Comparison

Principal Task vs dapter

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

Head to head
About

Principal Task

This app helps you manage tasks by tracking your completion rate against new tasks created. It offers a unique 'Task Velocity' score to show if you're keeping up with your workload. Organize with folders, contexts, and priorities, with advanced features available through a premium subscription.

Highlights
  • Task Velocity score
  • GTD-native structure
  • Due dates and repeating tasks
  • Markdown support
  • Kanban boards
  • Private templates
Features
Read full description

Track your Task Velocity — the ratio of tasks you complete against the ones you create, updated every day. See at a glance whether you're ahead or falling behind, not just what's on your list. Principal Task is a GTD-native task manager built for people who've outgrown to-do apps. Folders, contexts, priorities, statuses, and unlimited nested subtasks — organized the way real work actually happens. TASK VELOCITY Your 30-day completed-vs-created ratio, shown as a simple multiplier. Free members see their current score. Premium unlocks the full history, filterable by folder, context, priority, and status. SYSTEM HEALTH A live verdict — Healthy, Strained, or Overloaded — so you know where things stand today, separate from where they're heading. BUILT FOR GTD Folders and sub-folders, contexts, priorities, statuses, and stars. Subtasks nest as deep as you need, with independent completion — no forced parent-child status. KANBAN, HEATMAP, TEMPLATES See your work as a board. Watch your activity over time. Turn repeatable processes into templates you can apply in one tap. BUILT FOR AI ASSISTANTS Principal Task connects to AI assistants over MCP — read and write your tasks, subtasks, and folders directly from the assistant you already use. SHARE WITHOUT FRICTION Share a task list with a four-word link. No account required to view. You control how long it stays open. Free, no credit card. Premium is about $3/month or $24/year, and it doesn't limit how much you can do — it unlocks Task Velocity history, Kanban, the Activity Heatmap, and private templates. Principal Task. Software that gets out of the way. Terms of Use: https://principaltask.com/terms

About

dapter

Features
Read full description

Apple Notes, if it could do math. Type rate = 45 on one line and rate × hours on the next, and the answer appears in the margin as you type. Every line that looks like a calculation resolves instantly. Everything else stays prose. No account. No servers of ours. Nothing to sign up for. WRITE MATH LIKE A SENTENCE • 20% of 300, 200 - 10% — percentages, markups and discounts the way you'd say them • 100 usd in eur, $50 + 20% — live currency rates, formatted as money • 10 km + 5 m in miles, 6 m / 2 s → 3 m/s — real unit algebra, not string replacement • today + 21 days, 3 days + 12 hours — dates and durations that count themselves A NOTE THAT ADDS ITSELF UP • Name a value and reuse it: rate = 45, then rate × hours three lines later • sum a block for budgets, receipts, invoices and quick tallies • round, sqrt, pi and the rest, for when a note needs to be a little smarter STILL A REAL NOTES APP Folders, pinned notes, search, a home-screen widget, Recently Deleted, and a quick scratch pad one tap from anywhere. Light and dark themes. Available in English, Russian and Kazakh — and the calculator understands all three, because the parser does, not just the interface. PRIVATE BECAUSE OF HOW IT'S BUILT Every calculation runs on your device. Your notes live in local storage on your iPhone, not in an account with us. All the math, unit conversion and currency work is free, forever — there is no calculation behind the paywall. BUILT FOR Freelance quotes and invoices. Monthly budgets. Travel money. Recipe scaling. Any moment you'd reach for a calculator and then forget what the numbers were for. DÄPTER PLUS Unlimited notebooks, and iCloud sync across your iPhones through your own Apple account. Monthly, yearly, or a one-time lifetime unlock — pay once and you're done. Plus is what keeps däpter independent: no ads, no investors, no data sold. Terms of Use (EULA): https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/

Screenshots

Principal Task4 screens
dapter4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is update cadence: dapter at every 10 days against Principal Task's every 3 months. Principal Task's advantage is device support (3 vs 1). On price, ads, in-app purchases and iOS requirement 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. Principal Task sells 2 in-app purchases, starting at $3.99 per month and dapter sells 3 in-app purchases, starting at $3.99 per month. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Principal Task ships an update every 3 months, dapter every 10 days. The most recent releases landed on October 1, 2026 and September 30, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard2 real differences · 7 level
Principal Task versus dapter: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterPrincipal Taskdapter
PriceFreeFree
Rating5.0 (1 ratings) — better—
Number of ratings1 — better—
Update frequencyEvery 3 monthsEvery 10 days — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesYesYes
MonetizationFree with in-app purchases—
DevicesiPhone, iPad, iPod — betteriPhone
Requires iOS15.0 — better16.4
Further details — not scored
Size32 MB65 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperZechariah SchwenkAnuar Shaidenov

In-app purchases

2 purchases

Principal Task

Subscriptions2
  • Monthly Subscription$3.991 Month
  • Annual Subscription$29.991 Year
3 purchases

dapter

Subscriptions2
  • Dapter Plus Monthly$3.991 Month
  • Dapter Plus Yearly$19.991 Year
One-time1
  • Dapter Plus Lifetime$59.99

Questions

Is Principal Task free?
Principal Task is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is dapter free?
dapter is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Do Principal Task or dapter have ads?
Neither Principal Task nor dapter shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Principal Task or dapter?
Principal Task ships an update every 3 months, and dapter every 10 days. Most recently, Principal Task was updated on October 1, 2026 and dapter on September 30, 2026.

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