In April 2024, Proton acquired Standard Notes — the E2E-encrypted note-taking app that had been running independently since 2017. At the time, the privacy community reaction split roughly in half: some people were relieved a well-built privacy tool was getting more resources, and some were bracing for it to get absorbed, rebranded, and quietly enshittified.
Two years in, here's what actually happened.
What changed
Proton added dedicated engineers to the Standard Notes team and spent most of 2025 doing the unglamorous work: fixing long-standing bugs, improving performance across platforms, and reinforcing the infrastructure. The 2025 update shipped 30+ fixes — things like search not working across formatted text in the Super editor, bold formatting always being applied when pasting from Google Docs, and font size not updating in the plain editor. Not headline features, but the kind of issues that quietly drive people away.
New features did land too. The Super editor got image alignment options, a toolbar shortcut for creating notes from selected text, and a "resume where you left off" option that remembers your cursor position. Not transformative, but the app is clearly getting attention it wasn't getting before.
Infrastructure-wise, Proton's involvement shows. Standard Notes' own progress post describes improved reliability and resilience — the kind of thing you only notice when sync stops failing.
What didn't change
Quite a bit, and intentionally so.
Standard Notes is still its own product with its own brand, pricing, and roadmap. It hasn't been folded into Proton Unlimited or renamed "Proton Notes." The code is still open source. The four independent security audits are still on record. Self-hosting is still supported and documented.
If you had an existing subscription — including a five-year plan — it's been honored at the original price. Nothing was renegotiated after the acquisition.
This mirrors how Proton handled its SimpleLogin acquisition: keep the product running independently, improve the infrastructure, and integrate gradually. SimpleLogin eventually got Proton account login. Standard Notes hasn't reached that point yet.
What still hasn't happened: account integration
The most-requested thing on Proton's community forums is single sign-on — log into Standard Notes with your Proton account. As of writing, it doesn't exist. You still need a separate Standard Notes account.
There's no official timeline for this. It may follow the SimpleLogin path and get there eventually, or Standard Notes may stay a fully separate subscription indefinitely. Either outcome is fine from a privacy standpoint; it's just a convenience gap for people who are already in the Proton ecosystem.
Is Standard Notes still worth using in 2026?
Depends on what you need.
The free plan gives you unlimited notes with full E2E encryption across all your devices, plus 2FA. The limitation is format: text only. No rich formatting, no image attachments, no spreadsheet editor. For a private scratchpad or secure journal, it's completely functional.
The paid plans start at $90/year (Productivity) and go to $120/year (Professional). These unlock the Super editor — which handles rich text, tables, checklists, and more — plus file attachments and additional storage. Compared to something like Proton's own suite, which bundles email, Drive, Calendar, and VPN into one subscription, Standard Notes at $90/year is a meaningful additional cost if you're already paying for Proton.
The honest comparison to make is against Obsidian. Obsidian is more powerful — plugin ecosystem, local Markdown files, a graph view that some people find useful and others find gimmicky. But Obsidian doesn't encrypt locally by default, and its paid Sync ($48/year) is the only E2E option for cross-device access. If your primary concern is that your notes can't be read even if your cloud account is compromised, Standard Notes is the cleaner choice. If you want a local-first note system with optional encrypted sync and don't mind complexity, Obsidian works fine.
For people who want everything in the Proton ecosystem — mail, calendar, Drive, VPN — and are looking for a private notes option, Standard Notes fits naturally. It's not bundled yet, but it's built on the same principles, and the teams are clearly aligned.
What's coming in 2026
The 2026 roadmap has two notable items: universal in-note search across all editors (currently search only works within the Super editor) and expanded localization. Neither is groundbreaking, but universal search has been a pain point for a long time.
The short version
Standard Notes didn't get absorbed. It got some much-needed engineering attention, fixed a lot of bugs, and is still running as a distinct product. If you used it before the acquisition, nothing meaningful has changed negatively. If you were considering it, the app is in better shape now than it was in early 2024.
For practical email privacy that pairs well with this, see how to use email aliases with SimpleLogin or Addy.io — SimpleLogin is also a Proton acquisition and has gone through the same "kept independent, gradually integrated" process. The pattern is consistent.
If you want to build out a full privacy stack around Proton, the practical email privacy guide covers how these tools fit together.
Updated April 2026. Original post published when the acquisition was first announced.
