Short answer: No — it is Notion but worse, pricier, and locked inside Apple's walled garden. Save your money.
Worth it for: Apple diehards allergic to Notion Skip if: You own any non-Apple device or value features over aesthetics Better alternative: Notion
Craft won an Apple Design Award, and that is basically the only argument people can make for it. Strip away the animations and you are left with a note-taking app that does less than free alternatives. In 2026, that is not a product — it is a design portfolio piece.
When It IS Worth It
You are deep in the Apple ecosystem and genuinely allergic to Notion. Craft wins exactly one battle: native Apple feel. If SwiftUI animations and system-level integration matter more to you than actual functionality, congratulations — you are Craft's target audience.
You write short documents and share them as web links. Craft's document sharing creates clean, beautiful web pages. For quick proposals or brief documents you want to share publicly, the experience is smoother than Notion's sharing.
You want something between Apple Notes and Notion. If Apple Notes is too simple but Notion feels overwhelming, Craft occupies a narrow middle ground. But you should know: most people who want "simpler than Notion" actually just need to use fewer Notion features.
When It Is NOT Worth It
For 95% of productivity tool users. Craft's "blocks" are just Notion's feature set with half the functionality removed. Need tables? Worse than Notion. Databases? Laughable compared to Notion. Cross-platform access? Forget it. The $5/month pricing is especially offensive for what amounts to a Notes.app with delusions of grandeur.
You collaborate with anyone who does not use Apple. Craft's collaboration features are laughably limited. Real-time editing is clunky. Permissions are basic. And if your team includes a single Windows or Android user, the entire system breaks down.
You have any ambition to build a knowledge base. Craft has no databases, no automations, no API worth mentioning. Notion, Obsidian, and even Apple Notes with folders offer more structural flexibility for growing document collections.
You care about data portability. Your notes are trapped in Craft's proprietary format. Export options exist but lose formatting. If you ever want to leave, you will pay the switching tax.
Who Should NOT Buy This
- Teams — collaboration tools are laughably bad compared to Notion or Google Docs
- Windows/Android users — the app literally does not exist for you
- Power users — no databases, no advanced formulas, no real integrations
- Budget-conscious users — $5/month when Notion's free tier does more is hard to justify
- Students — Notion offers free education plans with full features; Craft does not match that value
- Anyone building a second brain — Obsidian does this infinitely better for the same price
Cheaper or Better Alternatives
| Alternative | Price | My Take |
|---|---|---|
| Notion | Free/$8 | Actually does everything Craft pretends to, and cross-platform |
| Obsidian | Free/$8 | For people who care about longevity and data ownership over looks |
| Apple Notes | Free | If you are already this deep in Apple's ecosystem, just commit to the free option |
| Logseq | Free | Open-source outliner with graph view — more power, zero cost |
| Bear | $2.99/month | If you just want pretty Markdown notes on Apple, this is cheaper |
Check out our Airtable review for comparison. Check out our Alfred Powerpack review for comparison.
What Annoys Me About Craft
- The Apple Design Award is used as a substitute for substance. Pretty animations do not make up for missing features. You cannot sort, filter, or query your notes in any meaningful way. Every time someone defends Craft, they mention the animations first. That is the problem — when the best thing about your productivity tool is how it looks, you have a screensaver, not software.
- The pricing model is deceptive. The free tier is crippled to 1,000 blocks. You hit that limit within a week of serious use, forcing an upgrade. And $5/month for what you get is insulting when Notion's free tier gives you unlimited blocks.
- No web app. In 2026, a productivity tool without web access is disqualifying for most workflows. Need to check a note from a public computer? A friend's laptop? Your work PC? Too bad.
- Feature gap keeps growing. While Notion adds AI, databases, and integrations constantly, Craft mostly adds visual polish. The gap widens every quarter.
- Export is a trap. Try exporting to Markdown and watch your formatting dissolve. Links break, nested pages flatten, and inline images vanish. They make it easy to get your data in, and painful to get it out. That is not a product design — it is a hostage negotiation.
The collaborative features work fine in theory but nobody outside the Apple world will ever use them with you. Sharing a Craft document to non-Craft users produces a read-only web view that feels like a screenshot of a document rather than the real thing.
Final Verdict
skip. Craft is the epitome of style over substance — a Notes.app reskin charging Notion prices for Notion Lite functionality. The only innovation here is convincing Apple users to pay for features they already get better elsewhere.
If you genuinely cannot stand Notion's interface, try Bear or Obsidian first. Both are cheaper, more capable, and will not leave you wishing you had chosen something else six months from now.
FAQ
But Craft won an Apple Design Award!
So did the butterfly keyboard. Awards do not fix missing features.
Isn't the UI smoother than Notion?
Marginally — and only if you ignore Notion's web and Windows apps that actually function across platforms.
What if I only use Apple devices?
You are still better off with Apple Notes (free) or Obsidian (actually powerful). "Apple-only" is not a reason to choose a worse tool.
Is Craft good for journaling?
Day One does journaling better. Craft is a jack-of-no-trades that loses to specialists in every category.