty estimating how recently or how long ago something happened.
  6. You manage family chores or shared household tasks. Apple Reminders. NotePlan is single-user.
  7. You use Obsidian for notes already and want to bridge to tasks. Honestly, you might not need NotePlan. Obsidian Tasks plugin + Apple Reminders bridge can give you the same daily-note feel. Or pick NotePlan if you want it pre-built.
  8. You travel often and live on Apple Watch. Stay with Apple Reminders. NotePlan has no Watch app.
  9. You want a weekly-review ritual baked into the tool. NotePlan's templates make this concrete. Apple Reminders requires building it yourself (see the weekly review in Apple Reminders for how).

The way I think about it: NotePlan is for people whose problem is "I have notes AND tasks AND calendar AND they should all be in one place per day". Apple Reminders solves the task slice. If notes are an afterthought for you, NotePlan is overkill. If notes are central, NotePlan is one of the best tools out there and Apple Reminders cannot follow it into the daily-note territory.

For a different angle, Apple Reminders vs Notion covers the database-heavy alternative, and Apple Reminders vs Things 3 covers the structured-task angle without the notes layer.

A note on NotePlan + Apple Reminders coexistence

NotePlan reads from and writes back to Apple Reminders via EventKit. So:

  • Tasks created in NotePlan show up in Apple Reminders.
  • Edits in either app sync to the other.
  • Apple Watch and Siri capture still work, because the data is in iCloud Reminders.
  • If you cancel NotePlan, your tasks are not stranded.

What does NOT sync back: the markdown notes themselves, daily-note headings, time blocks, links between notes. Those are NotePlan-specific. If you cancel NotePlan, you keep the markdown files (they are stored in iCloud or Dropbox as plain .md), but the rich linking and time-block features are lost without NotePlan to render them.

So the practical play for a lot of users: use Apple Reminders on iPhone + Watch for capture and quick task management, use NotePlan on Mac for the daily-note and journaling layer. Tasks live in iCloud, accessible to both. Notes live in markdown files, accessible to any editor.

"I treat NotePlan as my daily journal app that happens to read tasks from Reminders. The Reminders side stays simple. NotePlan stays in the markdown lane. They each do one job."
paraphrased from r/PKMS, April 2026

FAQ

Q: Does NotePlan replace Apple Reminders?

A: No, it reads from Apple Reminders via EventKit. Tasks live in iCloud regardless. NotePlan adds the daily-note, markdown, and time-blocking layers on top. If you cancel NotePlan, your tasks remain in Apple Reminders intact.

Q: Is NotePlan worth the subscription?

A: Depends on whether you actually use daily notes. If you write a daily journal, take meeting notes, or run a bullet journal, NotePlan is one of the best tools for it. If you just need dated tasks, Apple Reminders does that for free. The Plus tier at $90/year is hard to justify unless you use the AI features and cross-device sync heavily.

Q: Where are NotePlan notes stored?

A: Plain markdown files in iCloud or Dropbox, your choice. This is one of NotePlan's strengths: your data is portable. If NotePlan disappears, the markdown files are still readable in any text editor (BBEdit, Obsidian, VS Code, etc.).

Q: Does NotePlan work on iPhone?

A: Yes, there is an iOS/iPadOS app. No Apple Watch app, though, as of last we checked. The iPhone app handles daily notes and tasks, but the screen size makes it more of a viewer than a primary editor for most users.

Q: Can I time-block in Apple Reminders?

A: Not directly inside Reminders, no. You can create calendar events for blocks and link reminders to them, or use a Shortcut to push a reminder onto your calendar at a chosen time, but the unified canvas NotePlan offers is not available natively. Ultra Reminders adds a daily-plan view that approaches this, with the added benefit of AI-suggesting which tasks should be blocked.

Ultra Reminders solves daily notes plus tasks in one place without a database setup. $35 lifetime purchase, 14-day money-back guarantee, at ultrareminders.com.