Productivity tools / Bear
Bear
Bear is a beautiful, powerfully simple Markdown note taking app to capture, write, and organize your life.
Where it stands
3.4 / 5
Signals score
Not a hands-on test
Based on 1 of 3 signals
- Website health3.6 / 5 · weight 50%
Measured from the tool's public website
Built only from what we can measure or quote without using the tool. How ranking works
Rank by signals
We have not run our own hands-on test on Bear yet. Facts checked 2026-11-08. How tests work
Disclosure: agathox makes some of the tools listed here. They are labelled and scored by the same method as every other tool.
Should you use Bear?
A quick read built only from what the tool's own pages state and from our tests, not from opinion. Facts checked 2026-11-08.
A good fit if…
- You want a free option. It states: “The free version includes local access to notes, document scanning, export to various formats, 3 themes, 1 app icon, search inside…”
Check first
- Its pages do not state: signup, watermark. Check on the tool's site before you rely on it.
Does: Note taking
Measured signals
3.6 / 5 · measured 2026-11-08Read automatically from Bear's public website: how reliable, secure, private and open the site is. This is not a test of how well the tool does its job. How this is measured
- Reliability5 / 5The page answered and finished downloading in 289 ms.
- Security2 / 50 of 5 protective headers set.
- Privacy4 / 51 third-party tracking service found: Google Analytics.
- Transparency3 / 5Links a privacy policy; no pricing page linked.
Community feedback
Not enough discussion yet: 1 classified comment from 1 thread. We need at least 12 from 2 threads.
- Positive
“They used to have a page on their website which said "Bear for web is in the works!". [1] It looks like they have removed that page though”
Read in the thread
Threads: Bear 2 Is Here (2023, 6 comments)
- Free tier
- The free version includes local access to notes, document scanning, export to various formats, 3 themes, 1 app icon, search inside PDFs and images, and iCloud sync. The page says: “Free. Local access to your notes . Document scanning . Export to: TXT, Markdown, TextBundle, RTF, PDF, JPG, HTML, DOCX, ePub . 3 free themes . 1 app icon . Search inside PDFs and images . Sync with iCloud.”
- Paid plan
- Bear Pro costs $2.99 per month or $29.99 per year, with a 7-day free trial available. The page says: “A 7 day free trial, then $2.99 /month . -15% $29.99 /year.”
- Signup
- Not stated.
- Watermark
- Not stated.
- Where files go
- Notes are stored between the user and iCloud. The page says: “Your notes are between you and iCloud— we can't see anything.”
From the tool's own pages, checked 2026-11-08. Sources: Home. Prices and limits change; check the tool before you rely on them.
Read automatically by a program, not by a person. Each fact quotes the sentence it came from, and a fact is shown only if that sentence is on the page. Where a page did not say, it reads “Not stated.”
Get an email if Bear changes
We check its official pages every week. If they change, we tell you, so you can see if the price or limits moved. No other email, and one click stops it.
Are you the maker of Bear? Link to this page
Copy this into your site. The link goes to this page, and it does not change any score.
<a href="https://agathox.com/tools/bear">Bear on agathox: compared and tested</a>
Tasks and scores
- Note takingNot tested yet
Similar tools
Top signals in Note taking.
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