Paperpile vs SciNote
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Paperpile
Organize and manage your research papers effortlessly. Collect, read, and annotate PDFs from millions of academic journals. Beat paper chaos with a tidy digital library.
- Search millions of academic papers
- Collect PDFs with one tap
- Organize with folders and labels
- Read and annotate PDFs
- Highlight and add notes
- Browser integration for saving
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Get a head start for you research and finally beat the paper chaos on your desk. With Paperpile you have all your research PDFs in one place — nice and tidy. Paperpile makes it easier than ever to collect, manage, read, and annotate your papers. FIND & COLLECT - Search millions of papers from 20,000+ academic journals right in the app. - Add new papers to your collection with one tap and the PDF will be downloaded automatically. - Save directly from your browser to your Paperpile library - User your university's off-campus proxy access to get restricted content behind paywalls. MANAGE & ORGANIZE - Bring structure to your library with folders and subfolders - Organize your library visually with colored labels - Mark important papers with stars. - Search your library to find the paper you need fast. READ & ANNOTATE - Read like on paper with a fast and slick PDF viewer experience - Highlight important sections in different colors - Add notes and never forget an important idea. - Add hand-drawn annotations - with your fingers or your Apple Pencil The Paperpile App requires a Paperpile account.
SciNote
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SciNote electronic lab notebook, a leading ELN solution trusted by FDA, NIH, USDA and over 90+k scientists across the globe, now offers a mobile app as well! With the SciNote mobile app, you can say goodbye to printing out your protocols on paper. Organize your data in SciNote, and take it to the lab bench on your smartphone or tablet to level up your note-taking. Access your planned tasks in the SciNote mobile app on your smartphone or tablet. You can find your recent tasks on the home page, or browse through all the tasks accessible to you on the Tasks page. Use different filters to narrow down the list of tasks by project, experiment, and task status. You can also use the search function to find the task you want to work on. Monitor the progress directly in the app by completing the protocol steps on the fly. Step attachments can be downloaded and opened on your device. You can also add comments to protocol steps or read those added by others. Open the task details, notes, and protocol description when needed. Find a list of assigned items to prepare all of the needed materials for your laboratory experiment. Spend less time writing your notes and recording results. Simply create text results and attach images or other files to the task results directly in the app. With this, you avoid copying your hand-written notes into your computer at the end of your work day. All the updates you do in the mobile app will be reflected in your web account right away. When you’re done with your work, easily update the task status right in the app. You can use the same app for accessing all SciNote teams you are part of. Switch between different SciNote teams on the Account page. You must have an active SciNote account to use the SciNote mobile app. The actions made in the mobile app are reflected on your web account only if the device is connected to the internet. Without an internet connection, the actions are not performed and recorded. This is a beta version of the SciNote mobile app; the app is available to all Premium and Free users. The app is not yet available for Platinum and locally hosted customers. Please contact your Customer Success Manager for more information. Your feedback is very valuable and highly appreciated. You can submit your feedback through this email address support@scinote.net or to your Customer Success Manager. Terms of Service: https://www.scinote.net/legal/terms-of-service/ Privacy policy: https://www.scinote.net/legal/users-privacy-policy/
Screenshots
Verdict
Paperpile and SciNote are too close to call on the numbers: across 6 compared parameters — price, update cadence, ads and in-app purchases among them — neither pulls far enough ahead to decide it. What separates them is feature set and interface, not measurable difference.
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. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
Paperpile ships an update every 2 months, SciNote every 4 months. The most recent releases landed on October 23, 2026 and October 27, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Paperpile | SciNote |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.5 (131 ratings) — better | — |
| Positive reviews | 71.6% of reviews | — |
| Number of ratings | 131 — better | — |
| Update frequency | Every 2 months — better | Every 4 months |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free | — |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod | iPhone, iPad, iPod |
| Requires iOS | 12.0 | 11.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 242 MB | 66 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 17+ |
| Developer | Paperpile LLC | Scinote LLC |
Bugs and requests
Paperpile
Reported bugs
12 issues- App crashes frequently on iPad and iOS devices
- Highlighting disappears when revisiting papers
- Overlapping annotations delete together when removing one
- Sync failures requiring logout/login cycles
- Annotations not syncing between iPad and web versions
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- PDF metadata recognition failures when adding papers
- Settings reset when returning to previously edited files
- App incompatible with older iOS versions (iOS 12)
- Login authentication errors with university accounts
- App crashes without reliable internet connection
- Search functionality broken after updates
- Annotations not saving/loading on iOS 14.4.2
Requested features
17 requests- Dark mode implementation
- Edit citation metadata on mobile app
- Change PDF file functionality
- Save to downloads feature
- Dictionary/lookup function for reading
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- Cite while you write feature
- BibTeX export capability
- Ability to upload PDFs directly from mobile app
- Support for Safari and other browsers
- Desktop application version
- Shared library access in mobile app
- Advanced sorting options (by title, author, date)
- Custom color options for annotations
- Paste images into PDFs
- Shape snapping for drawing tools
- University email authentication
- Paper rating system beyond stars
SciNote
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
In-app purchases
Paperpile
No in-app purchases
SciNote
No in-app purchases









