Comparison

Recall vs Lists

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

Head to head
About

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.

Highlights
  • 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
Features
Read full description

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

About

Lists

Organize thoughts, plan projects, and write notes with an intuitive outliner. Features multi-level outlining, rich text formatting, and an optional AI assistant for content generation and translation. Seamlessly syncs across devices and offers export options.

Highlights
  • Multi-level outlining
  • Rich-text formatting
  • Optional AI assistant
  • Seamless cross-device sync
  • Export to PDF, Word, HTML
  • Password protection for folders
Features
Read full description

Lists is a user-friendly app designed for everyone who enjoys simplicity when it comes to organizing thoughts, planning projects, making lists, and writing notes. Whether you're a writer, student, project manager, or anyone who consistently works on intricate tasks, our app will help boost your productivity and streamline your ideas. Main Key Features: - User-friendly Interface: Designed for easy use, Lists comes with an intuitive interface where you can navigate, make entries, and review your created outline with ease. - Multi-level Outlining: Lists allows creating notes with multiple levels of detail; you can drill down to as many sub-levels as you want. - Optional AI Assistant to generate content for lists, summaries, essays, translations, blog posts, poems, emails, songs, quizzes, tests, memos, recipes, and so much more. - Rich-text formatting: Bold, italic, underline, highlight, subscript/superscript, alignment, line and paragraph spacing, first-line indent, page breaks, footnotes, comments, text and paper color, etc. - Create unlimited notebooks, folders and nested subfolders. - Protect individually your folders/notebooks with a password, very useful for iPads with more than one user in office, classroom or home. - Seamless Sync: Syncs effortlessly across all your iOS devices, making your outlines available anytime, anywhere. - Customizable Themes: Personalize your experience with a variety of themes and make the space truly yours. - Integrated Search: Find specific information quickly and easily using our state-of-the-art search and filter feature. - Export & Import Options: Need your outlines in other formats? Export to PDF, Word, HTML, and more. You can also import data from other formats. Lists presents you with a canvas for your thoughts, providing the perfect platform to plot your narrative, plan your project, or just jot down your thoughts in a clear and concise way. If you so choose, the included AI Assistant can perform tasks for you: • Easily generate automatically lists, summaries, essays, blog posts, poems, emails, songs, quizzes, tests, memos, recipes, and so much more. • Ask anything to our smart AI assistant, it's got your answers. • Nail perfect writing with built-in spell checking and grammar fixes. • Boost your vocab with a killer dictionary full of definitions, synonyms, and antonyms. • Make your writing better by analyzing sentence structures with no sweat. • Use the handy translation feature which supports heaps of languages, solving any language issues. • Talk and write in over 50 languages with our handy assistant. • Spin up travel plans, recipes, step-by-step guides, quizzes, tests, memos, essays, histories, poems, you name it. • Speech Recognition: Talk or type, either way we have smooth conversations. Try Lists today to bring clarity to your thoughts and productivity to your day! Privacy Policy http://www.noteswriter.com/Kairoos_Privacy_Policy.html EULA https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/ This app requires users to have a subscription to unlock all the features after a 3-day risk-free trial.

Screenshots

Recall4 screens
Lists4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is rating: Recall at 4.5 against Lists's 2.5. Recall also leads on ratings volume (8 vs 2) and iOS requirement (13.0 vs 16.4). Lists's advantage is review sentiment (100% vs 75%) and update cadence (every 3 weeks vs every 2 months). On price, ads, in-app purchases and monetization model 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. Recall sells 1 in-app purchase, starting at $4.99 per year and Lists sells 2 in-app purchases, starting at $1.99 per month. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

Recall holds the better App Store score, 4.5 against 2.5. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 8 and 2 respectively. Written reviews complicate that: 75% of Recall's written reviews are positive against 100% of Lists's, so the app with the better star average is not the one people write more warmly about.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Recall ships an update every 2 months, Lists every 3 weeks. The most recent releases landed on September 28, 2026 and October 8, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard5 real differences · 5 level
Recall versus Lists: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterRecallLists
PriceFreeFree
Rating4.5 (8 ratings) — better2.5 (2 ratings)
Positive reviews75.0% of reviews100.0% of reviews — better
Number of ratings8 — better2
Update frequencyEvery 2 monthsEvery 3 weeks — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesYesYes
MonetizationFree with in-app purchasesFree with in-app purchases
DevicesiPhone, iPad, iPod — betteriPhone, iPad
Requires iOS13.0 — better16.4
Further details — not scored
Size60 MB248 MB
Age rating17++4
DeveloperRobert N LucasKairoos Solutions SL

Customer experience

Recall

All ratings8 ratings
Positive87.5%
Neutral0.0%
Negative12.5%
Written reviews4 reviews
Positive75.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative25.0%

Lists

All ratings2 ratings
Positive50.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative50.0%
Written reviews1 reviews
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%

In-app purchases

1 purchases

Recall

Subscriptions1
  • Subscription$4.991 Year
2 purchases

Lists

Subscriptions1
  • Unlock All including AI3 Days trial$1.991 Month
One-time1
  • Outliner Lifetime Pro Upgrade$3.99

Questions

Is Recall free?
Recall is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is Lists free?
Lists is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Which has better reviews, Recall or Lists?
Recall is rated higher. Recall averages 4.5 out of 5 from 8 ratings, while Lists averages 2.5 from 2 ratings.
Do Recall or Lists have ads?
Neither Recall nor Lists shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Recall or Lists?
Recall ships an update every 2 months, and Lists every 3 weeks. Most recently, Recall was updated on September 28, 2026 and Lists on October 8, 2026.

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