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Mento vs Amplenote
Amplenote answers a great question: what should happen to a note after you write it? Its answer is action — Jots become notes, notes spawn tasks, and Task Score decides what lands on today's calendar. If your notes exist to get things done, that funnel is the real thing. Mento answers the other half: what if the note has to stay in your head? Notes, ink and PDFs become source-linked cards, spaced repetition brings them back before they fade, and practice tests rehearse the exam. Notes that become a schedule, or notes that become memory — that's the actual choice.
Updated September 2026
The short answer
Which one is right for you?
Choose Mento if…
- ✓You take notes to remember them — courses, certifications, anything with an exam attached
- ✓You handwrite or sketch — Amplenote has no ink surface
- ✓You study from PDFs and want highlights to become scheduled review
- ✓You want flashcards, daily review and practice tests built in, not improvised from recurring tasks
- ✓You still get tasks and a calendar — next to the material they refer to
Choose Amplenote if…
- ✓Your notes exist to drive work — the note-to-task-to-calendar funnel is the appeal
- ✓Task Score and time-blocking are how you want to plan your day
- ✓You want end-to-end encrypted Vault Notes for sensitive material
- ✓You live in Markdown and want quick Jots as your daily capture habit
Side by side
What's built in
Amplenote at its best — Personal through Unlimited — against Mento today.
AmplenoteBuilt-in features as of September 2026. Amplenote's free Personal plan syncs unlimited notes across unlimited devices; calendar integrations, Vault Notes and web publishing sit on paid tiers.
Where Mento pulls ahead
Executing an idea is not retaining it
The funnel ends at 'done' — memory doesn't
Amplenote's funnel is honest about what most notes are for: doing. But study notes have a different job — they have to survive until the exam, and re-reading them isn't enough. Mento turns notes into cards and schedules them with spaced repetition, so 'done' means remembered, not just checked off.
Spaced repetition in Mento →Recurring tasks are not a study system
Amplenote's own help docs suggest building spaced repetition from recurring tasks — question in the task, answer in a footnote, stretch the recurrence by hand when you get it right. That's the two-app problem compressed into one workaround. Mento grades your recall and reschedules each card automatically, per card, with no bookkeeping.
All the study modes →Capture includes a pen and a PDF
Amplenote captures typed thought fast; Mento widens the funnel — an ink notebook for diagrams and worked problems, a PDF reader whose highlights become source-linked cards, voice notes and lecture recordings. All of it lands in the same topics, tags and search, and all of it can come back as review.
The digital notebook →Cost
Compare the cost
AmplenoteUS prices as of September 2026. Amplenote's lower rates are the billed-yearly price; a $20–25/mo Founder tier adds early access and extra roadmap votes.
Fair is fair
When Amplenote is the better choice
Amplenote is a sharp, self-funded product with a clear philosophy, and for work that ends in action its funnel can beat ours.
- →Task management is genuinely best-in-class for a notes app — Task Score, flexible recurrence and snoozing make the to-do list feel self-sorting
- →Time-blocking is native: dragging tasks onto the calendar and syncing Google, Outlook or Apple calendars is the daily-planning workflow, not an add-on
- →Vault Notes offer end-to-end encryption for genuinely private material — Mento has no equivalent
- →The free Personal plan syncs unlimited notes across unlimited devices, and Markdown-first editing plus a plugin ecosystem reward tinkerers
Making the move
Trying Mento alongside Amplenote
This doesn't have to be either/or — plenty of people plan in one app and study in another. Move the material that has to stick.
01
Bring the study half
Paste the notes and upload the PDFs for whatever you're actually trying to learn — courses, certifications, languages. Work-planning notes can stay put.
02
Generate linked cards
Cards come from your material and stay linked to it, so re-reading and reviewing are one motion — no footnote-hiding tricks required.
03
Let the schedule run
Daily practice resurfaces what's due; dated exam topics aim it. Your calendar shows the review load next to the deadlines it serves.
Honestly: there's no Amplenote importer — Amplenote exports clean Markdown, which pastes straight into Mento, and that's the route today. Full export is included on every Mento plan, so the door swings both ways.
FAQ
Mento vs Amplenote, asked directly
Isn't Amplenote free?
The Personal plan is, and it's fair: unlimited notes and devices with all four modes, with 5MB per-file uploads and no external calendar sync. Mento's free plan has the same shape with the study layer inside it — unlimited notes, cards and reviews, with the caps on uploads and AI allowance, never on your writing or your studying.
Does Amplenote have flashcards or spaced repetition?
Not built in. Amplenote's help docs describe a workaround — put the question in a recurring task, hide the answer in a footnote, and stretch the recurrence yourself — and the community has built a plugin. Mento's spaced repetition is the product: cards generated from your notes, graded recall, automatic per-card scheduling.
Does Mento have Task Score or time-blocking?
Mento has real tasks inside notes and a calendar that carries deadlines, exam dates and your daily review — for a student's week, that's the planning that matters. It doesn't rank tasks with a score or drag-schedule them onto hour slots; if that's the workflow you want, Amplenote genuinely does it better.
Can I import my Amplenote notes?
Not with one click. Amplenote exports Markdown, which pastes cleanly into Mento; most switchers bring their active study material rather than the whole archive.
Which is better for students?
Amplenote is built for professionals turning ideas into scheduled work. Mento is built for learners: the pipeline from notes, PDFs and lectures to cards, daily review and practice tests is the whole product — and there's a verified student price.
What does Mento cost?
Free to start. Pro is $14.99 a month or $95.99 a year; verified students pay $8.99 a month or $59.99 a year.
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Notes that come back to you
Capture, plan and actually remember — free to start, no credit card.