Comparison

Standard Notes vs NeuralNotepad

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

Head to head
About

Standard Notes

Securely capture and sync your thoughts across all devices with end-to-end encryption. This app offers a simple, lasting place for all your notes, from personal thoughts to sensitive information, with robust privacy features.

Highlights
  • End-to-end encryption
  • Cross-device syncing
  • Offline access
  • Passcode and biometric lock
  • Tagging system
  • Open-source code
  • Optional productivity editors and themes
Features
Read full description

Standard Notes is a private and secure end-to-end encrypted notes app. It allows you to write and sync your notes across all your devices, including your iPhone, iPad, Mac, and web browser. Private means your notes are end-to-end encrypted, so only you can read your notes. Even we can't read the contents of your notes. Simple means it does one job and does it well. Standard Notes is a safe and lasting place for your life's work. Our focus is making it easy to write notes wherever you are and syncing them with encryption to all your devices. Our users love us for: • Personal Notes • Tasks & Todos • Passwords & Keys • Code & Technical Procedures • Private Journal • Meeting Notes • Cross-platform Scratchpad • Books, Recipes, & Movies • Health & Fitness Log Standard Notes comes free with: • Seamless sync across all your devices, with easy to use applications on iPhone, iPad, Mac, web browsers, and other platforms. • Offline access, so you can access your downloaded notes even without a connection. • No limit on number of devices. • No limit on number of notes. • Passcode lock protection, along with Touch ID and Face ID protection. • A tagging system to organize your notes (like #work, #ideas, #passwords, #crypto). • The ability to pin, lock, protect, and move notes to trash, which allows you to recover deleted notes until the trash is emptied. Standard Notes is completely open-source, which means when we say your notes are encrypted with industry-leading XChaCha-20 encryption, and that only you can read your notes, you don't have to take our word for it. Our code is open to the world to audit. We made Standard Notes simple because longevity is important to us. We want to make sure we're here, protecting your notes, for the next hundred years. You shouldn't have to find a new notes app every year. To sustain our development, we offer optional paid subscriptions which give you access to powerful tools like: • Productivity editors (like Markdown, Code, Spreadsheets) • Beautiful themes (like Midnight, Focus, Solarized Dark) • Powerful cloud tools including daily backups of your encrypted data delivered to your email inbox every day, or backed up to your cloud provider (like Dropbox and Google Drive). We're always happy to talk, whether it be a question, thought, or issue. Please feel free to email us any time at help@standardnotes.com. When you take the time to send us a message, we'll be sure to do the same. EULA: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/

About

NeuralNotepad

This app transforms your scattered thoughts into coherent journal entries using on-device AI. It automatically identifies patterns, tracks your mood, and creates summaries, all while keeping your data private. Capture ideas effortlessly through typing or voice.

Highlights
  • AI-generated daily journal entries
  • Automatic mood tracking from notes
  • Echo feature for connecting past notes
  • On-device AI processing for privacy
  • Voice capture with on-device transcription
  • Smart reminders for dates mentioned in notes
Features
Read full description

NeuralNotepad is a journal that writes itself. Jot down whatever's on your mind — a thought, a worry, something funny your kid said — and keep moving. No prompts, no forms, no friction. NeuralNotepad quietly does the rest: Echo recognizes when something you're writing connects to a note from days or weeks ago, and surfaces it right in the moment — so patterns in your thinking become visible instead of buried in a list. AI Journal clusters your day's scattered notes into a coherent end-of-day entry, written in your own words, so you get the reflective habit of journaling without the blank-page effort. Mood tracking turns your notes into a heatmap of how you've been feeling over time, with zero extra logging — it's inferred from what you already wrote. Voice capture lets you talk instead of type, with on-device transcription. Smart reminders notice when a note mentions a date — "dentist next Tuesday," "call Mom this weekend" — and offer to turn it into a Reminder, with one tap. Everything — the embeddings, the sentiment analysis, the journal generation, the entity extraction — runs locally using on-device intelligence. Your notes aren't sent to a server to make any of this work. NeuralNotepad Free includes unlimited note-taking, Echo recall, and mood tracking, plus one AI Journal generation per day. NeuralNotepad Pro ($4.99/month or $39.99/year) unlocks unlimited AI Journal generations and Reminders integration. NeuralNotepad is for anyone who has something to say but doesn't have time to sit down and "journal properly." Say it once. Let NeuralNotepad do the rest. Terms of Use: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/ Privacy Policy: https://mkamai.github.io/neuralnotepad-support/privacy

Screenshots

Standard Notes4 screens
NeuralNotepad4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is review sentiment: NeuralNotepad at 100% against Standard Notes's 64%. NeuralNotepad also leads on in-app purchases (none vs 1) and rating (5.0 vs 4.7). Standard Notes's advantage is ratings volume (3.8K vs 2) and iOS requirement (15.1 vs 17.0). On price, ads, monetization model 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

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Both are free to download. Standard Notes sells 1 in-app purchase, starting at $119.99 per year. NeuralNotepad asks for nothing beyond the download.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

NeuralNotepad holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 4.7. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Standard Notes has 3.8K ratings behind it against 2, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews point the same way: 64% of Standard Notes's written reviews are positive against 100% of NeuralNotepad's.

Scorecard5 real differences · 5 level
Standard Notes versus NeuralNotepad: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterStandard NotesNeuralNotepad
PriceFreeFree
Rating4.7 (3.8K ratings)5.0 (2 ratings) — better
Positive reviews63.9% of reviews100.0% of reviews — better
Number of ratings3.8K — better2
Update frequencyEvery 5 weeks—
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesYesNo — better
MonetizationFree with in-app purchasesFreemium
DevicesiPhone, iPad, iPod — betteriPhone, iPad
Requires iOS15.1 — better17.0
Further details — not scored
Size92 MB1 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperStandard Notes Ltd.Maruti Kampli

Customer experience

Standard Notes

All ratings3,751 ratings
Positive92.5%
Neutral2.2%
Negative5.3%
Written reviews598 reviews
Positive63.9%
Neutral10.4%
Negative25.8%

NeuralNotepad

All ratings1 ratings
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%
Written reviews1 reviews
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%

Bugs and requests

Standard Notes

Reported bugs

4 issues
  • Notes disappearing or getting deleted unexpectedly
  • Sync issues between devices
  • Keyboard and UI bugs on mobile
  • Compatibility problems with older iOS versions

Requested features

5 requests
  • Add support for images and attachments
  • Implement a more robust search function
  • Introduce a dark mode option
  • Allow for better note organization (folders, nested tags)
  • Add undo/redo functionality

NeuralNotepad

Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.

In-app purchases

1 purchases

Standard Notes

Subscriptions1
  • Professional Plan7 Days trial$119.991 Year
None

NeuralNotepad

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is Standard Notes free?
Standard Notes is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is NeuralNotepad free?
NeuralNotepad is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Which has better reviews, Standard Notes or NeuralNotepad?
NeuralNotepad is rated higher. Standard Notes averages 4.7 out of 5 from 3.8K ratings, while NeuralNotepad averages 5.0 from 2 ratings.
Do Standard Notes or NeuralNotepad have ads?
Neither Standard Notes nor NeuralNotepad shows ads.

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