Comparison

Bear vs Metion

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.

Head to head
About

Bear

A beautiful and simple Markdown app for capturing, writing, and organizing your thoughts and ideas. It offers a distraction-free writing environment, flexible formatting, and powerful organizational tools like tags and tasks. Ideal for anyone looking to streamline their note-taking and creative processes.

Highlights
  • Distraction-free writing environment
  • Flexible Markdown formatting
  • Tag-based organization
  • Task management
  • Note linking (WikiLinks)
  • Web clipping extension
  • Apple Pencil sketching
Features
Read full description

Bear is a beautiful, powerfully simple Markdown app to capture, write, and organize your life. ​ Take notes, plan your day, journal thoughts, organize tables, create lists and tasks, sketch ideas, link notes together, write a book, and much more. Bear is used by writers, lawyers, chefs, CEOs, teachers, doctors, engineers, students, parents.. you get the picture. Getting started couldn’t be faster—no signup and no account. Just open a note and write naturally. ​ "My journaling app of choice is Bear" - Kit Eaton, New York Times ​ * 2017 Apple Design Award * 2016 App Store App of the Year * Editors' choice for 7 consecutive years * Most of our parents love it ​ ## BEAUTIFUL. SIMPLE. POWERFUL. PRIVATE - Tools stay out of your way so you can just write - Sketch ideas on iPad with an extendable canvas and Apple Pencil (and other styli) - Clip web pages and other content with Bear’s app extension - The redesigned Info Panel now with Table of Contents and Backlinks - Use Apple Watch to dictate and append to recent notes - Support for all the scripts including RTL languages like Arabic, Hebrew, and Persian - Easily create notes with Siri and Shortcuts - Your notes, not ours - Bear is private at its core: We cannot see your notes, tags, or anything else ​ ## FLEXIBLE MARKDOWN ​ - Work in plain text - easy to move between apps - Still use formatting like bold, italics, strikethrough, links, tables, and more with Markdown - Combine text styles like bold and underline, even in headings - Markdown hides for a clean reading experience - Use WikiLinks to connect notes and build a personal wiki or knowledge management tool ​ ## GET ORGANIZED with #tags, tasks, and more ​ - Add #tags, #multi-word tags# and even #multiple/nested/tags anywhere in a note for quick organization - Pin important tags to the top of the Sidebar - Make important tags stand out in the Sidebar with TagCons - Add tasks to notes and easily view all notes that include tasks - Fold sections to get them out of the way ​ ## SHARING MADE EASY ​ - Export notes to plain text, Markdown, TextBundle, Bear note, and rich text - Export notes to HTML, DocX, PDF, JPG, and ePub (Bear Pro required) - Easily share your notes to any third-party app with the Share Sheet ​ ## SEARCH FAR AND WIDE ​ - Use Spotlight to search your notes from anywhere - Search for text inside photos and PDFs (Bear Pro required) - Focus on specific types of notes with powerful Special Searches like @todo, @images, and @yesterday ​ ## CREATE YOUR COZY SPACE ​ * Pick from nearly 30 themes for the perfect writing space in both Light and Dark Mode (Bear Pro required) * Choose an app icon that speaks to your personality (Bear Pro required) * Set your own fonts for plain text, headings, and code * Set line height and width, paragraph spacing, and more ​ ## GET MORE WITH BEAR PRO ​ One subscription enables a variety of features on all your devices and keeps the Bear hugs coming. ​ - Sync notes between your iPhone, iPad, and Mac via iCloud - Encrypt individual notes with a password that is entirely private to you - Lock Bear with Face/Touch ID - Export to more formats including HTML, DocX, PDF, JPG, and ePub - Search for text inside images and PDFs in Bear notes - Over 30 beautiful app themes & app icons ​ $2.99 monthly $29.99 yearly 14-day free trial ​ ----- Price may vary by location. Subscriptions will be charged to your credit card through your App Store account. Your subscription will automatically renew unless canceled at least 24 hours before the end of the current period. You will not be able to cancel the subscription once activated. After purchase, manage your subscriptions in App Store Account Settings. Any unused portion of a free trial period will be forfeited when the user purchases a subscription. ----- ​ bear@shinyfrog.net Twitter: BearNotesApp Reddit: reddit.com/r/BearApp Facebook: BearNotes Instagram: BearNotesApp Privacy Policy: http://www.bear.app/privacy/ Terms of Service: http://www.bear.app/terms/

About

Metion

This notebook tool prioritizes a superior writing experience using Markdown. It allows you to build knowledge bases, connect notes as networks, and offers a distraction-free Zen Mode. Data is stored freely in plain text files with built-in Git support for synchronization and version history.

Highlights
  • Markdown support
  • Knowledge base creation
  • Networked notes
  • Zen Mode writing
  • Open filesystem storage
  • Built-in Git sync
  • History versioning
Read full description

Metion is a notebook tool that focuses on the writing experience, uses Markdown as basic text syntax. ## Build Your Own Knowledge Base Metion 2.0 brings a new feature named "Knowledge Base", the plain text syntax, then becomes mindmap trees, or connected as a network... ## The Writing Experience is So Important Our goal is to create a great writing experience, specially for iPadOS, although it's not easy. Metion provides a relatively complete keyboard shortcuts support. After a keyboard connected, both iPad and iPhone can archive a huge improvement in writing experience. We also have redesigned the "Zen Mode" on iPad, a more focusing writing mode. It is very very beautiful, choosing a suitable background image, selecting the white noise you like in Zen Mode, and the irrelevant UI elements are hidden. Writing is a pleasure, writing is talking to the world, writing is your Zen. ## Data Freedom, Open Filesystem, Git Built-in Metion based on the open filesystem, no need to create another new format for storing data. An article is a plain text file, and the images in the article are also under a certain folder. Data freedom and open filesystems allow us to synchronize data across devices using iCloud or Git. If you have a higher requirement for data security, you can also make a backup very quickly by copying the entire folder (working directory). One more thing, Metion has a built-in support named "history version" that provides a little more reliability for your documents. **Also, if you know how to use Git, you can try Git to sync. Yes! We have the powerful Git as a built-in feature! ** ## Optimized for iPad Pro, Also for iPhone We tried the best to make Metion optimized for iPad Pro, when writing on iPad Pro by Metion, the iPad is a really more productive device. Metion is also optimized for the iPhone too. In recent years, most of the new iPhones have notch at the top of screen. Metion does not simply avoid the safe area, but makes a lot of technical efforts to apply every pixel on the screen as far as possible. If using the visual theme of "Dark", the notch sometimes look like disappeared, like the next generation of full-screen phone comes. ## The Exporting of Metion If using Metion to export as PDF, we suggest the theme of PDF can be set as "Printer" in Settings Panel. If there is a real printer connected in current local network, just print directly, it will be pretty when words on the real paper. Document in Metion can be exported as image, which is optimized for mobile device (iPhone). We can set text and QR-Code signature at the end of exported image. Send it to friends through some social Apps. The beautiful layout of text can highlight the value of your words. Metion can analyze the structure of current article automatically, then export it as "Mindmap" with one tap only. - - - - - - - - - - Privacy Policy: http://markeditor.com/privacy-policy.html Terms of Use: http://markeditor.com/page/terms.md

Screenshots

Bear4 screens
Metion4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is rating: Bear at 4.7 against Metion's 4.3. Bear also leads on ratings volume (6.9K vs 46) and review sentiment (77% vs 60%). On price, update cadence, ads and in-app purchases there is nothing between them.

Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Both are free to download. Bear sells 2 in-app purchases, starting at $2.99 per month and Metion sells 3 in-app purchases, starting at $0.99 per month. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

Bear holds the better App Store score, 4.7 against 4.3. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Bear has 6.9K ratings behind it against 46, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews point the same way: 77% of Bear's written reviews are positive against 60% of Metion's.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Bear ships an update every 9 days, Metion every 2 weeks. The most recent releases landed on September 24, 2026 and September 21, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard3 real differences · 7 level
Bear versus Metion: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterBearMetion
PriceFreeFree
Rating4.7 (6.9K ratings) — better4.3 (46 ratings)
Positive reviews76.9% of reviews — better60.0% of reviews
Number of ratings6.9K — better46
Update frequencyEvery 9 days — betterEvery 2 weeks
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesYesYes
MonetizationFreemiumFree with in-app purchases
DevicesiPhone, iPad, iPod, Apple WatchiPhone, iPad, iPod, Mac
Requires iOS15.614.0 — better
Further details — not scored
Size230 MB96 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperShiny Frog Ltd.Hangzhou Quanduan Technology Co., Ltd.

Customer experience

Bear

All ratings6,858 ratings
Positive91.6%
Neutral2.6%
Negative5.8%
Written reviews1,752 reviews
Positive76.9%
Neutral9.5%
Negative13.6%

Metion

All ratings46 ratings
Positive84.8%
Neutral4.3%
Negative10.9%
Written reviews50 reviews
Positive60.0%
Neutral14.0%
Negative26.0%

User reviews

Bear

From 6.9K App Store ratings

What we love

  • 👍 Elegant and minimalist design
  • 🚀 Smooth and fast performance
  • 💡 Flexible tagging system for organization
  • 🔒 Secure and private notes
  • 🎨 Customizable themes and fonts

Room to improve

  • 🔒 Subscription required for syncing and advanced features
  • 🔍 Limited search functionality within notes on iOS
  • 🖼️ Issues with image handling and resizing
  • 🐛 Occasional bugs and crashes reported
  • 💻 Lack of web/Windows app for cross-platform access

Metion

From 46 App Store ratings

What we love

  • ✨ Seamless integration with Apple ecosystem
  • ✍️ Great writing experience
  • 💡 Promising features
  • 🎨 Minimalist and aesthetic design
  • 🚀 Enhances productivity

Room to improve

  • 🐛 Frequent bugs and crashes
  • 📱 Not optimized for phones
  • 🗂️ Limited free version features
  • 🎨 UI issues and design flaws
  • ❌ Syncing problems

Bugs and requests

Bear

Reported bugs

3 issues
  • Sync issues causing note conflicts and data loss
  • Cursor jumping and input issues on iPad
  • Inconsistent behavior when importing/exporting content

Requested features

5 requests
  • Add password protection for individual notes
  • Improve search capabilities to find text within notes
  • Implement table support for more robust note-taking
  • Develop a web-based version for broader accessibility
  • Allow manual sorting and organization of notes

Metion

Reported bugs

19 issues
  • Git sync not working
  • iCloud folder cannot be specified
  • Writing statistics not visible or crashing
  • Custom file sorting not working
  • New file creation bug (text pushed up)
Show 14 more
  • Hyperlinks only work with connected keyboard
  • Help documentation partially translated
  • PDF export formatting issues
  • App crashes when submitting bugs
  • iPhone gets hot and requires restart
  • App launches inconsistently, crashes, slow to switch folders
  • Undo function not supported, causes crash
  • App crashes on startup
  • Cannot open old documents (free version limit)
  • English input lacks auto-capitalization and spell check
  • Soft keyboard shortcut bar disappears
  • Character input issues causing extra spaces
  • Zen mode background color setting causes crashes
  • App crashes when trying to set Zen mode background

Requested features

35 requests
  • Optimize for phone usage
  • Add Windows version
  • Improve Git sync functionality
  • Allow specifying iCloud folder
  • Restore writing statistics feature
Show 30 more
  • Fix custom file sorting
  • Fix new file creation bugs
  • Improve hyperlink functionality on iPhone
  • Add Undo functionality
  • Fix app crashes on startup
  • Allow opening old documents
  • Improve English input (auto-capitalization, spell check)
  • Fix disappearing shortcut bar
  • Increase font size limit
  • Allow changing Zen mode background and text color
  • Fix PDF export formatting
  • Improve Russian translation
  • Simplify interface navigation
  • Improve interface glitchiness
  • Support existing markdown folders
  • Add more font choices
  • Fix character input issues
  • Increase maximum character limit
  • Add Dropbox or other cloud drive sync
  • Add password lock feature
  • Improve line spacing in Zen mode
  • Combine markdown preview and writing like Bear
  • Add floating TOC
  • Add dedicated preview button
  • Option to dilate interface scale
  • Add statistics for daily word count
  • Improve Zen mode text color
  • Add support for Chinese-to-English conversion
  • Add file system for recording information like Windows with graphical display and tags
  • Add statistics for word count

In-app purchases

2 purchases

Bear

Subscriptions2
  • Monthly Pro subscription7 Days trial$2.991 Month
  • Yearly Pro subscription7 Days trial$29.991 Year
3 purchases

Metion

Subscriptions2
  • 订阅公众号图片上传中转3 Days trial$0.991 Month
  • Subscribe Pro Extensions3 Days trial$6.991 Year
One-time1
  • Standard Edition (iOS+iPadOS)$17.99

Questions

Is Bear free?
Bear is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is Metion free?
Metion is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Which has better reviews, Bear or Metion?
Bear is rated higher. Bear averages 4.7 out of 5 from 6.9K ratings, while Metion averages 4.3 from 46 ratings.
Do Bear or Metion have ads?
Neither Bear nor Metion shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Bear or Metion?
Bear ships an update every 9 days, and Metion every 2 weeks. Most recently, Bear was updated on September 24, 2026 and Metion on September 21, 2026.

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