Penbook vs Noteful
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Penbook
Create custom digital notebooks with a vast library of stationery or import your own PDFs for annotation. Write naturally with a stylus and organize your notes with dynamic features like live planners and searchable handwriting.
- Live Paper dynamic stationery
- Over 400 stationery types
- Import and annotate PDFs
- Natural handwriting with stylus
- Searchable handwritten notes
- Shape recognition
- Customizable notebook covers
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Write naturally with your Apple Pencil on Live Paper with Penbook. Build your perfect notebook from more than four hundred types of stationery. Then, use the best digital inking technology to pour your ideas, notes, plans, and dreams into it. Penbook's Live Paper is way smarter than ordinary stationery. Schedule your life on a monthly planner that shows a real calendar, organize your day with a day planner that shows you what time it is, and record your nutrition on a food diary that knows what day it is. Or, bring your own stationery! Import your PDFs into Penbook for quick annotation and editing. Give your notebooks colorful covers with fun art, and share them so your notes are always where you need them. FEATURES • Live Paper, the dynamic stationery that uses the smarts of your iPad and iPhone • Over 400 of academic, scientific, and planning stationeries • Import PDFs and use them as notebooks • Write naturally with your Apple Pencil, stylus, or finger • Unlimited unique cover combinations for your notes • Search your handwritten notes for words or phrases • Snap your strokes to perfect shapes with shape recognition INCLUDED STATIONERIES Penbook has a huge selection of customizable stationery. Each page of your notebook can be different, turning your iPad or iPhone into a magic notebook: • Blank stationery, with an optional date and configurable margin • Ruled paper with variable density • Graph paper with four options for square sizes • Dot stationery, either squared or isometric (offset) • Cross stationery with configurable margins and density • To Do pages with four layout options • Monthly habit paper for tracking streaks, habits, and goals • Day planner paper with a live updating timeline and calendar, and three layouts • Weekly planner paper that highlights the current time and date • Monthly planner paper that keeps track of the current day and shows you what's coming next • Yearly stationery for getting a complete overview of your next 365 days • Cornell paper for taking perfect study notes • French ruled (Séyès) paper • Penmanship practice paper • Table stationery for hand-written spreadsheets • Polar graph paper for plotting radial data • Semi-log and loglog paper for data with exponential growth or decay • Isometric stationery with equilateral (60-60-60) or isosceles (75-75-30) triangles • Perspective paper, configurable with one, two, or three vanishing points • Developer stationery with device stencils and configurable note-taking areas • Storyboard paper with 3 frame aspect ratios • Engineering paper with variable density • Chemistry paper for easily sketching molecules • Staff and tablature (music) paper with optional linked staves GET THE MOST OUT OF PENBOOK Use all of Penbook's stationery and writing features in a single notebook for free for as long as you like. Upgrade to Penbook Premium to create and export unlimited notebooks, receive access to new stationery and covers as they're designed, and get regular app updates. Penbook Premium is available by purchasing a yearly subscription or a one-time (lifetime) in-app purchase. When you choose to upgrade with the yearly subscription, you can start using Penbook Premium for free with a 7-day free trial. During the trial, cancel any time until 24 hours before the trial expires, and you will not be charged. If you do not cancel, you will be automatically billed for the yearly subscription when your free trial ends. Payment will be charged to your Apple ID account at the confirmation of purchase. Subscription automatically renews unless it is canceled at least 24 hours before the end of the current period. Your account will be charged for renewal within 24 hours prior to the end of the current period. You can manage and cancel your subscriptions by going to your account settings on the App Store after purchase. Our customer-first privacy policy: https://penbook.app/privacy-policy Penbook's terms of use: https://penbook.app/terms-of-use
Noteful
This app revolutionizes paperless note-taking on iPad, allowing for handwritten notes, document annotation, and knowledge organization. It offers a fluid writing experience, PDF markup, powerful tagging, and audio recording synced with notes.
- Handwritten notes with Apple Pencil
- PDF and document annotation
- Organize notes with tags
- Layers for annotations
- Audio recording synced with notes
- Import PDFs and MS Office documents
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Noteful is your one-stop note-taking app to experience the new paperless revolution on iPad. Perfect for annotating documents, taking class notes or even building your personal knowledge system. It is time to put aside the paper clutter, as Noteful is a versatile tool that helps you to accelerate your learning and knowledge work. Take Beautiful Handwritten Notes • Natural, fluid and precise handwriting experience • Precise handwriting on iPad with Apple Pencil native support • Custom-built ink engine InfiniteStroke that captures and converts your strokes into high-resolution vector ink • 3 brushes available: ballpoint pen, fountain pen and highlighter • Switch between pen sizes and colours • Recognise geometrical shapes Markup, Highlight, Annotate • Import PDFs, MS Office documents to a notebook • Add images, shapes and typed text to notes • Use multiple paper templates in a single notebook • Export and share handwritten annotations as PDF • Use Quick Create to create a new notebook for quick sketching Powerful Tagging • Organise quickly by tagging with #tag or even #nested/tag anywhere in notebooks • More flexible than folders; Notes can be organised by subjects, by topics or by priorities • Browse notebooks or pages by tags • Rename, delete or re-assign tags to easily re-organise your library Layers in Notebook • Add annotation on separate layers without changing original content* • Hide or show layers independently • Rearrange layers • Make it possible to composite complex layout* All Your Notes, All the Time • Sync to all your iPhone and iPad devices* • Take textbooks, slides, handwritten notes and PDF documents with you wherever you go • Notebooks synced with iCloud are encrypted via account-based keys Powerful Editing • Erase strokes with eraser • Double tap on Apple Pencil to switch to eraser tool • Move and resize annotations with lasso tool • Unlimited undo, redo • Support Split View for multitasking Audio Record Notes • Record audio while you take notes • Audio playback position synced with the notes Modern App Design • A minimalist UI that maximizes content space • Streamlined design that requires fewer taps for common functions • Different orientations are available for the main toolbar • A clean UI that lets you focus on note-taking and the content We will be adding new features so please stay tuned for future updates. — Noteful is free to use without time limit but with certain features (marked with*) only available to users who upgrade to Noteful Pro via In-app purchase. Noteful Pro is available for one-time purchase and the features will be unlocked forever. — If you have support questions or product suggestions, please contact us by support. Wishing you happy note-taking! Customer Support: support@getnoteful.com Privacy Policy: https://www.getnoteful.com/privacy
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is review sentiment: Noteful at 87% against Penbook's 58%. Noteful also leads on rating (4.8 vs 4.5) and iOS requirement (16.4 vs 18.1). Penbook's advantage is update cadence (every 5 days vs fortnightly). On price, ratings volume, ads and in-app purchases 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. Penbook sells 7 in-app purchases, starting at $4.99 per month and Noteful sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.
Noteful holds the better App Store score, 4.8 against 4.5. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 46K and 24K respectively. Written reviews point the same way: 58% of Penbook's written reviews are positive against 87% of Noteful's.
Penbook ships an update every 5 days, Noteful fortnightly. Both last shipped on November 5, 2026.
| Parameter | Penbook | Noteful |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.5 (46K ratings) | 4.8 (24K ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 57.8% of reviews | 87.0% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 46K — better | 24K |
| Update frequency | Every 5 days — better | Fortnightly |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | Yes |
| Monetization | Free with in-app purchases | Freemium |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, Vision Pro — better | iPhone, iPad |
| Requires iOS | 18.1 | 16.4 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 143 MB | 157 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Pencil Research | Noteful Technologies Ltd |
Customer experience
Penbook
Noteful
User reviews
Penbook
From 46K App Store ratingsWhat we love
- 👍 Intuitive and user-friendly interface
- 🎨 Variety of customization options for notebooks
- 📝 Smooth writing experience with Apple Pencil
- 🗓️ Useful calendar integration
- 💡 Innovative features like washi tape and stickers
Room to improve
- 🐛 Occasional crashes and data loss issues
- 🔒 Lack of password protection or locking feature
- 🔧 Glitchy zooming and ruler functionality
- 🧭 Poor notebook and page management
- 💰 Restrictive free version, expensive subscription
Noteful
From 24K App Store ratingsWhat we love
- 🚀 Smooth writing experience
- 👍 Intuitive and easy to use
- 💡 Layers feature
- 👍 Affordable one-time purchase
- 🚀 Efficient and lightweight
Room to improve
- 🐛 Occasional crashes or freezes
- 🔍 No handwriting recognition or search
- 🔍 Limited text editing options
- 🔍 Lack of advanced features like math conversion
- 🔍 Exporting PDFs loses some formatting
Bugs and requests
Penbook
Reported bugs
5 issues- Sticker resizing issues causing app freezes
- Ruler placement and alignment problems
- Inconsistent behavior when switching between pages
- Calendar sync not working as expected
- PDF import and annotation functionality not reliable
Requested features
5 requests- Allow custom notebook covers or images
- Add text box and typing capabilities
- Improve organization with folders or tags
- Provide more customization options for templates
- Implement a more intuitive undo/redo system
Noteful
Reported bugs
3 issues- Syncing issues across devices
- Lasso tool not working properly with PDFs
- Eraser tool not functioning as expected
Requested features
6 requests- Handwriting recognition and search
- More text editing options (bullet lists, etc.)
- Improved PDF handling and annotations
- Custom templates and sticker support
- Expanded cloud storage options (Dropbox, OneDrive, etc.)
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- Customizable pen pressure and smoothing
In-app purchases
Penbook
- Penbook Premium2 variants$4.991 Month
- Penbook Premium$7.991 Month
- Penbook Premium7 Days trial3 variants$14.991 Year
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- Penbook Premium7 Days trial$19.991 Year
- Penbook Premium7 Days trial$29.991 Year
- Penbook Premium7 Days trial$39.991 Year
- Penbook Premium Lifetime$49.99
Noteful
- Noteful Pro, Lifetime$6.99








