Surely vs Zealous Notes
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Surely
This app offers a streamlined approach to task management, focusing on completion rather than complex organization. It provides essential actions like completing, deleting, or deferring tasks, intentionally omitting features that might encourage procrastination.
- Complete tasks
- Delete tasks
- Defer tasks
- Minimalist interface
- Focus on task completion
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Most todo apps give you lots of features to organize your todos. But you don't want to be spending time organizing your todos: you want to be completing them. Surely is a focused todo app giving you just the features you need to get your todos done. There are only three things you can do with a todo: * Complete it * Delete it * Defer it Here are all the features Surely doesn't have because they encourage you to keep more todos instead of completing them: * Separate defer dates and due dates * Complex ways of searching for todos * Separate lists of todos so you aren't looking at all of them at once * Bulk defer features. It should not be painless to defer many todos to the future; it should be painful to work with multiple todos so that you complete or delete them Surely is available for free on both iOS and the web.
Zealous Notes
Organize your thoughts with a versatile note-taking application. Link related notes, embed various media files directly, and enhance your text with markup tools. Features include searchable PDFs, video playback, and audio transcription.
- Stackable and linked notes
- Inline PDF, video, and audio embedding
- Searchable and mark-upable PDFs
- Audio transcription
- Hashtag organization
- Marker mode with zoom
- Calendar event linking
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A lot like the Notes app you're used to, plus some added features: • Open several notes as a stack. - related notes can be linked together. • Subdivide your notes into Sections • PDFs, Video & Audio files attach inline, alongside your notes' other contents. - PDFs can be zoomed, scrolled, searched & marked-up. - Videos can play picture-in-picture or full-screen - Voice Notes audio files can be transcribed (with your permission) • Keep related notes together: - embed related notes as attachments - assign relatable #hashtags to your notes • Marker Mode - mark anywhere inside or outside of your notes - link markup with your highlighted or underlined text. - zoom-in for more precise drawings. • Link notes to your Calendar events (with your permission) • Case sensitive Find/Replace/Replace-All • Multiple Line-Spacing options See the included `Getting Started` guide for more, including several additional features available from within the app's Settings.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is price: Surely at Free against Zealous Notes's $4.99. Surely also leads on rating (5.0 vs 4.3) and iOS requirement (15.1 vs 26.0). Zealous Notes's advantage is update cadence (every 8 days vs every 6 weeks) and ratings volume (3 vs 1). On ads, in-app purchases and device support 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
Surely is free to download; Zealous Notes costs $4.99 up front. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
Surely holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 4.3. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 1 and 3 respectively.
Surely ships an update every 6 weeks, Zealous Notes every 8 days. The most recent releases landed on June 5, 2026 and June 4, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Surely | Zealous Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free — better | $4.99 |
| Rating | 5.0 (1 ratings) — better | 4.3 (3 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | 100.0% of reviews | — |
| Number of ratings | 1 | 3 — better |
| Update frequency | Every 6 weeks | Every 8 days — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free — better | Paid |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better | iPhone, iPad |
| Requires iOS | 15.1 — better | 26.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 34 MB | 265 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Joshua Justice | Jason Browning |
Customer experience
Surely
Zealous Notes
In-app purchases
Surely
No in-app purchases
Zealous Notes
No in-app purchases









