Recall vs Orca
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
Orca
Organize your thoughts and experiences with custom categories. Track books, shows, places, and more in one central location. Never forget your opinions or details about things you've enjoyed.
- Customizable categories
- Organize books, shows, places
- Track personal opinions
- Centralized organization
- Intuitive interface
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Have you ever read a book but forgot your exact opinions on it? Or watched a TV show but can't remember precisely how you felt about it? Then Orca is the app for you. It allows you to organize things in your life using custom categories. Now you can organize the books you've read, shows you've watched, places you've been, and more, all in one place!
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is rating: Orca at 5.0 against Recall's 4.5. Orca also leads on in-app purchases (none vs 1) and review sentiment (100% vs 75%). On price, ratings volume, ads and device support 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. Orca asks for nothing beyond the download.
Orca holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 4.5. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 8 and 5 respectively. Written reviews point the same way: 75% of Recall's written reviews are positive against 100% of Orca's.
| Parameter | Recall | Orca |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.5 (8 ratings) | 5.0 (5 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 75.0% of reviews | 100.0% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 8 — better | 5 |
| Update frequency | Every 2 months | — |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | No — better |
| Monetization | Free with in-app purchases | Free — better |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better | iPhone, iPod |
| Requires iOS | 13.0 | 11.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 60 MB | 32 MB |
| Age rating | 17+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Robert N Lucas | Cole Horvitz |
Customer experience
Recall
Orca
In-app purchases
Recall
- Subscription$4.991 Year
Orca
No in-app purchases





