Gratitude vs Journal
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Gratitude
This self-care app offers tools for mental well-being, including a private journal, positive affirmations, and vision boards. It provides daily motivation and prompts to foster self-love and a positive mindset.
- Private gratitude journal with voice recording
- Hundreds of positive affirmations
- Customizable vision boards
- Daily motivation and quotes
- Journal prompts and reminders
- Mindful minutes tracking
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The Gratitude app is a carefully-designed self-care tool to help you focus on your mental health. With a gratitude journal, affirmations, vision board, and daily motivation content, Gratitude provides you with all the tools and reminders you need to gain motivation and develop a healthy self-love routine in your life. To live a happy and fulfilling life, it is important for us to have good mental health and a strong sense of self-love. And, as the app is completely private, you can always be assured that your precious journal entries, affirmations, and vision board are for your eyes only. Here are the tools that you will find in the Gratitude app: 1. GRATITUDE JOURNAL A gratitude journal or diary opens up your eyes to reflect on all the little blessings in your life. In daily life, we can lose sight of what we are fortunate to have and by keeping a journal you can slowly and steadily shift your perspective to focus on what is good in your life. The Gratitude app will send you reminders with prompts to help you build the habit of journaling. You can also add photos to your journal entries and can record journals in your voice, build a gratitude journal streak, and access hundreds of journal prompts. 2. POSITIVE AFFIRMATIONS If you’ve heard about manifestation or the law of attraction, you’ve probably heard about affirmations. Positive daily affirmations change our self-talk to focus on more loving and kind thoughts towards ourselves. They give us the motivation we need to keep moving forward and believe in ourselves. The Gratitude app has hundreds of affirmations that you can listen to or read, as per your need. You can also write your own affirmations, add music, and record your voice to them. Positive affirmations are a dearly loved tool and with this affirmations app, it is very easy for you to practice them. 3. CREATE VISION BOARDS Another super popular manifestation tool is a vision board, also called a dream board. The vision board serves as a collage of your dreams and goals in the form of photos, quotes, and affirmations. In the Gratitude app, we’ll help you make a great vision board using sections, goal ideas, and create a video of all your goals together with music. You can also make multiple vision boards! 4. DAILY ZEN We understand the need for motivation and inspiration as you build a healthy routine with these self-help tools, which is why Daily Zen is an important part of the app. Here, you will find gratitude quotes, motivation quotes, thought switch ideas, thank you cards, affirmations, blog articles, and real-life stories of people who changed their mindset with gratitude. 5. MINDFUL MINUTES We define the Mindful minutes as the time that you spend in the Gratitude app. You can view the mindful minutes under 'All Health Data' section in the Health app provided by Apple. Currently, the app does not read any data from the health app. We don't write any data in the health app without your consent. You can turn on the mindful minutes from the profile & settings in the Gratitude app. Privacy Policy: https://www.notion.so/Gratitude-App-Privacy-Policy-40195d1e9f51499c82dc8f7d06ab2a1c Terms of Use: https://medium.com/@priteshsankhe/terms-and-conditions-c7a676f5d884
Journal
Capture and reflect on life's moments with rich media like photos, videos, and audio. Intelligent suggestions and prompts help you start writing, while multiple journals and goal tracking support a consistent practice. Sync across devices for seamless access.
- Journaling suggestions and prompts
- Rich media attachments (photos, video, audio)
- Handwriting and sketching support
- Multiple journal organization
- Streaks and insights for habit tracking
- Cross-device iCloud sync
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Take a moment to reflect on your day. Capture and write about the details of everyday moments and special events using photos, videos, audio recordings, places, your state of mind, and more. Journaling suggestions make it easy to remember your daily experiences—so you can add them to your journal and never have to start with a blank page. Organize your entries by creating multiple journals for different aspects of your life, keep track of your journaling goals with insights and streaks, and sync your journal between iPhone, iPad, and Mac using iCloud. Get started writing with journaling suggestions • Choose from suggested moments to start your journal entry with intelligently grouped outings, photos, workouts, media and more. • Get a writing prompt to guide your insights. • Find inspiration with reflection prompts to focus on gratitude, kindness, purpose, and more. • Journaling suggestions are created using on-device intelligence based on how you use your iPhone. Choose what information you want to enable for suggestions. • Suggestions created on your iPhone sync securely to iPad. Preserve powerful memories in rich detail • Illustrate your entries with the photos, videos, and places that tell your story. Customize the layout by placing attachments seamlessly within the text you write. • Get inspired to keep writing by asking for prompts tailored to the contents of your entry. • Get creative and express yourself with lettering, sketches, and doodles using your finger, or Apple Pencil on iPad. And you can make your journal even more personal with entries in your own handwriting. • Record your voice directly into your journal and have it transcribed automatically, or record your surroundings to add context to your entry. • Express yourself with text formatting options, including lists, quotes, and various text styles. • Add a widget to your Home Screen or Lock Screen that shows your current streak at a glance or presents writing prompts that change throughout the day so you can reflect on what’s going on in the moment. • Start a new entry and add content from other apps like News, Music, or Safari. • Keep your entries organized by creating multiple journals for different aspects of your life, and add a custom name and icon for each. Enjoy past moments • Browse, search, and sort your journal to look back and reflect on key moments in your life. • Easily find past entries using the calendar. • See entries written at a specific location or find entries you made nearby in the new Places view. • View each entry and its attachments in a beautiful fullscreen view. • Print or export your entries. Build a good habit • View your journaling streaks, the days you journaled, and other fun stats in the new Insights view. • Set a schedule or receive notifications at convenient times based on how you use the app. You’ll get reminders when it’s time to write, or when new journaling suggestions are ready, so you can keep a consistent journaling practice. Journal for wellbeing • Log your state of mind right from within Journal and save it to the Health app. • Automatically save your writing time as Mindful Minutes in Health. • Keep your journal private and secure • Protect your journal with your device passcode, Touch ID, or Face ID, so no one but you can access it. • Store your entries safely in iCloud so they’re automatically backed up. Certain features are available only in select languages and regions.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is in-app purchases: Journal at none against Gratitude's 17. Journal also leads on ratings volume (338K vs 45K). Gratitude's advantage is update cadence (every 8 days vs every 3 months). On price, rating, review sentiment and ads 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. Gratitude sells 15 in-app purchases, starting at $3.99 per month. Journal asks for nothing beyond the download.
On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 4.9 for Gratitude against 4.8 for Journal. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Journal has 338K ratings behind it against 45K, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews are what separate them: 86% of Gratitude's written reviews are positive against 80% of Journal's.
Gratitude ships an update every 8 days, Journal every 3 months. Both last shipped on October 31, 2026.
| Parameter | Gratitude | Journal |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.9 (45K ratings) — better | 4.8 (338K ratings) |
| Positive reviews | 85.9% of reviews — better | 79.7% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | 45K | 338K — better |
| Update frequency | Every 8 days — better | Every 3 months |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | No — better |
| Monetization | Free with in-app purchases | Free — better |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch — better | iPhone, iPad |
| Requires iOS | 17.0 — better | 17.2 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 100 MB | 6 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Hapjoy Technologies Private Limited | Apple Inc. |
Customer experience
Gratitude
Journal
User reviews
Gratitude
From 45K App Store ratingsWhat we love
- 💻 Simple and easy to use
- 🎨 Beautiful and customizable interface
- 🔍 Helpful prompts and challenges
- 📚 Useful affirmations and daily quotes
- 🗓️ Convenient daily journaling
Room to improve
- 💰 Subscription fees for full access
- 🔧 Some features not fully customizable
- 🐛 Occasional app crashes or bugs
- 🔍 Limited search functionality for affirmations
Journal
From 338K App Store ratingsWhat we love
- 🚀 Journaling made easy
- 🔒 Private and secure
- 👍 Organized and intuitive
- 👍 Helpful suggestions and prompts
- 👍 Convenient voice recording
Room to improve
- 🐛 Cursor jumps around while typing
- 🐛 Occasional crashes and freezes
- 🔍 Lack of search and filtering options
- 🔍 Inability to organize entries into folders or tags
- 🔍 Limited customization options for fonts, colors, etc.
Bugs and requests
Gratitude
Reported bugs
3 issues- Affirmation playback issues
- Inconsistent font changes after updates
- Difficulty canceling subscriptions
Requested features
5 requests- Allow editing of past journal entries
- Expand vision board capabilities
- Add option to change journal background color
- Improve affirmation playback and customization
- Integrate with more cloud storage options
Journal
Reported bugs
3 issues- Cursor jumping to top/bottom of entry while typing
- App freezing or crashing when adding multiple photos
- Inconsistent behavior when editing existing entries
Requested features
6 requests- Add search and filtering capabilities
- Implement tagging and folder organization
- Provide more customization options
- Expand to iPad and Mac platforms
- Integrate with Health app for mood tracking
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- Add option to share/export journal entries
In-app purchases
Gratitude
- Monthly pro plan$3.991 Month
- Monthly pro plan2 variants$4.991 Month
- Monthly pro: Free trial1 Month trial$4.991 Month
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- Gratitude Pro$5.991 Month
- Gratitude Pro$6.991 Month
- Quarterly Pro1 Month trial$9.993 Months
- Quarterly pro plan$9.993 Months
- Annual pro plan$19.991 Year
- Annual pro plan2 variants$29.991 Year
- Annual Pro1 Month trial$29.991 Year
- Gratitude Pro7 Days trial$34.991 Year
- Gratitude Pro1 Month trial$39.991 Year
- Gratitude Pro$39.991 Year
- Gratitude Pro7 Days trial$39.991 Year
- Gift Yearly Pro Subscription$14.99
Journal
No in-app purchases
Questions
Is Gratitude free?
Is Journal free?
Which has better reviews, Gratitude or Journal?
Do Gratitude or Journal have ads?
Which is updated more often, Gratitude or Journal?
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