Comparison

Outliner vs Lists

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

Head to head
About

Outliner

Organize your thoughts, tasks, and projects with a powerful outlining tool. Create structured lists, track project progress with visual indicators, and collaborate with others. Sync your work across devices and cloud storage for seamless access.

Highlights
  • Create structured outlines
  • Track project progress with pie charts
  • Sync with cloud storage (OneDrive, Dropbox)
  • Collaborate with other users
  • Drag and drop editing
  • Search and filter outlines
  • Archive old outlines
Features
Read full description

CarbonFin Outliner allows you to organize your thoughts, tasks, and projects. Easily create a todo list for today, or track an entire project anywhere you are. Share your outlines, edit them online, and collaborate with other Outliner users. Highlights • Create outlines full of notes, structured lists, tasks, or detailed projects • Sync your outlines automatically to Outliner Online, OneDrive, or Dropbox for web or desktop editing • Get a quick view of project progress - tasks with subtasks show a pie-chart indicating percent completed Organize • Search through all your outlines or an individual outline • Tag your outlines, and filter based on tag • Archive old outlines to hide them from view without deleting Easy-to-use Editor • Drag and drop to move items within an outline • Copy, paste • Undo, redo • Expand all, collapse all • Optional outline numbering • Zoom in to focus on a single subtree Outliner Online • Securely synchronize your outlines with Outliner Online • View and edit your outlines in any web browser • Import and export outlines as plain text or OPML • Keep all your devices synchronized • Share an outline with other Outliner users to collaborate OneDrive and Dropbox • Sync your outlines with OneDrive or Dropbox to allow quick import/export • Seamlessly access and edit across your iOS devices and PCs -= Recent version history =- Version 3.20 • iOS 27 support • Updated Dropbox and OneDrive integrations • Bug fixes Version 3.19 • iOS 26 support and adoption of liquid glass Version 3.18 • iOS 18 support • Dark and tinted app icons Version 3.17 • Minor bug fixes Version 3.16 • Minor bug fixes • iOS 17 support Version 3.15 • Fixed Dropbox integration • Show a warning when unlinking Dropbox/OneDrive if there are unsynced outlines • iOS 16 support Version 3.12 • Dark mode • Added confirmation to "Delete Completed" • Changing "Archived" won't update the outline's modification time • iOS 13 support Version 3.11 • OneDrive sync support Version 3.10 • Sync the order of outlines across devices (CarbonFin outlines only) • iOS 12 support Version 3.9 • iPhone X support • iOS 11 support Version 3.8 • Open In... support • Ability to hide the outline list on iPad • Minor UI tweaks

About

Lists

Organize thoughts, plan projects, and write notes with an intuitive outliner. Features multi-level outlining, rich text formatting, and an optional AI assistant for content generation and translation. Seamlessly syncs across devices and offers export options.

Highlights
  • Multi-level outlining
  • Rich-text formatting
  • Optional AI assistant
  • Seamless cross-device sync
  • Export to PDF, Word, HTML
  • Password protection for folders
Features
Read full description

Lists is a user-friendly app designed for everyone who enjoys simplicity when it comes to organizing thoughts, planning projects, making lists, and writing notes. Whether you're a writer, student, project manager, or anyone who consistently works on intricate tasks, our app will help boost your productivity and streamline your ideas. Main Key Features: - User-friendly Interface: Designed for easy use, Lists comes with an intuitive interface where you can navigate, make entries, and review your created outline with ease. - Multi-level Outlining: Lists allows creating notes with multiple levels of detail; you can drill down to as many sub-levels as you want. - Optional AI Assistant to generate content for lists, summaries, essays, translations, blog posts, poems, emails, songs, quizzes, tests, memos, recipes, and so much more. - Rich-text formatting: Bold, italic, underline, highlight, subscript/superscript, alignment, line and paragraph spacing, first-line indent, page breaks, footnotes, comments, text and paper color, etc. - Create unlimited notebooks, folders and nested subfolders. - Protect individually your folders/notebooks with a password, very useful for iPads with more than one user in office, classroom or home. - Seamless Sync: Syncs effortlessly across all your iOS devices, making your outlines available anytime, anywhere. - Customizable Themes: Personalize your experience with a variety of themes and make the space truly yours. - Integrated Search: Find specific information quickly and easily using our state-of-the-art search and filter feature. - Export & Import Options: Need your outlines in other formats? Export to PDF, Word, HTML, and more. You can also import data from other formats. Lists presents you with a canvas for your thoughts, providing the perfect platform to plot your narrative, plan your project, or just jot down your thoughts in a clear and concise way. If you so choose, the included AI Assistant can perform tasks for you: • Easily generate automatically lists, summaries, essays, blog posts, poems, emails, songs, quizzes, tests, memos, recipes, and so much more. • Ask anything to our smart AI assistant, it's got your answers. • Nail perfect writing with built-in spell checking and grammar fixes. • Boost your vocab with a killer dictionary full of definitions, synonyms, and antonyms. • Make your writing better by analyzing sentence structures with no sweat. • Use the handy translation feature which supports heaps of languages, solving any language issues. • Talk and write in over 50 languages with our handy assistant. • Spin up travel plans, recipes, step-by-step guides, quizzes, tests, memos, essays, histories, poems, you name it. • Speech Recognition: Talk or type, either way we have smooth conversations. Try Lists today to bring clarity to your thoughts and productivity to your day! Privacy Policy http://www.noteswriter.com/Kairoos_Privacy_Policy.html EULA https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/ This app requires users to have a subscription to unlock all the features after a 3-day risk-free trial.

Screenshots

Outliner4 screens
Lists4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is price: Lists at Free against Outliner's $4.99. Lists also leads on update cadence (every 3 weeks vs every 4 months) and review sentiment (100% vs 87%). Outliner's advantage is rating (4.8 vs 2.5) and in-app purchases (none vs 2). On ads, device support 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

Lists is free to download; Outliner costs $4.99 up front. Lists sells 2 in-app purchases, starting at $1.99 per month. Outliner asks for nothing beyond the download.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

Outliner holds the better App Store score, 4.8 against 2.5. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Outliner has 88 ratings behind it against 2, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews complicate that: 87% of Outliner's written reviews are positive against 100% of Lists's, so the app with the better star average is not the one people write more warmly about.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Outliner ships an update every 4 months, Lists every 3 weeks. The most recent releases landed on September 22, 2026 and September 8, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard7 real differences · 3 level
Outliner versus Lists: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterOutlinerLists
Price$4.99Free — better
Rating4.8 (88 ratings) — better2.5 (2 ratings)
Positive reviews86.7% of reviews100.0% of reviews — better
Number of ratings88 — better2
Update frequencyEvery 4 monthsEvery 3 weeks — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNo — betterYes
MonetizationFree — betterFree with in-app purchases
DevicesiPhone, iPadiPhone, iPad
Requires iOS16.0 — better16.4
Further details — not scored
Size17 MB248 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperCarbonFinKairoos Solutions SL

Customer experience

Outliner

All ratings88 ratings
Positive93.2%
Neutral1.1%
Negative5.7%
Written reviews323 reviews
Positive86.7%
Neutral6.2%
Negative7.1%

Lists

All ratings2 ratings
Positive50.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative50.0%
Written reviews1 reviews
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%

Bugs and requests

Outliner

Reported bugs

3 issues
  • Unexpected error: 500 when saving data
  • Pane that lists outlines won't go away or resize
  • Keyboard takes up too much screen space

Requested features

5 requests
  • Add due dates and priority levels for tasks
  • Improve export and sharing options (e.g., PDF, Word)
  • Implement better organization and search capabilities
  • Introduce a desktop companion app for easier editing
  • Add support for voice notes and other multimedia

Lists

Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.

In-app purchases

None

Outliner

No in-app purchases

2 purchases

Lists

Subscriptions1
  • Unlock All including AI3 Days trial$1.991 Month
One-time1
  • Outliner Lifetime Pro Upgrade$3.99

Questions

Is Outliner free?
Outliner costs $4.99, with no in-app purchases.
Is Lists free?
Lists is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Which has better reviews, Outliner or Lists?
Outliner is rated higher. Outliner averages 4.8 out of 5 from 88 ratings, while Lists averages 2.5 from 2 ratings.
Do Outliner or Lists have ads?
Neither Outliner nor Lists shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Outliner or Lists?
Outliner ships an update every 4 months, and Lists every 3 weeks. Most recently, Outliner was updated on September 22, 2026 and Lists on September 8, 2026.

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