PowerNotes

What PowerNotes does

PowerNotes is a Chicago-based software company that builds a structured research workspace for students, educators, and academic institutions. Its platform combines a web application, Chrome and Edge browser extensions (Researcher and Clipper), and institutional integrations to let users capture sources from any webpage or database, annotate them with persistent highlights and notes organized by topic, automatically generate citations in APA, MLA, Chicago, and Bluebook formats, and assemble those sources into project outlines ready for writing. Two patent-pending systems underpin the platform: Progressive Organization, which embeds structure into the research process itself, and Insight™, a digital authorship verification score that correlates a student's documented research behavior with assignment guidelines for instructor review.

PowerNotes makes money through three subscription tiers: an Individual plan at $10 per month (or $96/year) for students and independent researchers, a Classroom plan at $79 per six-month term for up to 35 users that adds Insight™ and group features, and custom-priced Institutional plans that bundle SSO, LMS integrations (Canvas, Moodle, Blackboard, D2L Brightspace), library proxy and database integrations (ProQuest, EBSCO, Summon, Blacklight), and a dedicated account manager. Distribution combines a self-serve consumer motion with institutional direct sales. The platform integrates with Westlaw and LexisNexis for legal research and, as of 2026, connects to Anthropic's Claude via Model Context Protocol — and soon ChatGPT — so AI conversations are grounded in the user's saved sources rather than blank prompts. With 65+ named partner institutions spanning law schools, research universities, IB programs, and K-12 schools, and a founder-controlled, privately held capital structure with no disclosed funding rounds, PowerNotes operates as an early-stage EdTech company targeting the academic research workflow rather than the broader note-taking market.

Name

PowerNotes

Legal name

PowerNotes LLC

Website

https://powernotes.com

Company type

Private

Founded year

2016

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

11–50 employees

Short description

PowerNotes builds a structured research workspace for students, educators, and academic institutions, combining browser-based annotation, automatic citation capture, project outlines, and a patent-pending authorship verification score across 65+ partner schools.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Academic Research Software

SIC

Services-Prepackaged Software (7372)

akta.pro primary industry

AI-Generated Content Detection & Authorship Verification (EDAFALAB)

akta.pro secondary industries

Digital Whiteboards, Annotation & Collaborative Canvas Tools (EDAFAGAD), Assistive Reading & Writing Tools (Text-to-Speech, Speech-to-Text, OCR, Dyslexia Support) (EDAFAKAA)

Keywords

• Research workspace platform
• Citation management software
• Academic integrity tools
• Browser annotation extension
• Student research software

Headquarters

HQ city

Chicago

HQ country

United States

HQ region

North America

Offices1 record

Markets served

GTM type

B2B and B2C

Offering type

Software

Cost components

Personnel, Technology or R&D, Marketing or Sales, Operations, Infrastructure

Revenue model

1. Individual Subscription: Individual plans at $10/month billed monthly or $8/month ($96/year) billed annually with a 14-day free trial. Currently offered free to students through summer 2026 via promo code during the Summer Beta period. Includes unlimited topics and projects, highlight and annotate, automatic citation capture, project outline builder, Claude AI integration, export to Word and .RIS, PDF & OCR, and browser extensions.
2. Classroom Subscription: Classroom plans at $79 per 6-month term for up to 35 users. Includes everything in Individual plus Insight™ digital authorship verification, group projects, student engagement insights, classroom training and onboarding, implementation support, proxy compatible access, and enhanced support. Annual billing available by contacting sales.
3. Institutional Subscription: Custom-priced annual institutional plans with campus-wide deployment. Includes campus-wide AI literacy and academic integrity tools, LMS integrations (Canvas, Moodle, Blackboard, D2L), library integrations (In-Line Search and Library Proxy), custom SSO, dedicated account manager, custom training and adoption packages, webinars and faculty events, support & uptime SLA, and data/analytics reporting. Billed annually with purchase orders and invoicing.
4. Professional Services (Training & Onboarding): Classroom and Institutional plans include implementation support, training, and onboarding. Custom training packages and adoption support are part of institutional deployments.

Pricing tiers

Go-to-market motion3 records

Distribution channels7 records

Marketing channels8 records

Core offering

PowerNotes is a web-based research workspace that lets students capture, annotate, organize, and cite sources from any website, PDF, or academic database, and then build structured project outlines before writing. The platform is delivered through browser extensions (Chrome/Edge), integrates with LMS systems (Canvas, Moodle, Blackboard, D2L), legal databases (Westlaw, LexisNexis), and AI assistants (Claude via MCP, ChatGPT), and includes a patent-pending Insight™ authorship verification system available on institutional plans.

Product overview

PowerNotes is a unified research workspace platform designed for students, educators, and institutions. The core platform consists of the PowerNotes Workspace, supported by browser extensions (Researcher and Clipper for Chrome/Edge), AI integrations (Claude live, ChatGPT coming soon), and tiered subscription plans (Individual, Classroom, Institutional, plus free Summer Beta). The platform integrates reading, research, and writing into a single workflow: sources are captured with automatic citation metadata, annotated with highlights and notes organized by topic, built into structured outlines, and connected to AI tools grounded in actual research. PowerNotes Insight™ on Institutional plans provides patent-pending authorship verification. The platform integrates with major LMS systems (Canvas, Moodle, Blackboard, D2L Brightspace), legal databases (Westlaw, LexisNexis), and library systems (EBSCO, ProQuest, Summon, Blacklight).

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Brands

• PowerNotes Researcher: Full-featured browser extension for highlighting and annotating sources across websites, PDFs, and databases with topic organization and automatic citation capture
• PowerNotes Clipper
• Insight
• PowerNotes Summer Scholar Beta

Products and services

• PowerNotes Workspace The central web-based research platform where students organize sources, annotations, highlights, project outlines, and AI conversations. Supports individual users, classroom deployments with up to 35 users, and campus-wide institutional deployments with SSO, LMS integration, and library proxy access.
• PowerNotes Researcher Extension

Quantifiable outcome

• 33% of Boston University Law students signed up in 2 months, including almost the entire 1L class
• +3 more outcomes

Named customers21 records

Segments8 records

Ideal customer profiles4 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Integration14 records

AI capability5 records

Feature10 records

Partnerships

13 partnerships are on record, tiered minor and core.

• OpenStaxminorStrategic or Co-development Partner · 23 September 2021Partnership announced September 2021 with the mission of improving educational access and learning for everyone. OpenStax provides openly licensed textbooks and PowerNotes integrates with their content to support student research workflows.
• American Bar Association (ABA) / LSCminorOthers · 1 May 2019PowerNotes participates in an ABA initiative to provide legal non-profits with free access to the platform. This community-impact partnership supports legal aid organizations and their research workflows.
• ProQuestcoreTechnology or IntegrationPowerNotes is embedded directly within ProQuest's Congressional Database. When students find a source worth keeping, they save it — highlights, annotations, and all — back to their PowerNotes project in one click. Citation metadata is pulled directly from ProQuest and formatted automatically. This partnership keeps the research session connected from discovery through final citation without friction.
• Canvas LMScoreTechnology or IntegrationPowerNotes integrates with Canvas on Institutional plans. Students access their research workspace directly from course pages; instructors view activity logs without leaving Canvas.
• Moodle LMScoreTechnology or IntegrationPowerNotes integrates with Moodle on Institutional plans. LMS integration allows students and instructors to access research tools directly within the course environment.
• Blackboard LMScoreTechnology or IntegrationPowerNotes integrates with Blackboard on Institutional plans as part of the LMS connectivity suite.
• D2L Brightspace LMScoreTechnology or IntegrationPowerNotes integrates with D2L Brightspace on Institutional plans, enabling research workspace access directly from course dashboards.
• Claude (Anthropic)coreTechnology or IntegrationPowerNotes connects to Claude via MCP integration. Every AI conversation starts grounded in saved sources, highlights, and annotations — not a blank prompt. AI interactions are logged with supervisor review available. Live now.
• ChatGPT (OpenAI)coreTechnology or IntegrationPowerNotes research (annotated sources and notes) will be available as context within ChatGPT conversations. Announced as 'coming soon' on the extensions page.
• Google Chrome Web StorecoreChannel Partner/ Reseller/ DistributorPowerNotes Researcher and Clipper browser extensions are distributed through the Google Chrome Web Store, making them discoverable and installable by students globally.
• WestlawcoreTechnology or IntegrationPowerNotes automatically captures inline citations when students highlight or annotate on Westlaw. Context and claims are properly referenced without copy-paste, and citation metadata is captured automatically.
• LexisNexiscoreTechnology or IntegrationPowerNotes automatically captures inline citations when students research on LexisNexis. Every highlight and annotation captures the correct citation without manual entry.
• Drexel University Writing CenterminorStrategic or Co-development PartnerDrexel University writing center uses PowerNotes to enable better research and writing outcomes for students, as covered in EdTech to Help press coverage.

Scale indicators5 records

Recent moves2 records

Expansion highlights6 records

Emerging players

• Roam Research: Block-based networked note tool popular with researchers for argument-mapping. Comparable to PowerNotes' project outline builder and topic-organized research, though Roam lacks academic citation capture and institutional integrations.
• Obsidian: Markdown-based note-taking app with strong adoption among researchers and graduate students. Comparable as a project-organized research workspace but lacks PowerNotes' automatic citation capture and library proxy integrations.

Direct peers

• Hypothesis: Annotation layer for scholarship used by publishers, librarians, and instructors. Comparable to PowerNotes' persistent highlighting/annotation and instructor-activity-log features for academic reading workflows.
• RefWorks: Web-based citation manager sold primarily via library/institutional subscriptions. Comparable to PowerNotes in its institutional go-to-market and citation-style coverage including Bluebook.
• Zotero: Open-source reference manager and annotation tool widely used by graduate and law students. PowerNotes explicitly acknowledges using Zotero-derived code (AGPL) for its auto-citation feature, making this the closest comparable on citation capture and PDF annotation.
• Mendeley: Elsevier-owned reference manager and academic social network with PDF annotation, citation capture, and institutional tier. Comparable to PowerNotes in serving graduate researchers with structured citation and reading workflows.
• ReadCube Papers: Reference and PDF management platform for researchers with citation capture and enhanced reading. Comparable to PowerNotes' project-based research workspace and AI-style reading tools.
• EndNote: Clarivate-owned reference management software used heavily in academic and legal research. Directly comparable citation capture, APA/MLA/Bluebook-style output, and institutional deployment model.

Broad incumbents

• EasyBib: Citation generation tool owned by Chegg, used heavily by K-12 and undergrad students. Overlaps with PowerNotes on automatic citation capture (APA/MLA/Chicago) but does not provide persistent annotation or institutional research infrastructure.
• Notion: General-purpose productivity and note-taking workspace widely used by students and universities. Overlaps with PowerNotes on project organization and AI integration but does not natively handle academic citation capture or library proxy workflows.

Market position

Strengths5 records

Weaknesses5 records

Competitive moat5 records

Key risks5 records

Key highlights7 records

Customer concentration

• YouTubeyoutube.com/playlist?list=PL7x678Y6P1BUsqyqjpvAFRSiwGKGta8a0

Compliance1 record

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles2 records

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about PowerNotes