PaperSteps vs How We Feel
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
PaperSteps
Read full descriptionHide 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.
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.
- 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
Read full descriptionHide 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
Verdict
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
Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
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.
| Parameter | PaperSteps | How We Feel |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | — | 4.9 (30K ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | — | 91.2% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | — | 30K — better |
| Update frequency | Every 33 months | Fortnightly — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | — | Free |
| Best chart rank | — | #160 — better |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better | iPhone |
| Requires iOS | 15.0 — better | 17.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 24 MB | 235 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Paul Demers | The 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 moreShow fewer
- Integrate with health/fitness tracking apps
In-app purchases
PaperSteps
No in-app purchases
How We Feel
No in-app purchases
Questions
Is PaperSteps free?
Is How We Feel free?
Do PaperSteps or How We Feel have ads?
Which is updated more often, PaperSteps or How We Feel?
Other comparisons















