PlanJour vs Notion: which is better for planning and journaling?

If you want one flexible workspace for notes, projects, wikis and team documents, Notion is the better tool. If you want a calendar and a daily journal that work together from the first minute, with nothing to build, PlanJour is the simpler and more focused choice.

The two are often compared because plenty of people try to run their personal life in Notion. Some love it. Many build an elaborate planner template, use it hard for three weeks, and then quietly stop. That is less a flaw in Notion than a sign of what it is: a set of building blocks, not a finished planner.

At a glance

| | PlanJour | Notion | |---|---|---| | Price | Free plan; Plus £4.99/month or £34.99/year | Free plan; paid tiers available | | Calendar | Built in: day, week, month, year and agenda views, recurring events | Database calendar views; a separate calendar app is available | | Journal | Built-in daily page: thoughts, wins, gratitude, affirmation, photos | Whatever you build from pages and templates | | Mood tracking | Mood and weather on every journal entry | Possible with a custom database property | | Habits | Daily habit checklist with a momentum figure rather than a streak | Possible with templates and formulas | | Sharing | Share single events, shared categories, or view-only calendar access | Excellent: pages, workspaces, comments, permissions | | Platforms | Web app (installable), companion iOS app | Web, desktop, iOS and Android apps | | Privacy | Optional end-to-end encryption for journal content | Standard cloud storage; no end-to-end encryption |

Where Notion is genuinely better

Notion is far more flexible. You can link a reading list to a project tracker to a meeting note, build dashboards, and share all of it with a team. If your planning lives alongside work documents, or you enjoy designing your own system, nothing in PlanJour comes close to that range.

It is also on more platforms. Notion has native desktop and Android apps; PlanJour runs in the browser (and installs to a home screen on Android) with a companion app on iOS.

And for collaboration, Notion wins outright. PlanJour is single-person software with sharing bolted on deliberately small: you can share an event, a category or a view of your calendar, but there are no team workspaces.

Where PlanJour is better

PlanJour is opinionated in the places Notion leaves blank. The calendar is a real calendar: recurring events that behave properly when you move one occurrence, colour-coded life categories, and insights showing where your week actually went. The journal sits on the same day, so the meeting at 2pm and how you felt about it end up in one place.

There is nothing to set up. A Notion planner is only as good as the template and your patience maintaining it. PlanJour's daily page already has prompts for wins, gratitude, mood and weather, and the habit checklist reports momentum instead of a streak that resets to zero the first time you miss a day.

Privacy is the other difference. PlanJour offers optional end-to-end encryption for journal entries, so the text is unreadable to anyone without your recovery key, including us. Journal content is never sent to an AI model. For a diary, that matters more than it does for a project board.

Choose Notion if…

• You want one place for work documents, projects and personal notes.
• You enjoy designing your own system and changing it as you go.
• You collaborate with a team or need native desktop and Android apps.

Choose PlanJour if…

• You want a calendar and a journal that work together without building anything.
• You have tried a Notion planner before and stopped using it.
• You want your diary private by design, with optional end-to-end encryption.
• You care about seeing how your time is balanced across work, health, social life and rest.

Can you use both?

Yes, and plenty of people do: Notion for work and reference, PlanJour for the day-to-day of your own life. PlanJour can import events one way from Google Calendar or an iCal feed, so a work calendar can sit alongside your personal one. It does not sync back.

FAQ

Is PlanJour a Notion template?

No. PlanJour is a standalone app with its own calendar and journal. You do not need a Notion account to use it.

Can I move my Notion journal into PlanJour?

There is no direct importer for Notion pages. Most people start fresh in PlanJour and keep the old Notion pages as an archive.

Which is cheaper?

Both have a free plan. PlanJour Plus is £4.99 a month or £34.99 a year. Notion has paid tiers too; check its pricing page for current figures, as they vary by plan and region.