Comparison

PaperSteps vs How We Feel

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

Head to head
About

PaperSteps

Read full description

PaperSteps turns your daily movement and energy into a simple, calming, beautifully hand-drawn experience. No clutter, no noise-just your progress, sketched as if right on a sheet of paper. Whether you’re checking your steps, tracking active and resting energy, or reviewing your past week, PaperSteps makes it feel natural, warm, and motivating. This app integrates with Apple's Health app in order to retrieve a step count.

About

How We Feel

This app helps users understand and manage their emotions with science-based strategies. It tracks sleep, exercise, and health trends to identify patterns and offers guided exercises for stress, anxiety, and relationship building. Share your feelings with trusted friends to strengthen connections.

Highlights
  • Emotion identification and tracking
  • Sleep, exercise, and health trend monitoring
  • Science-based emotional regulation strategies
  • Guided video exercises (mindfulness, movement, cognitive)
  • Real-time emotion sharing with trusted friends
  • Pattern identification for emotional wellbeing
Features
Read full description

How We Feel is a free app created by scientists, designers, engineers, and therapists to help people better understand their emotions and find strategies to help them navigate their emotions in the moment. Conceived in conjunction with Yale University's Center for Emotional Intelligence and based on the work of Dr Marc Brackett, How We Feel helps people find the right word to describe how they feel while tracking their sleep, exercise, and health trends using HealthKit in order to spot patterns over time. Founded as a science-based nonprofit, How We Feel is made possible by donations from people who are passionate about bringing mental wellbeing to the widest possible audience. Our data privacy terms are clear and easy-to-understand: all of your data is kept on your device unless you opt-in to send an anonymized version of your check-ins to be used in research to help more people. Whether you are downloading this app in order to build better relationships, make your emotions to work for you, not against you, improve how you handle stress and anxiety or simply to feel better, How We Feel will help you identify patterns through daily HealthKit tracking and find emotional regulation strategies that will work for you. The How We Feel friends feature allows you to share how you feel with the people you trust most in real time, strengthening your most important relationships. Filled with step-by-step video strategies you can do in as little as one minute on themes like "Change Your Thinking" to help you address negative thought patterns with cognitive strategies; "Move Your Body" to express and release emotions through movement strategies;"Be Mindful" to gain perspective and minimize the negative impact of misunderstood emotions with mindfulness strategies; "Reach Out" to build intimacy and trust, two important tools for emotional wellbeing, with social strategies.

Screenshots

PaperSteps2 screens
How We Feel4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is update cadence: How We Feel at fortnightly against PaperSteps's every 33 months. How We Feel also leads on chart position (#160 vs unranked). PaperSteps's advantage is device support (3 vs 1) and iOS requirement (15.0 vs 17.0). On price, 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

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

PaperSteps ships an update every 33 months, How We Feel fortnightly. The most recent releases landed on May 15, 2026 and September 26, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard4 real differences · 7 level
PaperSteps versus How We Feel: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterPaperStepsHow We Feel
PriceFreeFree
Rating—4.9 (30K ratings) — better
Positive reviews—91.2% of reviews
Number of ratings—30K — better
Update frequencyEvery 33 monthsFortnightly — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNoNo
Monetization—Free
Best chart rank—#160 — better
DevicesiPhone, iPad, iPod — betteriPhone
Requires iOS15.0 — better17.0
Further details — not scored
Size24 MB235 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperPaul DemersThe How We Feel Project, Inc.

Bugs and requests

PaperSteps

Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.

How We Feel

Reported bugs

4 issues
  • App crashes when accessing the 'Tools' section
  • Exercise and sleep data incorrectly applied to past entries
  • Editing past entries leads to a blank screen
  • Inconsistent behavior when adding friends

Requested features

6 requests
  • Add ability to log multiple emotions at once
  • Implement a body map to identify physical sensations
  • Allow users to customize emotion categories
  • Provide an option to export data or sync across devices
  • Add a widget for quick mood check-ins
Show 1 more
  • Integrate with health/fitness tracking apps

In-app purchases

None

PaperSteps

No in-app purchases

None

How We Feel

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is PaperSteps free?
PaperSteps is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is How We Feel free?
How We Feel is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Do PaperSteps or How We Feel have ads?
Neither PaperSteps nor How We Feel shows ads.
Which is updated more often, PaperSteps or How We Feel?
PaperSteps ships an update every 33 months, and How We Feel fortnightly. Most recently, PaperSteps was updated on May 15, 2026 and How We Feel on September 26, 2026.

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