Recall vs Tree Notebook
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Recall
This app helps you store and quickly find thousands of information snippets, including recipes, lists, and web links. It supports plain text, PDFs, and images, with comprehensive iCloud backups and drag-and-drop functionality on iPad.
- Store thousands of information snippets
- Plain text format with PDF and image support
- Comprehensive iCloud backups
- Drag and drop support on iPad
- Hierarchical tagging for organization
- Advanced search with AND, OR, NOT operators
- Siri Shortcut support
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Recall-It Notes enables you to store thousands of snippets of information and quickly find what you need. For example, you can store recipes, gift lists, notes made while watching how-to videos or reading articles, keep annotated lists of web links, track major purchases, maintain checklists for activities like upgrading to a new phone, save frequently used keyboard shortcuts for your favorite apps, and much more. Recall-It is based on plain text, the most portable medium for your information. You can export your notes exactly as you entered or imported them so there is no lock-in as there can be with proprietary formats. Despite being plain text, your notes can include and display linked PDFs and images, e.g. photos or screenshots. Recall-It includes comprehensive back-up: by default, your entire database is backed up daily to your iCloud account, and you can manually archive everything, or any subset of your notes, any time. You can completely rebuild your database from any of the full back-ups. On iPad, drag and drop support lets you do things like create new notes by dragging text files from iCloud drive, drag images or selections from web pages, Apple Notes, email, iBooks, etc. and drop them to create new notes or append to existing ones. You can drag terms from the note you are looking at to the search field to find other possibly related notes. You can drag within the app to augment or copy notes, or drag a group of notes to iCloud drive to export them as text files. MAJOR FEATURES - Syncs via iCloud to all of your devices - Notes can be tagged to enable browsing or enhance search - You can apply multiple hierarchical tags to any note - Existing tags can be renamed or deleted for all associated notes - You can search based on AND, OR, NOT, and BEGINS-WITH - Searching for “word” automatically finds “words”, “worded”, “wording”, “wordy”, etc. (English only, and optional) - Search results are ordered showing best matches first - Search results can be filtered to include/not include notes with attachments - Search terms are highlighted within notes which auto-scroll to first occurrence - Repeat previous searches with a few taps - Launch the app and search via Siri command (Siri Shortcut support in iOS 12.) - One tap access to “favorite” or recently viewed notes - Easy formatting: bold headings, subheadings are automatically styled, or for greater flexibility, use Markdown heading syntax. - Handy in-note search function for continuing search within long notes - Auto-completion for easy entry of search terms/tags - Action Sheet support in Safari and other apps lets you save selections as new notes or append to any “favorite” note - Support for Slide Over, Split View, and 3D Touch on appropriate devices. - Automation via x-callback-url support; control Recall-It with the Workflow app - Easily insert images, checkboxes, bullets, current date and time into your notes. - Powerful batch editing for deleting, exporting, backing up, adding or removing tags from groups of notes - Comprehensive back-up and restore, including auto-backup (see above) - Extensive drag and drop support (see above) You may optionally choose to support development by purchasing a yearly, auto-renewing subscription ($4.99/year USD). Payment will be charged to your iTunes account, and renewals will be charged at the same price within 24 hours prior to the end of the current subscription if you have not turned off auto-renewal. You may turn off auto-renewal by going to your settings in the iTunes store, or directly from the app Settings pane where you purchased the subscription. For privacy policy and service terms see: http://www.microspell.com/recall-it/PrivacyPolicy.html
Tree Notebook
Organize personal information with a hierarchical notes manager. Structure data into a tree-like hierarchy of folders and notes, with options for public and encrypted private sections. Features include powerful search, customizable item appearance, and event reminders.
- Tree-like hierarchical organization
- Public and encrypted private data sections
- Attachments (images, files)
- Multiple data views (tree, list, favorites, history)
- Powerful search capabilities
- Customizable item appearance
- Event reminders and calendar
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Tree Notebook is a hierarchical notes manager designed for keeping personal information. Tree Notebook runs on an iOS device (iPhone or iPad). Besides, there is a counterpart for OS Windows which can be synchronized with up to three iOS devices via a local Wi-Fi network. No access to Internet is needed for synchronizing. The data in Tree Notebook is divided in two parts: the public part accessible without password and the encrypted private part which requires password for opening. The data in every part is arranged as a tree-like multilevel hierarchy of folders and notes. Any folder can include notes and other folders, and so fourth. Any item (a note or a folder) can include text of any size. The items can keep attachments like images or other files. The app can represent data in several ways: as a tree, as a list of items (folders and notes) on the current level, as a list of manually selected items ("Favorites"), or the items visited recently ("History"). The contents of an individual item can be viewed or edited. Tree Notebook includes powerful search facilities: simplified or conditional global search, local search inside an item text. The items can be sorted by several criteria: alphabetically, by creation or modification time, and in manually defined order. The item titles can be attributed using a variety of font types, colored flags, graphic icons. Any item can have an Event attribute and serve as an alarm clock or reminder. A calendar feature is available to help managing events. The app is free to use both on iOS devices and desktop PC.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is in-app purchases: Tree Notebook at none against Recall's 1. Recall's advantage is update cadence (every 2 months vs every 25 months) and iOS requirement (13.0 vs 15.6). On price, rating, ratings volume 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. Recall sells 1 in-app purchase, starting at $4.99 per year. Tree Notebook asks for nothing beyond the download.
On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 4.5 for Recall against 4.4 for Tree Notebook. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 8 and 5 respectively.
Recall ships an update every 2 months, Tree Notebook every 25 months. The most recent releases landed on September 28, 2026 and September 30, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Recall | Tree Notebook |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.5 (8 ratings) — better | 4.4 (5 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | 75.0% of reviews | — |
| Number of ratings | 8 — better | 5 |
| Update frequency | Every 2 months — better | Every 25 months |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | No — better |
| Monetization | Free with in-app purchases | Free — better |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod | iPhone, iPad, iPod |
| Requires iOS | 13.0 — better | 15.6 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 60 MB | 12 MB |
| Age rating | 17+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Robert N Lucas | Lena Pankratova |
Customer experience
Recall
Tree Notebook
In-app purchases
Recall
- Subscription$4.991 Year
Tree Notebook
No in-app purchases








