Expense vs Diarium Journal
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Expense
Effortlessly monitor your finances with this intuitive spending tracker. Visualize your expenses with a clean line chart and gain insights into your spending habits. Customize categories and export your data for detailed analysis.
- Intuitive expense tracking
- Beautiful line chart visualization
- Monthly spending overview
- Customizable categories
- Export data to CSV
- Local data storage
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Expense makes tracking money easy and intuitive. • Simple and beautiful line chart • Fast expense tracking, enter amount and select a category, that’s it • Track where your money is going in monthly view • Export to CSV for further processing • Customize categories in settings • All of your data are stored locally and are not available to us
Diarium Journal
Capture your memories, thoughts, and experiences in a private digital journal. Enrich entries with photos, audio, and location data, and secure your personal timeline with password protection. Organize your life and revisit moments with flexible viewing options.
- Private diary and daily journal
- Add photos, drawings, audio, files
- Track mood with star ratings
- Calendar, timeline, and travel map views
- Import from other diary apps
- Cross-platform sync
- Password, PIN, Face ID, Touch ID protection
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Keep a private diary and daily journal for memories, photos, mood, travel, gratitude, and everyday notes—with no ads or subscriptions. Diarium helps you capture what happened today and build a personal timeline you can return to for years. Write a quick reflection or a detailed entry, enrich it with the moments that matter, and protect everything with a password, PIN, Face ID, or Touch ID. Make each entry your own • Keep a personal diary, gratitude journal, bullet journal, photo diary, or travel journal • Add photos, drawings, audio recordings, files, tags, people, ratings, and locations • Track your mood with star ratings and tracker tags • Revisit memories through calendar, timeline, and travel map views • Organize thoughts with lists and text formatting • Set daily reminders to support your writing routine Bring the details of your day together. Diarium can add useful context from your camera roll, calendar events, weather, completed tasks, Apple Health and other fitness activity, social activity, and entertainment activity. Moving from another journal? Import from Apple Journal and supported diary apps including Day One, Diaro, Journey, Daylio, Diarly, Daybook, and Evernote. You can also back up your diary database and export entries as Word, HTML, JSON, or plain text. Continue your journal across supported phone, tablet, laptop, and desktop versions. Optional sync uses your own iCloud, OneDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox, or WebDAV storage, so you do not need a separate Diarium account. Diarium is made for the story of everyday life: reflections, family memories, trips, photos, gratitude, feelings, and small moments worth remembering. It remains personal, flexible, and secure whether you write daily or only when inspiration strikes. Diarium is free to use, with optional Diarium Pro for advanced features such as sync, unlimited attachments per entry, Word export for printing, connected feeds, custom fonts, widgets, and weather in entries. You can evaluate Pro features for 7 days after installing. Diarium Pro is a one-time purchase, not a subscription. It is linked to your Apple ID and unlocks Pro for iOS and iPadOS; a separate Pro purchase may be required on other platforms.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is in-app purchases: Expense at none against Diarium Journal's 1. Diarium Journal's advantage is update cadence (fortnightly vs every 6 months) and ratings volume (2.1K vs 111). On price, rating, review sentiment and ads 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
Both are free to download. Diarium Journal sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. Expense asks for nothing beyond the download.
On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 4.8 for Expense against 4.8 for Diarium Journal. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Diarium Journal has 2.1K ratings behind it against 111, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews are what separate them: 97% of Expense's written reviews are positive against 95% of Diarium Journal's.
Expense ships an update every 6 months, Diarium Journal fortnightly. Both last shipped on November 11, 2026.
| Parameter | Expense | Diarium Journal |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.8 (111 ratings) | 4.8 (2.1K ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 97.1% of reviews — better | 95.1% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | 111 | 2.1K — better |
| Update frequency | Every 6 months | Fortnightly — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No — better | Yes |
| Monetization | Free — better | Free with in-app purchases |
| Devices | iPhone | iPhone, iPad — better |
| Requires iOS | 17.0 — better | 17.4 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 4 MB | 27 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Shan Cao | Timo Partl |
Customer experience
Expense
Diarium Journal
User reviews
Expense
From 111 App Store ratingsWhat we love
- 👍 Extremely simple and easy to use
- 🚀 Fast and efficient expense tracking
- ✨ Clean and minimalistic interface
- 🆓 Free to use with no ads
- 💡 Intuitive GUI
Room to improve
- 💡 Lacks search functionality
- 💡 No recurring expense option
- 💡 Limited category icon selection
- 💡 No subcategories
- 💡 Currency display can be odd
Diarium Journal
From 2.1K App Store ratingsWhat we love
- 🚀 Easy to use
- 📷 Ability to add photos
- 🗓️ Calendar and timeline views
- 🔒 Secure and private
- 💰 One-time purchase, no subscription
Room to improve
- 💰 Separate purchase required for each platform
- 🔍 Limited search options
- 🖌️ Lack of advanced formatting options
- 🗓️ Calendar view issues
- 🐛 Occasional sync and stability problems
Bugs and requests
Expense
Reported bugs
2 issues- Currency display issues
- No visible way to delete entries (user reported)
Requested features
28 requests- Search functionality
- Increased list of category icons
- Ability to use Emojis as category icons
- Set a recurring expense
- Add a 'memo' or text field for notes
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- Search function
- New icons for categories
- Option to add a 'sim' if money and it to tell me how much is left (per diem)
- Read from/write to the app with Shortcuts
- Annual summary feature
- Online help or FAQ in settings
- Exporting to select week or month
- Better category icons
- Subcategories
- Currency format tweaks
- Total cost row/cell for exporting
- Home screen widget
- Currency symbol (auto-set)
- Password protection
- Custom image option for categories
- Organize by week or bi-weekly
- Year-end summary
- Filter process for month/year outlook within the app
- Configure file export layout
- Auto-backup via iCloud
- Add button closer to screen edges
- iPad & Mac version
- iCloud sync
Diarium Journal
Reported bugs
3 issues- Sync issues between devices
- Crashes when adjusting settings
- Photos not displaying correctly in some cases
Requested features
7 requests- Ability to embed photos within entries
- More font and color options
- Checklist/task functionality
- Multiple journal/diary support
- Export to PDF or other formats
Show 2 moreShow fewer
- Improved search with highlighting
- Focus mode for distraction-free writing
In-app purchases
Expense
No in-app purchases
Diarium Journal
- Pro version (iOS)$14.99









