Is Notion free?
Answered (2022)

Is it worth the hype? Why are so many people loving Notion? Let's dive deeper into the beloved note-taking app and see why people are going crazy over it
A group of Notion blocks and a question as to whether is Notion free?
What is Notion?
Is Notion free?
Why is Notion free?
What plan is for me?
Can I build websites with Notion?
Can I add a custom domain to a Notion page?
What other free Notion resources are there?

If you've searched for this question - "Is Notion Free?" - you might've already heard of Notion. If not, we'll explain below what Notion is, but for the time being, let's get the short answer out of the way:

Yes, Notion has a free plan and you can make the most out of it by sticking to freemium. Power users might need a paid plan, but most will be perfectly fine with the Notion free plan. What's more: with our free Notion website builder, you can turn Notion pages into websites, for free as well. We'll host your Notion website for free!

What is Notion?

Know already what Notion is and does? Scroll below to jump to the next section, where we explore in detail Notion's freemium plan, what plan works best for you, why is Notion free + more.

Notion's homepage

Notion has been trivially called a "just another note-taking app", but it's definitely more than that. Notion themselves call it the one-in-all workspace for your notes, tasks, wikis and databases, but it's certainly more than that. To put it in simple English:

Notion is a simpler combination of the Google/Microsoft Suite of apps: docs, folders, spreadsheets, etc. With Notion, you can write documents & spreadsheets, organize files around and more.

If that wasn't clear, let's try different ways to explain Notion:

  • Explanation 2: if you think of a boiled-down version of Google Docs + Google Sheets + all the other tools, you'll get it mostly right
  • Explanation 3: think of a note-taking app that looks minimalist, but in fact gets powerful, the more you discover it. Maybe like some Apple products.
  • Explanation 4: Notion is a Microsoft Word, stripped down to look simple, but upon which other "sections" have been built: simple tables, expandable lists, embeds, table of contents blocks, etc.
  • Explanation 5: Notion is a note-taking app where every paragraph, image, table, list, etc is a block. You can move blocks around, the same way you can move folders on your desktop: drag and drop.

At the same time, people have loved making Notion websites with Simple.ink, simply because it's quite hard to mess it up.

The pages look clean and aesthetic, no matter what. It's quite hard to make it look ugly. The simplicity and minimalism of the pages give people focus, clarity and confidence in how their documents, tables, spreadsheets, or even websites look like. Besides, Notion is very flexible and customizable.

So what's all the rage? Many people love and swear by Notion but... why?

Why do people love Notion so much?

To put it simply, it's because of the ease of use.

Reddit comments with positive opinions about Notion

People start "getting it" super fast, because of the simplicity we've mentioned above. At the same time, it doesn't stop there: Notion can also go a long way, with people making complex systems to organize their life, their business, their classroom, etc.

So that's really the answer: the app has managed to strike a perfect balance: easy to be picked up by your grandparents, but complex enough to keep you into it, even months after you started using it.

It's worth mentioning that the illustration style Notion have put out caught on quite a few people: sure, they're not the first to invent this type of illustrations, but the branding has really gone well together, with the app.

Is Notion Free?

Yes, Notion has got a very generous free plan, which works best for 99% of the people out there.

Notion used to have a limit of 1,000 "blocks" (meaning: a paragraph is a block, an image is a block, etc) back in the day, but they removed that eventually. And that's where things changed: now Notion is pretty much unlimited, given what most people need out of it.

So what's free? Quite a few things:

Notion's pricing page
Notion's pricing, as of early 2022. May change in the future!
  • Unlimited pages, or blocks
  • You can upload files up to 5MB - pretty good, if you don't want to use it as a Google Drive/Dropbox/etc replacement. If you do, however, the paid plan gives you unlimited storage which is pretty generous
  • Collaboration: you can share a link to your page(s) and have other people edit it
  • Access to all features: nothing is restricted
  • Bulk export functions

What's more, if you plan to turn a Notion page into a website, or to add a custom domain to your Notion page (e.g. yourname.com), that's free as well, with our tool Simple.ink. We'll even host your website!

Is Notion free for personal use?

As of mid-2020, yes, Notion is free for personal use, with a very generous freemium plan. Notion for students gives you their "Personal Pro" plan for free!

There is no limit in terms of how many pages you can create or how many elements (think: one paragraph is a "block", one image is a "block") you can make.

Unless you're a power user who needs some special features, you can stick to the freemium Notion plan and enjoy its' features. 99% of users will be perfectly ok with the free plan!

Is Notion free for students forever?

Most probably yes, Notion will continue to be free forever.

Ever since May 2020, Notion restricted its limits on the number of blocks you can create. But even before then, Notion had a free version.

Most software companies these days offer a free plan to make it super easy for users to start using their product.

What's more: reverting a decision like that (the limit removal of the freemium plan) is usually hurting a tech company, should they ever do it. The conclusion? It's strongly believed that Notion will continue to remain free with its generous free plan, for the time being. Not doing that would probably cause more damage than they'd prefer.

So our recommendation is: yes, feel free to use Notion and use it as your central hub - you're safe!

Is Notion free for Windows?

Notion does not discriminate against operating systems (such as Mac, iOS, Android, Windows), so yes, Notion is free for Windows as well!

To download it, simply:

How to download the Notion app for Windows
  1. Go to Notion.com
  2. Look for their download link in the bar at the top of the website
  3. Download and install the app

Enjoy!

Why is Notion free?

You might be wondering why is Notion doing this — and it's a valid question: why give all this value for free?

I mean let's be honest, it's giving away stuff that other (big) companies charge for - take Microsoft for example: Word, Excel, OneDrive. And Notion is the smaller company! So... how does it work?

Many software companies offer freemium plans these days. It's an effort to make it easier for users to join. Why? Once you join, chances are you'll stick to it. Sure, you can leave anytime but... why bother, if it's working?

That's Notion's strategy here as well: offering a lot of free value will speed up the adoption of their app. And they're doing a pretty good job! User are loving it and Notion grows like crazy.

Most of the time, the plan is: grow the user base first, worry about monetization later. That's what Facebook, Google and so many others have done.

And how do you pay for this expensive growth? With funding from investors (Notion has raised hundreds of millions of USD), but also with paying customers.

What we estimate is the following: as time goes by, Notion will continue to offer its free plan, but will also add more features that will require a paid plan. If they're smart (and they seem like they are), they'll probably charge only those people who, in turn, make money using Notion. Think of payment processors: they make money when users make money.

But here's the good news: if you like it today, with the free features, it'll probably be the same (we estimate) in the future. And this has been confirmed time and time again: Notion has released new features and they've pushed them to all users, most of the time.

The conclusion: expect Notion to offer the same service, with more efforts to monetise some features that are not yet available, at a later point.

What plan is for me? Should I upgrade to a paid Notion plan? Is a paid Notion plan worth it?

We've researched hundreds of discussions from paying users.

Here's why Notion users upgrade to a paid plan (and quotes from people who've done it):

Notion.com's pricing table for its features
Notion's table of features, as of early 2022. May change in the future!
  • They need to upload files bigger than 5MB
  • "I just started to use it as a way of organizing all my files and ditched Dropbox. I don't have many files, but they take up a lot of space. The "unlimited" file size is also a major plus. No brainer for me"
  • They need a "version history" of their files. Meaning: how did this page look like 2 months ago? What about 2 days ago? If you want to see the changes at every stage (and have all those stages saved), you'll need version history
  • "I was living with free notion till I cannot stand the limited size of file uploads and history of recently altered pages"
  • They need to collaborate with a group over ALL the files in a workspace: a family, a group of clients, teammates, etc
  • "I share pages with lots of different people including family members and clients. Worth it for me."
  • They simply want to support Notion for what they've done. Yes, really! Just a way of saying thank you.
  • "I'm not even near the limit but I freaking love notion so I want to support the Devs."
  • "I just pay. I didn’t even reach the limits, it’s just that the app is worth the money."

Our conclusion? Use the free plan (it costs you nothing so...), and only upgrade if you reach a hard limit.

Can I build websites with Notion?

You absolutely can and many people use Notion pages as the backbone of their website.

Turning a page into a website takes 1 minute with Simple.ink and here are the most beautiful parts:

Turning a photography page into a Notion website
  • Every change you make in your Notion will be reflected on your website. That's right - no more complicated, spaghetti website builders. Just edit your Notion page and your Notion website is edited
  • No-code required
  • We'll host your Notion website - oh, and we've got a generous free plan
  • It's fast
  • It's seamless
  • Once people start building websites with Notion and Simple.ink, they get addicted: lower barriers for creation means... more creation!

Check out our list of beautiful, free Notion templates to 10x your creation process!

Can I add a custom domain to a free Notion account?

Yes you can! To put it shortly, there are 3 ways:

Turning a Notion page into a website with a custom domain
  • There's a free, imperfect way, with your own domain (one that you have to have purchased)
  • There's a free way, where you get a .simple.ink domain (e.g. angela.simple.ink) - if it's still available. Sign up now to claim your domain!
  • There's a perfect way, with your own domain

Check out our dedicated page to see all those 3 methods!

What other free Notion resources are there?

Here's the thing: Simple.ink is a Notion website builder, and our strategy for growth is super simple.

We want to offer as many free, valuable things to people. Why?

In turn, people will get to know about us. Some will become paying customers, others will become friends. Here's a list of a couple of things we've made that will help you:

Check out our navigation bar (top of the page) to see everything we've made for you!