Thinky vs Guided Journaling
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Thinky
This app offers a secure and simple way to journal your thoughts and feelings. It automatically classifies your mood, provides writing prompts, and allows for cloud backup. Track your emotional patterns with visual graphs and set reminders to build a consistent journaling habit.
- Automatic mood classification
- End-to-end encryption
- Writing prompts
- Cloud backup and sync
- Photo attachments
- Daily reminders
- Visual mood graph
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Say hello to effortless journaling with Thinky, the beautifully simple and secure free journal. Take the guess work out of your thoughts and feelings as automatic mood classification tracks life’s ups and downs, leaving you time to focus on what really matters. Start the habit of a lifetime with Thinky, with your wellbeing at heart. More Thinky features: - Safely tuck your thoughts away with our state-of-the-art end-to-end encryption, keeping your private feelings just that: private. - Not sure where to start? Thinky’s writing prompts will help you focus on your wellbeing and remove that blank-page fear. - Create your free account to securely backup and sync your entries to the cloud - Add a splash of colour to your timeline and bring your posts to life with a photo, perfect for those times when words aren't enough. - Complete your post in a few seconds thanks to our simple, no-fuss interface, perfect for journaling on-the-go. - Never miss an entry: build the habit of daily journaling with reminders and streaks to incentivise you to keep up your practice. - Take the guess work out of your emotions and let Thinky’s automatic mood classification do all the hard work for you. - With each post, grow your bespoke visual mood graph and see how your mood ebbs and flows over time. - Take a moment for reflection, and ask Thinky to remind you of special posts at a future date. - Search your entries quickly and easily and see if you can spot patterns in your thoughts. - See in the dark with Dark Mode, perfect for late night journaling. - Keep your journal private with the Face ID lock. Now is the time to focus on you: download Thinky, your intuitive mindfulness companion.
Guided Journaling
This app helps you reflect on your life, form habits, and reduce stress through personalized guided journaling. Analyze trends with over 60 charts, manage tags, and set goals with reminders. Secure your data with on-device encryption and cloud sync.
- Personalized guided journals
- Habit formation and goal setting
- Mood and activity tracking
- Data analysis with 60+ charts
- On-device encryption and secure backup
- Export data in multiple formats
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Discover past trends, celebrate now, and take control of your future with the most personalizable guided journal app Features: -Record anything in one place, reflect on your life, form habits, reduce stress, sleep better, feel calmer, and happier through guided journaling -Over 50 ready-to-use mindful journals or create your own custom guided journals to keep consistent journals with text, number, currency, and time fields -Easily create and manage tags for regularly used things such as moods, feelings, activities, and people -Quantity, summary, and time-based goals and reminders to help you to form habits and to be more consistent -More than 60 charts to analyze mood, goals, tracked time, expenses, locations, tags, template answers, and more -Slide along all your previously geotagged entries on the map -Grid view to quickly compare all your answers between different days, weeks, months, and years -On-device encryption and secure backup and sync between your devices with your own encryption key and dropbox account -Look back at your entries with throwbacks -Images on the calendar and map -Export in PDF, JSON, TXT, KML, CSV -Dark mode -Passcode lock
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is ads: Guided Journaling at none against Thinky's shown. Guided Journaling also leads on review sentiment (100% vs 84%). Thinky's advantage is rating (4.7 vs 4.4) and ratings volume (89 vs 5). On price, update cadence, 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
Both are free to download. Thinky sells 4 one-off in-app purchases and Guided Journaling sells 2 in-app purchases, starting at $1.49 per month. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.
Thinky holds the better App Store score, 4.7 against 4.4. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Thinky has 89 ratings behind it against 5, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews complicate that: 84% of Thinky's written reviews are positive against 100% of Guided Journaling's, so the app with the better star average is not the one people write more warmly about.
Both ship on a similar rhythm, roughly every 2 weeks. The most recent releases landed on September 28, 2026 and August 11, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Thinky | Guided Journaling |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.7 (89 ratings) — better | 4.4 (5 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | 84.3% of reviews | 100.0% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 89 — better | 5 |
| Update frequency | Every 2 weeks | Every 2 weeks |
| Ads | Yes | No — better |
| In-app purchases | Yes | Yes |
| Monetization | Free with in-app purchases | Free with in-app purchases |
| Devices | iPhone, iPod | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better |
| Requires iOS | 10.0 — better | 13.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 49 MB | 52 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Thinky Ltd | Dominik Gyecsek |
Customer experience
Thinky
Guided Journaling
Bugs and requests
Thinky
Reported bugs
3 issues- App crashes when navigating to past dates
- Privacy key not working for login
- Wind down and bedtime alerts not working
Requested features
14 requests- Increase word limit
- Ability to export entries
- Tagging entries for search
- Add a return button for new lines
- Bullet points feature
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- Edit past entries
- Add more features and color customization
- Ability to add entries to specific dates
- iPad version
- Pin separate from phone for access
- Dark mode
- Advanced analytics
- Change daily entry order (asc/desc)
- Previews for entries
Guided Journaling
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
In-app purchases
Thinky
- Coffee-sized tip$0.99
- Sandwich-sized tip$2.99
- Pizza-sized tip$4.99
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- A very generous tip$9.99
Guided Journaling
- DoEntry Monthly Plan$1.491 Month
- Doentry Pro Lifetime$40.99









