Harbor

Harbor is a private notes app and second brain built as a genuine Evernote alternative: one place to capture notes, documents, scans, and recordings, keep them searchable, and own them for life. It is aimed at anyone who wants a single private home for everything they capture, on every device they use. Harbor describes itself as "Anchored • Private • Yours," and the product is organised around three ideas — save anything in any form, find anything even inside your files, and decide what stays private with optional zero-knowledge encryption. Everything you save syncs the moment you save it, across every device you own. Harbor is positioned as a direct response to a broken promise. In its own words, "Evernote promised to be your second brain. Then it broke the promise." Prices doubled, the free plan was gutted, the app got slow, and data got harder to leave with. Harbor picks up the original idea — one private place for everything, forever — and commits to it in writing. That commitment shows up as promises on the page: no price increase for three years, then capped at 10% a year, and a policy of never holding your data hostage, so that if you stop paying your account goes read-only and you can still export and delete everything. Capture is the first pillar. Harbor lets you save anything, in any form: notes, scans, photos, audio, handwriting, and web clips. The content illustrates this with a couple sorting mail and scanning documents together at a sunlit table, with the scanned document then captured and saved in Harbor. The point is that whether what you want to keep arrives as a typed note, a photographed page, a scanned PDF, a recording, or a handwritten sheet, Harbor gives it a home. Because capture lives in the same place as everything else, you are not scattering memories across separate apps for scanning, recording, and writing. Find is the second pillar, and it is what makes that captured material useful. Harbor reads the words inside your photos, scanned PDFs, and even your handwriting, so a two-word search surfaces the exact page. Your recordings become searchable transcripts, too. The page shows a worked example: searching the word "receipt" returns seven results, including a Monroe County business tax receipt stored as county_tax_receipt_2026.pdf and an OCR-indexed F-250 brake job scan stored as f250_brake_invoice_2023.pdf. That means the search box reaches material that would normally be invisible — text baked into images, invoices, and scanned paperwork — instead of stopping at filenames and typed titles. Privacy is the third pillar. Harbor lets you decide what is private. You can turn on zero-knowledge encryption for any note or notebook, and only you hold the key. The guidance is to lock down the sensitive stuff and keep everything else fully searchable and AI-ready. On the security side, Harbor lists zero-knowledge encryption and privacy by principle, and states plainly that your data is never sold, mined, or shared: "Your brain, not a company's." Optional rather than all-or-nothing encryption matters because it lets you protect documents such as tax records or personal notes without giving up search and AI features on the rest of your library. Harbor also runs everywhere you are, even offline. The apps are described as genuinely native — fast and light, "not a web page in a wrapper." Everything works with no signal and syncs the moment you're back. The platforms listed are Mac, Windows, iPhone, iPad, Android, and Web. Independently, Harbor offers the Web Clipper: you can clip an article, a full page, a bookmark, or a screenshot, mark it up, and then drop it straight into the right notebook without ever leaving the page. The clipper supports Simplified article, Full page, Bookmark, and Screenshot capture modes and runs in Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and Safari. The bring-your-own-AI approach is a defining feature rather than an add-on. Harbor points out that you already pay for ChatGPT or Claude, so you can connect one to Harbor to search, add, and organize your notes — instead of paying Harbor for a weaker AI baked in. The connection is opened through API, CLI, and MCP, and your keys and data stay yours, with the ability to revoke access anytime. In Harbor's framing: "We don't build AI into Harbor — we open the door to yours." Beyond capture and search, Harbor gathers the rest of a second brain in one place. Notes and notebooks are simple — no Markdown, no clever-tag gymnastics. Tasks and reminders sit right next to your notes, with due dates, recurrence, and priority. Templates let you start faster with ready-made note structures you build once. Version history saves every change, with one-click restore, so you never lose an edit. Public links let you share any note read-only, with no account needed to view it. Passkeys and 2FA let you sign in your way — passkeys, Apple, Google, and full device control. Import and export bring Evernote in and let you take everything out anytime, in the open. And security is treated as a principle: zero-knowledge encryption and privacy that never sells your data. The "Own it for life" promise is central to how Harbor is sold. Stop paying and your memories don't vanish — your account goes read-only and you can still export everything. A real API, MCP, and one-click export mean you can leave anytime, because Harbor says it wants you to stay because Harbor is great, not because you're stuck. The written promises are: price locked (no increase for 3 years, then capped at 10% a year), never held hostage, yours to leave with, and personal — never enterprise. Harbor also states there is no gutted free tier and no surprise doubling, and that its price is one it promises to keep fair. Switching from Evernote is handled with one-step import that brings your notebooks, tags, checklists, attachments, and clips — nothing left behind. Pricing is deliberately simple: one plan, one fair price, plus a free plan to start with no credit card. Harbor Unlimited costs $8.25 per month on annual billing ($99 billed yearly, cancel anytime), and monthly and annual options are offered with an annual discount of 17%. The plan includes unlimited notes, notebooks and devices; OCR search, all apps and the Web Clipper; optional zero-knowledge encryption; API, CLI and MCP to bring your own AI; and import and export anytime. Harbor's unique approach is to open the door to the AI you already use rather than build a weaker one in. You connect ChatGPT, Claude, Cursor and your tools to Harbor through API, CLI and MCP, and those tools can search, add, and organize your notes. Because your keys and data stay yours and access can be revoked anytime, the AI connection does not compromise the privacy model — and because only the content you choose to encrypt is locked, everything else remains fully searchable and AI-ready. Harbor is downloadable for Mac (Universal .dmg), Windows (Installer .exe), iPhone and iPad (App Store), Android (Google Play), and the Web Clipper (Chrome, Firefox and more). The benefits follow directly from those choices. You get one private library where scanned paperwork, recordings, photos and handwritten pages are all searchable by their contents, so you can retrieve the exact page with a two-word search. You get the ability to encrypt individual notes or notebooks while leaving the rest searchable and AI-ready, rather than choosing between privacy and convenience. You get native apps that keep working offline and sync when you are back, so you can capture on a phone in the field and find it on a desktop later. And you get the freedom to leave — full export on every plan, plus a real API, CLI and MCP. Concrete workflows described in the content include capturing a scanned business or tax receipt and later finding it by searching for "receipt," along with an OCR-indexed invoice for a brake job stored next to it. Another is clipping a news article — such as a Bloomberg article on China's GDP growth — annotating it and dropping it into the right notebook from the page itself. A third is connecting ChatGPT or Claude to Harbor so it can search, add and organize notes. A fourth is locking sensitive notes and notebooks behind zero-knowledge encryption while keeping the rest of the library open to search. A fifth is switching from Evernote in one step, carrying notebooks, tags, checklists, attachments and clips across, and exporting everything later if you choose to leave. Harbor is for people who want a private, cross-platform second brain and are wary of subscription apps that raise prices, gut free tiers, or trap their data. It is explicitly personal, not enterprise: your data is never sold, mined, or shared. It supports Mac, Windows, iPhone, iPad, Android and web, with a CLI, API and MCP for connecting the AI tools you already have. Pricing starts on a free plan with no credit card, and Harbor Unlimited is $8.25 per month billed yearly at $99, cancel anytime, with unlimited notes, notebooks and devices, OCR search, all apps and the Web Clipper, optional zero-knowledge encryption, API, CLI and MCP, and import and export anytime. The takeaway is that Harbor's primary value is ownership. It is a private notes app and Evernote alternative you own for life: capture anything in any form, find anything even inside your files with OCR and transcripts, encrypt only what needs encrypting, work natively offline across every device, connect the AI you already pay for, and export everything whenever you like — all backed by promises put in writing, including a price locked for three years and then capped at 10% a year.