Comparison

Expense vs Diarium Journal

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

Head to head
About

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.

Highlights
  • Intuitive expense tracking
  • Beautiful line chart visualization
  • Monthly spending overview
  • Customizable categories
  • Export data to CSV
  • Local data storage
Features
Read full description

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

About

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.

Highlights
  • 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
Read full description

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

Expense3 screens
Diarium Journal4 screens

Verdict

The call

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

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Both are free to download. Diarium Journal sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. Expense asks for nothing beyond the download.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

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.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Expense ships an update every 6 months, Diarium Journal fortnightly. Both last shipped on November 11, 2026.

Scorecard4 real differences · 6 level
Expense versus Diarium Journal: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterExpenseDiarium Journal
PriceFreeFree
Rating4.8 (111 ratings)4.8 (2.1K ratings) — better
Positive reviews97.1% of reviews — better95.1% of reviews
Number of ratings1112.1K — better
Update frequencyEvery 6 monthsFortnightly — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNo — betterYes
MonetizationFree — betterFree with in-app purchases
DevicesiPhoneiPhone, iPad — better
Requires iOS17.0 — better17.4
Further details — not scored
Size4 MB27 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperShan CaoTimo Partl

Customer experience

Expense

All ratings112 ratings
Positive96.4%
Neutral2.7%
Negative0.9%
Written reviews69 reviews
Positive97.1%
Neutral2.9%
Negative0.0%

Diarium Journal

All ratings2,063 ratings
Positive96.3%
Neutral1.9%
Negative1.8%
Written reviews951 reviews
Positive95.1%
Neutral2.0%
Negative2.9%

User reviews

Expense

From 111 App Store ratings

What 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 ratings

What 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
Show 23 more
  • 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 more
  • Improved search with highlighting
  • Focus mode for distraction-free writing

In-app purchases

None

Expense

No in-app purchases

1 purchases

Diarium Journal

One-time1
  • Pro version (iOS)$14.99

Questions

Is Expense free?
Expense is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is Diarium Journal free?
Diarium Journal is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Which has better reviews, Expense or Diarium Journal?
Diarium Journal is rated higher. Expense averages 4.8 out of 5 from 111 ratings, while Diarium Journal averages 4.8 from 2.1K ratings.
Do Expense or Diarium Journal have ads?
Neither Expense nor Diarium Journal shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Expense or Diarium Journal?
Expense ships an update every 6 months, and Diarium Journal fortnightly. Most recently, Expense was updated on November 11, 2026 and Diarium Journal on November 11, 2026.

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