Catch vs Nodebook
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Catch
Capture your thoughts quickly and easily with this journaling app designed for busy individuals. It offers multiple input methods and a unique linking feature to connect ideas, helping you record life's moments in small increments.
- Quick entry creation
- Multiple media input methods (text, drawing, images)
- Link entries together
- Time-efficient journaling
- User-friendly interface
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Catch is a pocket notebook for the ideas you'd otherwise lose. Press one button and capture it — by text, voice, photo, or a quick drawing — before it's gone. Catch is perfect for academics capturing text and photos from new subjects they need to remember. For photographers connecting shots and notes on locations they've scouted. For podcasters grabbing ideas fifteen seconds at a time for the next show. For travelers eating and drinking their way through a holiday, always finding something new to tell people back home. CAPTURE In Catch, you don't start by creating a document, a title or even deciding where to sort something before you capture — you create cards that fit a single idea. Whether by writing it out, talking out loud, using your camera, or simply drawing an idea out with your finger, a simple idea is saved to a single card. LINK Like any PKM system, you can link ideas together, but Catch simplifies that all the way down. Instead of hashtags or folders, you just link a card to another. It doesn't matter if it's a photo of your amazing lunch in Rome or that fortune cookie you found on the way back after work that read, "Life brings you a bold and dashing adventure." These two are connected, and you don't have to explain why. Your brain will relive that connection. RIFF Catch doesn't just allow you to link cards but to instantly bounce off another card. When you capture something by bouncing off another, you can flip back and forth between your reference and the next one. When you submit, that new card will instantly be connected to the previous one. Some users create a title card, bookmark it, and then create off that original card. All their cards interconnect and stay on theme. Simple and powerful. CREATIVITY Catch is designed with constraints in mind to keep you creative and, more important, keep your ideas sharp and raw. Max 200 text characters per text card, 15 seconds of audio per audio card, or even just having to fit your content inside the shape of a small card forces you into the habit of being concise. Instead of trying to fit that large idea into a single card, spread it out over several cards and link them together. EXPORT You are fully in charge of your data. Nothing you create is trapped in Catch — your text, photos, audio, and drawings export to open files you can take anywhere, any time.
Nodebook
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Nodebook combines a document reader with an infinite mind map. Highlight a passage in a PDF, EPUB, video, audio file or web page, and it appears on your canvas as a node, linked to the exact place it came from. There is nothing to set up. You read, you select a passage, you choose a colour — and the map builds itself. For students, researchers, writers and teachers working with more sources than anyone can keep in their head. READ EVERY FORMAT · Free • Open PDFs, EPUBs, text files and imported web pages, as well as video and audio. • Read continuously or page by page, with chapters and bookmarks. • Every document reopens exactly where you left it. • Documents live on your device. ANNOTATE THE PAGE · Free • Built-in OCR reads scanned books word by word in 12 languages, so a scan highlights like any PDF. • Select an equation, handwritten or printed, and Nodebook renders it as LaTeX. • Write, underline and draw on the page with a stylus, finger or mouse. • Crop any part of a page — diagram, table, photo — and send it to the map. • Insert a notepad mid-page: the PDF opens up for a comment that stays attached to that paragraph. • Six highlight colours let you follow six separate threads. BUILD THE MAP · Nodebook Plus • An infinite canvas with no templates and no limit on nodes or depth. • Drag a single node or a whole branch to reorganise your thinking. • Drop one node onto another to merge them, and separate them later. • Set snippets aside in the drawer, and keep a mini-map in view as you read. • Export the map as a PDF or a FreeMind file, and the outline as a Word document. • Back everything up into one .nodebook file and pick what to restore. OUTLINE AND SEARCH · Nodebook Plus • View the same map as a classic indented outline, and edit titles and text in it. • Search the full text of every snippet, filter by tag or colour, and retag or recolour in bulk. CONNECT YOUR NOTES · Nodebook Plus • Create wiki-links between notes: start typing a title and Nodebook suggests matches. • Click one and a preview shows you the target without losing your place. REVISE WITH FLASHCARDS · Nodebook Plus • Turn any snippet into a flashcard and review it with spaced repetition. • Group cards by area, tag or source, or build your own sets. WRITE YOUR OWN DOCUMENTS · Nodebook Plus • A rich-text editor with headings, lists and quotations. • Draw vector diagrams inside the text, erase single strokes and undo freely. WORK TOGETHER · Nodebook Max • Share a project as a viewer or an editor, and watch the other person's highlights appear live as you work. • Send a file to another account with all your highlights and drawings intact. • Every project keeps a version history with dates and authors, and restores to any point. PLANS • Nodebook is free to install, with the reader and its annotation tools included. • Buy Nodebook Plus once — $39.99 — for full offline functionality, including mind maps creating and editing, flashcards and more. • Subscribe to Nodebook Max for the cloud: sync across your devices, collaboration and version history. $8.99 a month, or $89.99 a year. Max renews automatically. Payment is charged to your Apple Account when you confirm the purchase, and again within 24 hours before each period ends, unless you turn off auto-renew at least 24 hours earlier. Manage or cancel it in your Apple Account settings. Prices are shown in your local currency. Terms of Use: https://nodebook.me/terms Privacy Policy: https://nodebook.me/privacy
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is in-app purchases: Catch at none against Nodebook's 3. Nodebook's advantage is update cadence (daily vs every 2 months) and device support (3 vs 1). On price 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
Both are free to download. Nodebook sells 3 in-app purchases, starting at $8.99 per month. Catch asks for nothing beyond the download.
Catch ships an update every 2 months, Nodebook daily. The most recent releases landed on September 20, 2026 and October 3, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Catch | Nodebook |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 5.0 (1 ratings) — better | — |
| Positive reviews | 100.0% of reviews | — |
| Number of ratings | 1 — better | — |
| Update frequency | Every 2 months | Daily — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No — better | Yes |
| Monetization | Free | — |
| Devices | iPhone | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better |
| Requires iOS | 18.0 | 15.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 53 MB | 143 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 17+ |
| Developer | Freddie Iboy | Kamil Zabiegala |
In-app purchases
Catch
No in-app purchases
Nodebook
- Nodebook Max - Monthly14 Days trial$8.991 Month
- Nodebook Max - Yearly14 Days trial$89.991 Year
- Nodebook Plus$39.99









