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Flipboard vs Microsoft OneNote

Flipboard logo

Flipboard

News

Your personal magazine for news and stories

From
Free
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite
Microsoft OneNote logo

Microsoft OneNote

Productivity

Microsoft's free-form notebook, free with a Microsoft account and synced through OneDrive

From
Free
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite

The short version

  • Each has a real cost: Flipboard no pricing information is published on the website; Microsoft OneNote notes live in a proprietary notebook format on OneDrive or SharePoint and the only exports are a OneNote file, a PDF or a Word document, produced section by section, so a large notebook is effectively unmovable to any other tool.
  • They diverge on capability: Flipboard covers Magazine-style layout, Microsoft OneNote covers Free-form page canvas.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 30 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Flipboard and Microsoft OneNote actually diverge.

Attributes where Flipboard and Microsoft OneNote differ
AttributeFlipboardMicrosoft OneNote
Pricing modelfreefreemium
PlatformsWeb, Ios, AndroidWeb, IOS, Android, MacOS, Windows
CategoryNewsProductivity
Founded20101975

Identical on both: starting price (Free), free tier (Yes), user rating (Not yet rated).

What each one covers

Drawn from each product's published feature list. An absence here means we hold no record of it - not that the product lacks it.

Only in Flipboard

  • Magazine-style layout
  • Content curation
  • Topic discovery
  • Smart magazines
  • Social sharing
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn

Only in Microsoft OneNote

  • Free-form page canvas
  • Notebook hierarchy
  • Indexed handwriting
  • Audio recording
  • Web clipper and Outlook capture
  • Shared notebooks
  • Cross-platform clients
  • Tags and cross-notebook search

What people use each for

The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.

Flipboard

  • News consumptionnot Microsoft OneNote
  • Content discoverynot Microsoft OneNote
  • Magazine creationnot Microsoft OneNote
  • Social readingnot Microsoft OneNote

Microsoft OneNote

  • Handwritten notes on a pen tablet that you still need to find months later by searching for a word you wrote.not Flipboard
  • Lecture or meeting notes where a recording needs to line up with what you were typing at the time.not Flipboard
  • A team already inside Microsoft 365 that needs a shared notebook without buying anything or seeking approval.not Flipboard
  • Collecting mixed material such as screenshots, clippings and sketches on one page, where a document editor would force a linear structure.not Flipboard

Where each one falls short

Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.

Flipboard

  • No pricing information is published on the website

Microsoft OneNote

  • Notes live in a proprietary notebook format on OneDrive or SharePoint and the only exports are a OneNote file, a PDF or a Word document, produced section by section, so a large notebook is effectively unmovable to any other tool.
  • Personal notebooks consume OneDrive quota, which is 5 GB on a free Microsoft account, so a notebook full of scans, images and recordings quietly exhausts the whole account including the space Outlook needs for mail.
  • Sync happens at section level and conflicts are resolved by placing both versions on the page, so simultaneous edits to a large or media-heavy section produce duplicated content that somebody has to merge by hand.
  • Search behaves differently across clients, so what the Windows desktop app finds inside handwriting, images and attachments is not necessarily what the browser or mobile version finds, and the same query gives different answers on different devices.
  • There is no relational structure, no database and no properties, so anything that needs a table of records with fields has to be maintained by hand or moved elsewhere, and OneNote's own tables cannot be queried or filtered.

Pricing, plan by plan

Flipboard

Free
  • FreeFree
    • Unlimited reading
    • Personalized feeds
    • Magazine creation

Microsoft OneNote

Free

No published plan breakdown. See the Microsoft OneNote review.

Which should you pick?

Choose Flipboard if

  • You need magazine-style layout.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You work on Web, Ios, Android.
  • You also want content curation.
Flipboard review

Choose Microsoft OneNote if

  • You need free-form page canvas.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You work on Web, IOS, Android, MacOS, Windows.
  • You also want notebook hierarchy.
Microsoft OneNote review

Questions people ask

Is Flipboard or Microsoft OneNote better?
Neither clearly leads. Flipboard starts at Free and Microsoft OneNote at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Flipboard or Microsoft OneNote?
Flipboard starts at Free and Microsoft OneNote at Free.
Does Flipboard or Microsoft OneNote run on more platforms?
Flipboard runs on Web, Ios, Android. Microsoft OneNote runs on Web, IOS, Android, MacOS, Windows.
Can I use Flipboard for free?
Both have a free tier, so you can try either at no cost before committing.
What is Flipboard best used for?
Flipboard is most often used for news consumption, content discovery, magazine creation, social reading. Of those, news consumption and content discovery are not what Microsoft OneNote is typically brought in for.
What can Flipboard do that Microsoft OneNote cannot?
Flipboard covers Magazine-style layout, Content curation, Topic discovery, Smart magazines. Microsoft OneNote covers Free-form page canvas, Notebook hierarchy, Indexed handwriting, Audio recording.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Flipboard: How much does Flipboard cost?

No pricing information is disclosed on Flipboard's website. The service provides options to sign up and log in, but the specific pricing model or whether the service is free or paid is not stated.

Source
Microsoft OneNote: Is OneNote really free?

Yes. The application is free with a Microsoft account, with no time limit and no feature gate. What you may end up paying for is the OneDrive storage the notebooks consume.

Flipboard: Is Flipboard free or paid?

Flipboard's pricing model is not disclosed on their public website. Users can access the platform by signing up or logging in, but costs and features associated with different tiers are not published.

Source
Microsoft OneNote: Can I keep notebooks off Microsoft's cloud?

The Windows desktop app can keep local notebooks, but they will not sync to other devices and any shared access requires OneDrive or SharePoint.

Microsoft OneNote: How do I get my notes out?

Section by section as a OneNote file, a PDF or a Word document. A OneNote package preserves a whole notebook but only for another copy of OneNote. Third-party converters exist and the page layout usually does not survive them.

Microsoft OneNote: Which version should I install?

Microsoft consolidated onto a single OneNote application on Windows after retiring the Store version, so install the one distributed with Microsoft 365 rather than looking for an alternative.

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