Recall vs Metanote
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
Metanote
A privacy-focused offline editor that supports Org mode for writing, task management, and knowledge wikis. It offers real-time editing of rich content and seamless synchronization across devices.
- Privacy-first offline editor
- Full Org mode support
- Real-time rich content editing
- Seamless synchronization
- Integrated task management
- Full-text search
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Metanote is a privacy-first offline editor that supports org mode. In Metanote, everything is text, everything is editable. Supports real-time editing and rendering of images, hyperlinks, tables, Latex mathematical formulas, source code blocks, attachments and other rich content with the text markup language 'org mode'. Literary creation, academic papers, literary programming, task management, knowledge wiki and other usage scenarios can be easily handled. *** Freedom & Private 100% work offline, no account required, no network required, no private document formats, no data collection, your data and privacy are completely under your control. *** Writing every where Whether on the go or in your bedroom, you can create, view and edit your documents anytime, anywhere, and with built-in synchronization, everything will be there when you return to your desk. *** A silky-smooth editing experience Pure native development, lightweight and smooth, rejecting any lag, even for large files! *** Thinking better Through the structured editing function, ideas come to life on screen. It is not only a beautiful outline, but also efficient thinking. *** Never miss a thing There is no more free task management system than this. Notes are to-dos, and to-dos are notes. Everything is plain-text and everything can be edited. Capture inspiration on the go with 'capture' and keep everything in sight with 'agenda view's. *** Org mode Metanote fully supports org mode 9.3.6 syntax, including features like Capture and Agenda View, allowing for a perfect and even enhanced org mode experience on smartphones. - An incredibly smooth editing experience. - Sync using WebDAV(Apache WebDAV Server, ownCloud, Yandex.disk, etc.), Dropbox, OneDrive, Git, iCloud. - Support for adding Obsidian and Logseq working directories, integrating and managing them in a unified manner - Supports full-text search. - Support images, tables and LaTeX. - Support hyperlinks and attachments. 1. Supports internal links and external links. 2. Click on the attachment link to preview and edit, the following types are supported: 1. iWork and Microsoft Office documents 2. Images 3. Live Photos 4. Text files 5. PDFs 6. Audio and video files - Supports multi-window editing. - Customizable startup page - Supports mini buffer. - Compatible with org mode version 9.3.6 - Todo notifications support - View agenda views by year, month, and day - Customizable workflows - Support for custom capture, custom agenda view, refile, log note, and other features. Terms of Use: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is update cadence: Metanote at every 2 weeks against Recall's every 2 months. On price, rating, review sentiment and ratings volume 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 and Metanote sells 3 in-app purchases, starting at $1.99 per month. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.
On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 4.5 for Recall against 4.5 for Metanote. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 8 and 11 respectively. Written reviews are what separate them: 75% of Recall's written reviews are positive against 73% of Metanote's.
Recall ships an update every 2 months, Metanote every 2 weeks. The most recent releases landed on September 28, 2026 and October 3, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Recall | Metanote |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.5 (8 ratings) — better | 4.5 (11 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | 75.0% of reviews — better | 72.7% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | 8 | 11 — better |
| Update frequency | Every 2 months | Every 2 weeks — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | Yes |
| Monetization | Free with in-app purchases | Freemium |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod | iPhone, iPad, iPod |
| Requires iOS | 13.0 — better | 14.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 60 MB | 16 MB |
| Age rating | 17+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Robert N Lucas | 雪双 陈 |
Customer experience
Recall
Metanote
In-app purchases
Recall
- Subscription$4.991 Year
Metanote
- Metanote Premium$1.991 Month
- Metanote Premium$12.991 Year
- One-time purchase$19.99









