Comparison

Private Notes. vs Pentip

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

Head to head
About

Private Notes.

Securely store your personal thoughts, ideas, and text with a passcode or biometric authentication. This app offers intuitive text editing tools and a straightforward interface for organizing timestamped notes.

Highlights
  • Biometric and passcode security
  • Intuitive copy/paste/cut
  • Text formatting (underline, bold, italic)
  • Timestamped notes
  • Straightforward user interface
Features
Read full description

Have personal notes you would like to keep secret? Look no further. With this app you can safely secure personal thoughts, ideas or any text with with Apple’s touch/Face ID or a passcode. FEATURES: -Intuitive copy/paste/cut functions are at your disposal. -Underline, embolden or change any word in italic. -Straight forward user interface allows you to quickly organize your timestamped notes.

About

Pentip

Features
Read full description

Pentip is a notebook for people who take a lot of notes, and who write some of them by hand and type the rest. FIND WHAT YOU WROTE BY HAND Search your notes and Pentip reads your handwriting. It also searches typed text, floating text frames, the text inside any PDF you imported, and the values you filled into PDF form fields. Search your whole library, or find every match inside the document you have open and jump straight to it. Handwriting is recognised in all ten languages Pentip speaks, Arabic and Turkish included. Searching costs nothing extra. TYPE AND HANDWRITE ON THE SAME PAGE Type straight onto the page. Your text flows from one page to the next, the way it does in a word processor, instead of sitting in a small box you have to drag around. Then pick up your Apple Pencil and draw on that same page. There is no drawing mode to switch into: the Pencil draws, the keyboard types where the cursor is, and your finger scrolls. YOUR DRAWINGS MOVE WITH YOUR TEXT Every pen stroke remembers the line of text it was drawn beside. So if you come back weeks later and add a paragraph, the arrow you drew still points at the same sentence, even once that sentence has moved onto the next page. READ IN THE DARK WITHOUT CHANGING YOUR WORK Turn on Smart Dark and a light document is drawn dark while you read and write it. It is a viewing mode, so what you export is exactly what you made. TOOLS THAT FEEL RIGHT Pen, brush, highlighter and a precise eraser, all with Apple Pencil pressure and tilt. Hold at the end of a stroke and it snaps into a clean shape. Straighten lines with the ruler or turn it into a protractor to measure an angle. Squeeze an Apple Pencil Pro and a small palette of colours and sizes opens at the tip of the pen. WORK ON YOUR HANDOUTS Import a lecture PDF and mark it up like paper, or scan pages straight in with the camera. Tap a form field and type into it, in any script, right to left included. Select the text in the PDF itself to copy, look up or translate it. And if your lecturer sends a corrected version, swap it in and every note you made stays where it was. BUILT FOR BIG DOCUMENTS Notebooks of any length, page templates, five layers, and sections that hold several canvases in a single file. Star the ones you live in and they gather on a Favorites page. TEN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING RIGHT TO LEFT Arabic, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Polish, Russian, Spanish and Turkish. Text direction is set for each paragraph, so an Arabic note sits correctly next to an English source. Export to PDF or as an image, and sync across your devices with iCloud. Pentip runs on iPhone and Mac too. Terms of Service: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/ Privacy Policy: https://pentip.app/privacy/

Screenshots

Private Notes.3 screens
Pentip4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is in-app purchases: Private Notes. at none against Pentip's 2. Private Notes. also leads on iOS requirement (12.0 vs 18.2). Pentip's advantage is ads (none vs shown). On price, update cadence and device support there is nothing between them.

Scored on Price Β· Rating Β· Positive reviews Β· Number of ratings Β· Update frequency Β· Ads Β· In-app purchases Β· Monetization Β· Best chart rank Β· Devices Β· Requires iOS

CostPrice Β· In-app purchases Β· Ads Β· Monetization

Both are free to download. Pentip sells 2 in-app purchases, starting at $0.99 per month. Private Notes. asks for nothing beyond the download.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Private Notes. ships an update every 2 months, Pentip every 6 weeks. The most recent releases landed on August 22, 2026 and September 10, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard3 real differences Β· 5 level
Private Notes. versus Pentip: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterPrivate Notes.Pentip
PriceFreeFree
Positive reviews14.3% of reviewsβ€”
Update frequencyEvery 2 monthsEvery 6 weeks β€” better
AdsYesNo β€” better
In-app purchasesNo β€” betterYes
MonetizationAd-supportedβ€”
DevicesiPhone, iPad, iPod β€” betteriPhone, iPad
Requires iOS12.0 β€” better18.2
Further details β€” not scored
Size16 MB43 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperWALABOK LLCKhalil Khalil

In-app purchases

None

Private Notes.

No in-app purchases

2 purchases

Pentip

Subscriptions2
  • Pentip Pro Monthly7 Days trial$0.991 Month
  • Pentip Pro Yearly7 Days trial$8.991 Year

Questions

Is Private Notes. free?
Private Notes. is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is Pentip free?
Pentip is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Do Private Notes. or Pentip have ads?
Private Notes. shows ads; Pentip does not.
Which is updated more often, Private Notes. or Pentip?
Private Notes. ships an update every 2 months, and Pentip every 6 weeks. Most recently, Private Notes. was updated on August 22, 2026 and Pentip on September 10, 2026.

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