If you last used Notion in 2024 and reopened it in 2026, your first reaction might be: is this even the same product? What began as an "all-in-one set of blocks" for notes, docs, and databases has reinvented itself into an AI-first workspace that can actually do work for you. This review, based on publicly available information as of May 2026, breaks down Notion's capabilities, ecosystem, pricing, and real limitations—then puts it side by side with Coda and ClickUp.

1. Overview: From Building Blocks to a Workspace That Works

Notion was born from one idea: everything is a block. A paragraph, a to-do, a table—each is a building block you can freely assemble. That flexible structure made it a Swiss Army knife for personal notes, team wikis, project management, and lightweight databases. But the real transformation across 2025–2026 came from AI working its way deep into the product.

Notion launched its LLM-powered chat assistant in February 2023, acquired the encrypted email service Skiff in early 2024, and built Notion Mail on that foundation, shipping it as a Gmail-based client in April 2025. In September 2025, Notion 3.0 introduced AI Agent capabilities—the shift from "AI helps you write" to "AI does the work." The pace then accelerated sharply in 2026: version 3.2 in January brought mobile AI and model choice, February introduced autonomous Custom Agents, March added Custom Skills, and April delivered the Workers code-execution environment for developers.

In short, today's Notion is no longer just "a place to keep things." It's a unified platform that folds documents, databases, mail, calendar, enterprise search, and autonomous agents into a single context. Teams at OpenAI, Figma, Volvo, Ramp, and Cursor use it. Let's go through it dimension by dimension.

2. AI Capabilities, In Depth

2.1 Model Choice: Handing the Decision to Users

One of Notion AI's most commendable traits is that it doesn't lock you into a single model. After the 3.2 update in January 2026, users can switch freely between GPT-5.2, Claude Opus 4.5, and Gemini 3, or choose Auto to let the system pick the best model for the job. Crucially, your accumulated context (memory) in Notion stays with you when you switch. As Notion puts it plainly: models will keep changing, but your memory in Notion doesn't. This positions Notion as a work layer above the models, rather than a thin wrapper around any one vendor.