# Highlights vs Digital Reflective Journal

The clearest difference is in-app purchases: Digital Reflective Journal at none against Highlights's 3. Highlights's advantage is update cadence (fortnightly vs every 2 months). On price, ads, device support and iOS requirement there is nothing between them.

Both are free to download. Highlights sells 3 in-app purchases, starting at $4.99 per month. Digital Reflective Journal asks for nothing beyond the download.

Highlights ships an update fortnightly, Digital Reflective Journal every 2 months. The most recent releases landed on October 14, 2026 and September 28, 2026 respectively.

## The numbers

| Metric | Highlights | Digital Reflective Journal |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | **[4.5 (1.6K ratings)](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/highlights-pdf-reader-and-notes/id1498912833/reviews)** | — |
| Number of ratings | **1.6K** | — |
| Positive reviews | 53.2% of reviews | — |
| In-app purchases | Yes | **No** |
| Ads | No | No |
| Update frequency | **Fortnightly** | Every 2 months |
| Monetization | Freemium | — |
| Size | 37 MB | 38 MB |
| Requires iOS | 15.0 | 15.0 |
| Devices | **iPhone, iPad, iPod, Mac** | iPhone, iPad, iPod |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | [Jonas Myren Ribe](https://appshunter.io/developer/794854096) | [Kateina ebova](https://appshunter.io/developer/1887059676) |

## What reviewers say

### Highlights

[App page](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/highlights-pdf-reader-and-notes/id1498912833)

This app is a fast and lightweight PDF reader designed for research. It allows users to read, highlight, and annotate documents, and then extract this information into organized notes. Advanced features include table data extraction, text recognition, and smart copying of annotations into various formats.

**Highlights:** Read and browse PDF documents, Highlight, underline, and strikethrough text, Add comments and sticky notes, Extract annotations into organized notes, Convert table data and recognize text, Smart copy annotations to various formats (CSV, BibTex), Lookup citation metadata and DOI links

**Features:** Family Sharing, Vision Pro support

**In-app purchases (3)**

| Purchase | Price | Billing |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Highlights Pro: Monthly | $4.99 | per month |
| Highlights Pro | $29.99 | per year |
| Highlights Pro: Legacy Upgrade | $29.99 | per year |

**What reviewers like**

- 🚀 Great for highlighting and annotating PDFs
- 🔍 Effective for research and note-taking
- 📚 Useful for academic and professional work
- 👍 Clean and intuitive user interface
- 🔗 Good integration with other apps and cloud storage

**What reviewers complain about**

- 💰 Subscription model is too expensive
- 🐛 Frequent crashes and bugs
- 🔍 Limited search functionality
- 🔒 Lack of customization options
- 🔧 Poor customer support and unresponsive developers

**Reported bugs**

- Highlights and annotations randomly disappearing
- Text selection issues, especially with footnotes
- Compatibility problems with certain PDF files
- Syncing issues across devices
- Export functionality not working as expected

**Requested features**

- Add handwriting and freeform annotation support
- Implement a table of contents or bookmarking feature
- Allow editing of notes directly in the app
- Provide a one-time purchase option instead of subscription
- Improve search capabilities with visual results and navigation


### Digital Reflective Journal

[App page](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/digital-reflective-journal/id6760963728)

**Features:** macOS Compatibility, Vision Pro support

**In-app purchases:** none


## Frequently asked questions

### Is Highlights free?

Highlights is free to download, with in-app purchases available.

### Is Digital Reflective Journal free?

Digital Reflective Journal is free to download, with no in-app purchases.

### Do Highlights or Digital Reflective Journal have ads?

Neither Highlights nor Digital Reflective Journal shows ads.

### Which is updated more often, Highlights or Digital Reflective Journal?

Highlights ships an update fortnightly, and Digital Reflective Journal every 2 months. Most recently, Highlights was updated on October 14, 2026 and Digital Reflective Journal on September 28, 2026.

---

*Compared by [AppsHunter](https://appshunter.io/) from daily US App Store data. Review summaries are generated from verbatim App Store reviews.*