Best note-taking app for New Zealand students in NZ dollars

Short answer first: start with what you already have. All eight universities give enrolled students Microsoft 365 through the student account, and OneNote and Word are in it. On an iPad, Goodnotes Essential is NZ$23.99 a year on the New Zealand App Store and Notability lists Plus at NZ$24.99. Notion's Education Plan is free with a university email. Otter prices in US dollars. Notibo is 9.99 euro a month. What each app does is compared in the best note-taking app hub; this page keeps what is decided in New Zealand: what is free, what it costs, whether it hears New Zealand English, where the audio goes.

Every price below comes from the vendor's own page, the New Zealand one where it exists, fetched on 22 September 2026, in the currency that page shows, with GST mentioned only where the page mentions it.

What does your university already give you?

All eight universities describe Microsoft 365 for students on their IT pages. Six of them say free in so many words; Victoria and Waikato list the suite as part of the student account without naming a price. The suite matters for this comparison because OneNote is a note app and Word is where the essays go, so the first tool on the list costs nothing until the day you leave.

• Auckland lets you install the suite on five devices for nothing while enrolled. The University of Auckland's introduction to Microsoft 365 Apps says it is free to you, that you can legally install it on up to five devices while enrolled or employed, and lists OneNote, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Teams.
• AUT and Massey say the same: free, on up to five devices. AUT's Microsoft 365 page lists Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams, OneNote and OneDrive for Business as free to AUT students and says you can install the suite on up to five devices; Massey's IT services and support page says students can download Office 365 for free on up to five personal devices and get a 100 GB OneDrive account.
• Otago says free of charge while you are studying. The University of Otago's software licences for students page adds EndNote for students and SPSS for use on your own computer, with ordering and costs on AskOtago.
• Victoria's Office 365 includes OneNote and Word, reached through Pūaha. Te Herenga Waka, Victoria University of Wellington, lists the suite on its software page and names EndNote, JMP, Matlab and NVivo on its student download site.
• Waikato bundles 50 GB of OneDrive with Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote and Teams. The University of Waikato's software for students page also lists ArcGIS Pro, AutoCAD, EndNote, MATLAB, NVivo, Power BI, Qualtrics and Zoom, and says you set up your student account and Microsoft Authenticator before any of it opens.
• Canterbury's OneDrive holds one terabyte for free. The University of Canterbury's IT logins and tools page says OneDrive for Business, part of the Office 365 package, lets UC students store, sync and share up to one terabyte across devices.
• Lincoln gives free access to the Office apps, cloud storage and LU email. Lincoln University's Office 365 page puts it in one line under its student support pages.

The practical consequence is that a New Zealand student has a synced note app, a word processor and cloud storage on day one, and the only question is whether anything else earns its price. Zoom, EndNote and MATLAB on Waikato's and Victoria's lists are worth knowing about before you pay for a reference manager or a meeting tool.

What do the apps cost in New Zealand dollars?

Apple's pages are the only ones here that state the tax position: its iCloud+ page lists New Zealand prices in NZD with a footnote that taxes are included. Microsoft's New Zealand page shows NZ$ amounts and says nothing about GST. The App Store pages show dollar amounts on the New Zealand storefront and say nothing about tax. Otter's page says prices in USD.

• Microsoft 365 Personal is NZ$17.00 a month or NZ$179.00 a year. Microsoft's New Zealand comparison page also lists Family at NZ$23.00 a month or NZ$229.00 a year for up to six people, Premium at NZ$37.00 a month or NZ$369.00 a year, and Office Home 2024 at NZ$259.00 as a one-time purchase for one PC or Mac. Both Personal and Family include OneNote and 1 TB per person.
• Apple's iCloud+ starts at NZ$1.69 a month for 50 GB, taxes included. The iCloud+ plans and pricing page gives 5 GB free, then NZ$1.69 for 50 GB, NZ$4.99 for 200 GB and NZ$16.99 for 2 TB, and its footnote names New Zealand among the countries where taxes are included in all prices. Apple Notes and Voice Memos themselves cost nothing beyond the device.
• Goodnotes lists Essential at NZ$23.99 a year and Pro at NZ$71.99 a year. The Goodnotes page on the New Zealand App Store shows the app as free with in-app purchases, a Goodnotes 6 free trial at NZ$0.00, and a description that promises audio notes synced to the moment you write and AI-powered transcription.
• Notability lists Plus at NZ$24.99 and does not say per what. The Notability page on the New Zealand App Store shows several Plus entries at NZ$14.99, NZ$24.99 and NZ$29.99, Lite at NZ$9.99 and NZ$14.99, Pro at NZ$39.99 and NZ$199.99 and Classic at NZ$99.99, with no billing period beside any of them. The description says the app is free to use and that a subscription adds unlimited note-taking and live audio transcripts.
• Notion's Education Plan is free for a one-member workspace. Notion's help page says it is available to students or teachers signed in with their institution's email per the WHED, that you verify the school email each year, and that student IDs are not accepted in its place.
• Otter prices in US dollars and its student discount needs a .edu address. Otter's pricing page says prices in USD, gives Basic 300 monthly transcription minutes with a 30-minute maximum per conversation, and offers 20 per cent off Pro to students and teachers using an email address ending with .edu. Auckland's student address ends in aucklanduni.ac.nz on its install instructions, and Canterbury's in uclive.ac.nz on its student email page.

Handwriting on an iPad

Goodnotes and Notability are the two apps on this page that are priced for New Zealand on their store pages, and the difference in a year is small: NZ$23.99 for Goodnotes Essential against Notability's NZ$24.99 entry, if that entry is yearly, which the page does not say. The hub covers how the two differ in use. What decides it locally is only the price, and both store pages list a free way in, so try before you pay.

If you only have a laptop

OneNote from your university account is free, syncs through the OneDrive your university gives you, and Waikato's and Canterbury's pages show that storage is not the constraint. Notion's Education Plan is the free alternative if you prefer databases to notebooks, on the condition that your university email stays active and verified each year. Neither costs a dollar while you are enrolled, so the comparison between them is about how you work, not about money.

Does the app hear New Zealand English?

A transcript of a lecture at a New Zealand university carries place names, te reo Māori terms and a vowel system that speech models trained elsewhere can mangle. No vendor publishes an accuracy figure for New Zealand English on the pages read here, and none is given for Notibo, so the only honest test is what each vendor says it supports.

• Apple's Notes guide for New Zealand says transcription works on iPhone 12 and later when the device language is set to English. Apple's record and transcribe audio in Notes guide names English and nine other languages, with no variant. Apple's iOS 27 feature availability page lists English (New Zealand) for the Apple Intelligence summaries of Notes transcripts and for Writing Tools, but its list for audio transcription in Notes names ten languages and no English variant.
• Voice Memos transcribes on iPhone 12 or later in English, all variants. Apple's New Zealand support page for Voice Memos says the transcript can be viewed while recording or after, that transcription covers English and nine other languages, and that it is not available in all countries or regions.
• Goodnotes and Notability promise transcription without naming languages on their store pages. Both descriptions on the New Zealand App Store advertise audio transcription and live summaries; neither store page lists which English they hear.
• Otter lists multi-language support on its Basic plan. Its pricing page says so without naming New Zealand English.

Notibo transcribes 89 languages and returns the transcript in the language spoken. It does not translate, and this article gives no accuracy figure for it. Whatever you use, the check that works is the same: read the transcript against the slides for names and te reo terms before you turn it into notes.

Where does the audio go under the Privacy Act 2020?

A recording of a lecture is personal information about the people whose voices are on it, and every cloud app on this page processes audio somewhere. The Office of the Privacy Commissioner's page on principle 12 describes the rule for an agency disclosing personal information outside New Zealand: the receiver has to be subject to the Act, protect the information adequately, for example through model contract clauses, or sit under comparable privacy law, and otherwise the person concerned has to agree after being told the protection may be weaker. The page does not address an individual sending their own recording overseas, which is the position you are in; student data privacy in New Zealand works through what that means for you and for your university.

What this page can say is where Notibo puts the file, because that is a product fact. Files are stored in the EU, on Supabase in Frankfurt; transcription and the AI notes run on US processors under standard contractual clauses; the audio is deleted from storage as soon as the transcript and notes are generated, and kept only for a short while if processing fails so it can be retried. The processors are listed in the privacy policy. For Otter, Apple and Microsoft, the equivalent answer is in each vendor's own policy, and it is worth reading before the first upload.

May you record the lecture at all?

That is decided by your university, not by the app, and the eight universities do not decide it the same way. Recording lectures in New Zealand sets out who publishes a rule, what a yes covers and the law underneath. The short version for a buyer is that a recording app is worth paying for only after the lecturer has agreed, and that a tutorial or a lab is a different room with everyone in it on the recording. On a clinical placement or a practicum, no app on this page belongs in your pocket. What to write in each of those rooms is in notes in lectures, tutorials, labs and placements.

Which app should a New Zealand student choose?

The local facts sort the list quickly, because the first tier costs nothing and the second tier has one price each. Apply the steps in order and stop when one fits.

1. Sign in to your university's Microsoft 365 and use OneNote. It comes with the student account at all eight universities, syncs to a OneDrive of 50 GB at Waikato, 100 GB at Massey and 1 TB at Canterbury, and is the only app here that nobody has to buy.
2. If you write by hand on an iPad, add Goodnotes Essential at NZ$23.99 a year or Notability, whose NZ$24.99 entry does not state its period. Try the free version of each for a week of lectures first.
3. If you want the lecture transcribed and the lecturer has said yes, the free options come first: Voice Memos on an iPhone 12 or later, or Notes. Otter Basic's 30-minute cap per conversation is shorter than a lecture, which the University of Waikato's glossary puts at 50 minutes, and Notibo's free plan is 30 minutes a month, so a full semester of recording is a paid plan on either.
4. Pay for a transcription app only if it does the second half of the job for you: turning the transcript into notes and questions you can test yourself on. That is the difference between the recorder in your phone and Notibo, and the reason to read the hub before choosing.

Where Notibo fits

Notibo is the paid row for a student who has been told yes and wants more than a transcript. It records a lecture on a computer, or takes an audio file you upload, and returns a transcript, structured notes and flashcards with spaced repetition. It also turns PDF, PPTX and DOCX files into notes and flashcards, which is the lecture slides from Canvas, Moodle or Stream. One recording can run up to two hours; long recordings are saved in smaller parts as they run and joined into one transcript. Uploads are capped at 50 MB, and the transcript and notes export as PDF or Word.

You get Pro free for 14 days, with 240 minutes of recording, and no card is asked for. After those 14 days the free plan gives 30 minutes of recording a month. Pro is 9.99 euro a month or 88.99 euro a year; prices are in euro and the New Zealand amount appears at checkout, on the pricing page. The transcript is in the language spoken, from 89 languages. Files are stored in the EU in Frankfurt, transcription and the AI notes run on US processors under standard contractual clauses, and the audio is deleted from storage once the notes are generated. Against OneNote, which is free, it is a second tool for the lectures alone, and it is only worth the price if the flashcards get used.