Finny | Dining App vs Palate Journal
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Finny | Dining App
Organize all your dining experiences, from past visits to future plans. Save check-ins with friends, bookmark new restaurants, and create custom lists for any occasion. Easily search and filter your saved places to rediscover favorites or find new culinary adventures.
- Save dining check-ins with photos and notes
- Bookmark new places and create organized lists
- Search past dining experiences by place or people
- Filter saved places by visited or unvisited
- Create public or private custom lists
- See friends' dining explorations
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Finny is a beautiful and elegant dining app that saves and organizes all your dining experiences in one place. All the places you’ve been and places you want to go. We’ve all experienced the need to save and organize all of our dining experiences and recommendations we come across, whether it’s from our family, friends, or food bloggers. With Finny, you can curate your own dining experiences so you can return to the places you love and save all the new places you can’t wait to try out. You can also see what places your friends have been exploring and saving, so you can check them out for yourself. SAVE CHECK-INS Check-in to places with your friends, and save photos and notes — all the things that make dining out memorable, fun, and important. BOOKMARK NEW PLACES Going on vacation to Italy this Summer? Or want to hit all of Bobby Flay’s restaurants? Save all those recommendations and organize them into lists for future visits. SEARCH Look back on your birthday dinner from last year or from that special vacation spot. You can search by place, who you ate with, or tags, and remember all the good times. FILTER Forget that place with giant meatballs you went to last year? Or that new Thai place you’ve been meaning to try? Filters can help you find places, whether you’ve been there or not. CREATE LISTS Have go-to places for hot dates or dumplings? Create lists to organize all of them. Make them public or keep them private for just you and your circle. Your feedback will help us improve and add more features to Finny. Any questions or suggestions, or simply to tell us about a place you love, just email us: info@finny-app.com
Palate Journal
Create a private, personal guide to your favorite dining experiences. Log meals, dishes, and companions with custom tier marks. Generate an annual PDF summary of your culinary year.
- Editorial tier system
- Visit log with details
- Dish-of-the-year highlighting
- Annual PDF guide generation
- Cross-device sync
- Private by design
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Palate Journal is a private restaurant journal — a place to keep a record of the meals worth remembering, the dishes that surprised you, and the rooms you'd return to. No reviews to publish. No followers. Just your own quiet guide to the places you love. Each restaurant earns a tier mark — three stars for a journey, two for a detour, one for a very good meal in its category, plus Bib, Plate, Watching, and a private Blocklist. The system is yours; the marks are yours; nobody else sees them. Add a place in seconds: tap +, find the restaurant from a search or a dropped pin, give it a tier, and write as much or as little as you like. Photograph the dishes. Tag the companions. Note the occasion. Each visit becomes a card in your guide. Every December, Palate Journal renders your year as a beautifully typeset PDF — a print-ready volume of the restaurants you visited, the dishes of your year, and the patterns hidden in twelve months of eating. Print it. Share it. Shelve it. FEATURES • Editorial tier system: three star, two star, one star, Bib, Plate, Watching, Blocklist • Visit log with companions, occasions, photos, and per-visit tier marks • Dish-of-the-year highlighting • Map view across every city you've eaten in • Annual PDF guide auto-generated each December • Trips: group restaurants by city and dates • Cross-device sync via iCloud • Sign in with Apple, Google, or email • Private by design — your guide is never published, ranked, or shared without your asking Palate Journal is for people who keep track of where they've eaten the way they used to keep ticket stubs and theatre programs. A guide to the places you love — by you, for you. Terms of Use: https://www.palate-journal.app/terms Privacy Policy: https://www.palate-journal.app/privacy
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is in-app purchases: Finny | Dining App at none against Palate Journal's 2. Finny | Dining App also leads on ratings volume (3 vs 1) and iOS requirement (14.0 vs 26.0). Palate Journal's advantage is update cadence (every 4 days vs every 3 months). On price, rating, ads and monetization model 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. Palate Journal sells 2 in-app purchases, starting at $4.99 per year. Finny | Dining App asks for nothing beyond the download.
On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 5.0 for Finny | Dining App against 5.0 for Palate Journal. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 3 and 1 respectively.
Finny | Dining App ships an update every 3 months, Palate Journal every 4 days. The most recent releases landed on October 30, 2026 and October 14, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Finny | Dining App | Palate Journal |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 5.0 (3 ratings) | 5.0 (1 ratings) |
| Number of ratings | 3 — better | 1 |
| Update frequency | Every 3 months | Every 4 days — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No — better | Yes |
| Monetization | Free | Free |
| Devices | iPhone, iPod | iPhone, iPad |
| Requires iOS | 14.0 — better | 26.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 67 MB | 45 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | HOCNYCO, LLC | The Ivy Studios LLC |
Customer experience
Finny | Dining App
Palate Journal
In-app purchases
Finny | Dining App
No in-app purchases
Palate Journal
- Palate Pro$4.991 Year
- The 2026 Edition$9.99
Questions
Is Finny | Dining App free?
Is Palate Journal free?
Which has better reviews, Finny | Dining App or Palate Journal?
Do Finny | Dining App or Palate Journal have ads?
Which is updated more often, Finny | Dining App or Palate Journal?
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