Comparison

Mood vs Private Journal

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

Head to head
About

Mood

This app helps you understand your emotions by tracking your mood and identifying underlying feelings and needs. It offers guided analysis of situations, providing relief and suggesting new life strategies for improved well-being and joy.

Highlights
  • Guided mood tracking
  • Identify feelings and needs
  • Written or spoken situation analysis
  • Discover hidden needs
  • Develop new life strategies
  • Track mood statistics and history
Features
Read full description

Mood – Track your mood, uncover hidden needs, and find calm Mood’s mission is to analyze your moods and shed light on what they truly mean. Behind every mood lie feelings and needs, often unconscious. Recognizing them brings relief—because most needs simply want to be identified and named! This emotional hygiene, still little known, is a powerful lever for well-being: when we learn to identify our needs, we can ease inner tension and transform how we experience difficult situations. With Mood, you get: - Guided mood tracking: Share your mood, and Mood suggests the associated feelings and needs to help you understand what you’re going through. - Written or spoken situation analysis: Describe a troubling situation; Mood identifies the hidden feelings and needs, then reformulates your experience clearly—free from judgment and limiting beliefs. - Immediate relief: Often, simply expressing a need is enough to ease inner tension. - New life strategies: Mood helps you take a step back and adopt new ways of responding, transforming your habits, broadening your perspective, and experiencing situations differently. - Statistics and history: Track your moods and well-being over time. Mood is the first app that deciphers your mood to uncover hidden needs, bring you relief, and support you in evolving your life strategies—so you can experience situations differently, take care of yourself, and access more joy.

About

Private Journal

This app offers a secure and private journaling experience with a simple, user-friendly design. It focuses on helping users track their moods and daily experiences to foster happiness and positivity. All data is stored locally or in private iCloud, with no ads or logins required.

Highlights
  • Simple and intuitive design
  • Secure local and iCloud storage
  • Face ID/Touch ID protection
  • No login or ads
  • Supports accessibility features
  • Fair and transparent pricing
Features
Read full description

Punkt is the German word for punctuation mark. Punkt makes journaling secure, private, easy and fun. But the best of starting a journal now is that you become a happier person. Here's what makes Punkt special: * EASY TO USE * Punkt's focus is on a simple design. Your stories are the most important part of the app, so why should we distract you with any other complicated stuff? * SECURE AND PRIVATE * Punkt saves your stories on your local device and in your private iCloud. No one but you can read your stories. You can also protect your stories with Face ID or Touch ID. * NO LOGIN, NO ADS * Punkt works without sharing any personally identifiable information. The app is focused on simplicity and privacy. There is no login, no Facebook or Google SDKs, no analytics tracking, no server connection. Everything you do in Punkt is truly private and secure. * ACCESSIBILITY * Punkt supports dynamic type, voice-over and voice control. It is designed to be used by everyone. I would welcome any feedback regarding accessibility as this is truly important to me. * FAIR PRICING * Punkt is developed just by one developer, therefore I want to make really fair and transparent pricing. If Punkt makes you just a little bit happier, you can help to contribute that the app stays independent and does not need to display ads or require personal data. --------------- Why did I start building this app? I'm a startup founder myself and I've been through very rough but also hyper exciting and happy times. That's tough by itself, but if one of your loved ones is helpless in pain and suffers then your world stops spinning. Bad times in business and private life made me think about how I can get out of this and become more positive and happier in the end. I've researched a lot and came across the one-sentence journaling technique. Long story short, I've started tracking my days in a Google Sheet. With just a few clicks I could make myself smile again by reading stories about happy days. But also the other way round, looking at rough times makes you appreciate even more what you have in your life. Now I want to help other people with this app. If you have any feedback you can reach out at https://punktapp.me or gregor@punktapp.me ============ Should you choose to support the development of this app and unlock all premium features of Punkt, payments will be charged to your iTunes account at confirmation of purchase. Your subscription renews automatically unless cancelled at least 24 hours before the end of the current period and cancellation of the current active subscription period is not allowed. Auto-renewal may be turned off in your Account Settings in iTunes after purchase. You can read our privacy policy at https://punktapp.me/privacy-policy You can read our terms of use at https://punktapp.me/terms App Preview Music: www.bensound.com

Screenshots

Mood4 screens
Private Journal4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is in-app purchases: Mood at none against Private Journal's 6. Private Journal's advantage is update cadence (weekly vs every 3 months) and ratings volume (542 vs 12). 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

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Both are free to download. Private Journal sells 6 in-app purchases, starting at $1.49 per month. Mood asks for nothing beyond the download.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 4.8 for Mood against 4.7 for Private Journal. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Private Journal has 542 ratings behind it against 12, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews are what separate them: 92% of Mood's written reviews are positive against 85% of Private Journal's.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Mood ships an update every 3 months, Private Journal weekly. The most recent releases landed on September 21, 2026 and September 26, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard4 real differences · 6 level
Mood versus Private Journal: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterMoodPrivate Journal
PriceFreeFree
Rating4.8 (12 ratings) — better4.7 (542 ratings)
Positive reviews92.0% of reviews — better85.4% of reviews
Number of ratings12542 — better
Update frequencyEvery 3 monthsWeekly — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNo — betterYes
MonetizationAd-supported — betterFree with in-app purchases
DevicesiPhone, iPadiPhone, iPad
Requires iOS16.6 — better17.0
Further details — not scored
Size68 MB18 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperFizzUpGregor Pichler

Customer experience

Mood

All ratings12 ratings
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%
Written reviews25 reviews
Positive92.0%
Neutral8.0%
Negative0.0%

Private Journal

All ratings542 ratings
Positive94.1%
Neutral3.9%
Negative2.0%
Written reviews253 reviews
Positive85.4%
Neutral5.9%
Negative8.7%

Bugs and requests

Mood

Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.

Private Journal

Reported bugs

3 issues
  • Crashes when exporting journal
  • Inconsistent behavior when writing late at night
  • Restore purchases not working on iPad

Requested features

6 requests
  • Add iPad and macOS app support
  • Allow editing of past entries
  • Expand mood/reason options
  • Provide more detailed analytics and data visualization
  • Add ability to change entry dates
Show 1 more
  • Implement iCloud/cloud sync support

In-app purchases

None

Mood

No in-app purchases

6 purchases

Private Journal

Subscriptions4
  • Punkt Premium Monthly$1.491 Month
  • Punkt Premium Monthly3 Days trial$1.991 Month
  • Punkt Premium Monthly3 Days trial$3.491 Month
Show 1 more
  • Punkt Premium Yearly3 Days trial$19.991 Year
One-time2
  • Punkt Premium Lifetime Special$19.99
  • Punkt Premium Lifetime$49.99

Questions

Is Mood free?
Mood is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is Private Journal free?
Private Journal is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Which has better reviews, Mood or Private Journal?
Mood is rated higher. Mood averages 4.8 out of 5 from 12 ratings, while Private Journal averages 4.7 from 542 ratings.
Do Mood or Private Journal have ads?
Neither Mood nor Private Journal shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Mood or Private Journal?
Mood ships an update every 3 months, and Private Journal weekly. Most recently, Mood was updated on September 21, 2026 and Private Journal on September 26, 2026.

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