Scribes PRO vs PaperCode
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Scribes PRO
This app offers a versatile digital notebook for handwritten notes, freehand drawing, and text editing. It supports audio recording, image import, and technical drawing tools with grid options. Securely archive your notebooks and print them wirelessly.
- Handwritten note-taking with customizable pens
- Freehand drawing with grid and technical tools
- Integrated text editor with font and angle options
- High-quality stereo audio recording
- Image import and annotation
- Secure, password-protected archive
- Wireless printing support
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Do you need a notebook with lines or squares with endless pages where you can take your freehand notes in the same way and with the same speed as when you use the pen? Need a few sheets of white paper for freehand drawing and then enter the text written with the keyboard and being able to choose font, color, size and angle of the text? Do you want to photograph transparencies of a presentation in real time and add notes or highlight parts? Do you need to record audio while taking notes of lectures on the book with an infinite number of pages? Need a secure archive (password protected) to save countless notebooks? Want to listen a recorded university lecture and add or correct the notes taken during the lesson? In your notes you have to add computer-aided technical drawings by exporting them ex. from FingerCAD and writing notes on the CAD design or using CAD technical drawing tools like lines, rectangles, circles with the drawing grid option activated? Need to print the pages of your notebook when You come back to home (using the new technology of wireless printing "AirPrint" or PDF)? Do you think that writing with a pen is faster than writing with the keyboard? "Scribes" is the right application for You! Write mode: - Writing handwritten text (the same way as you use a pen/highlighter on a notebook, with the stroke, the color, the transparency “ALPHA” that you want - dotted lines with ALPHA = 0) - Writing text using the integrated text editor of Scribes (you can use different fonts, different angles, different sizes and colors on the same page or on different pages of the notebook) Drawing mode: - Draw free-hand using many colors/transparency and the brush size you want (both on notebook lines/squares and on white sheets) - Enable or disable the drawing grid: enable the grid together with the line, circle, rectangle drawing tools (with optional color fill) for simple technical drawings (disable the grid to write some freehand notes on the technical drawings or use the text editor of Scribes to insert for example measurements) - Filter for wrist touch Multimedia Support: - Record high quality stereo audio with 32Bit 44Khz, infinite recording time (on .caf file) in the background (while recording, you can take notes on notebook) - Import images in the pages of the notebook in real-time, taken by camera and stored in the photo albums of the device (you can import many images, for each page of the book, on which you can write notes) - Listen the audio recordings with the built-in player of Scribes - Photo camera support (acquire the photo camera's images directly from Scribes software) Navigation: - Fast book pages change - Animated zoom pinching the screen with two fingers - Animated pan dragging two fingers on the screen - Reset pan and zoom settings: full zoom out pinching the screen with two fingers or by pressing and holding down two fingers on the screen Management of books stored in the "Scribes Archive": - Archive of notebooks (you can save / copy an infinite number of notebooks in the archive) - Add books (file sharing, copy) - Sharing books with other apps - Rename notebooks - Delete notebooks - Duplicate notebooks Sharing books and audio files recorded with: - Dropbox (remote storage systems, cloud) - Apple FILE - AirDrop - Open In - iTunes File Sharing - email - tapeRecorder app Print: - AirPrint - PDF App type: - UNIVERSAL APP (you pay only once and runs on all your devices) * www.ngcybit.it Scribes PRO Quick Users Guide is available at URL: http://www.ngcybit.it/iTunesApp/scribes/scribes-pro-quick-users-guide.html *
PaperCode
Organize your books and papers by assigning them to custom places and associating them with barcodes or QR codes. Quickly update an item's location by scanning its code. Automatically gather book information from databases by scanning ISBN barcodes.
- Manage items and places
- Scan barcodes/QR codes
- OCR for printed text
- Automatic book information retrieval
- Customizable place names
- Quick item location updates
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What you can do with this app: [The app remembers where your books/papers are.] *Manage ITEMS with PLACES where they belong to. -You can manage ITEMS and PLACES related to Barcodes/QR-codes by scanning codes or printed texts(OCR) using your phone's camera. -Only you need is minimum effort to add, update and search PLACES and ITEMS. -You can add and name any PLACES, such as "Bookshelf:A", "Box:B" and "Bed room closet". It is not necessary that PLACES are real physical places. They can be "Borrowed by John Doe", "Papers to copy", "Things to survey" and so on. -Though this app is designed for management of academic books and treatises(papers), you can also add and name any ITEMS. They can be "Golf shoes", "Water bottles for emergency", "Tax payment documents of 2019", "Buy salt", "Reserve restaurant" and so on. [Easier is better.] *Add, move, search, sometimes manage. With this app, you will: -Add(register) PLACES. Add(register) ITEMS and relate them to barcodes/QR-codes. -When you move an ITEM, scan a barcode/QR-code to update its PLACE to belong to. -Search an ITEM's name to find out its PLACE. -You can rename ITEMS and PLACES, update relationship between them and new codes, update their order in the lists at any time. [No automation, no life.] *ITEMS and PLACES cooperate with barcodes/QR-codes. -You can relate ITEMS and PLACES to any barcodes/QR-codes. -Once you created relationships between ITEMS/PLACES and codes, when you move an ITEM from current PLACE to another PLACE, all you have to do is: 1.Scan the code of the new PLACE using the camera, 2.Scan the code of the ITEM. That's it. It won't take more than 3 seconds. -The code will be scanned automatically when your camera focuses it. You don't even need to press the shutter button. -If the books or papers don't have barcodes/QR-codes, add codes to them. (for example, codes printed directly on the papers using handy printers or codes printed on sticker labels.) Any unique digits or characters will work. *Automatically collect information. -Information of books and papers (author, title, publisher, published date) will be collected automatically by searching with keyword(s). -This app accesses CiNii/CiNiiBooks database OpenSearch service on the web to get the information. -If you scan a barcode and the code is an ISBN, this app will collect and fill all necessary information automatically. All you need is to tap "OK" button. -You can search and find books or papers by using keyword(s). Use space for AND search and use slash for OR search. If multiple results hit, you can choose one to add as a new ITEM. -A particular chapter of a book can be added in the same way as a paper. *Relate ITEMS and PLACES to barcodes/QR-codes -Both ITEMS and PLACES can be related to barcode/QR-code. -You can delete or update(relate again) relationships between codes and ITEMS/PLACES. *Script(handwriting) recognition -If you can't use barcodes/QR-codes in some reason, you can try script(handwriting) recognition. It works, but it takes a lot of time and it won't recognize 100% correctly. So I strongly recommend you to use barcodes/QR-codes. [Nothing is more important than safety.] *Backup and export your data. -You can backup your data(ITEMS/PLACES) to a text file (as SQL expressions). -You can export backup file(s) to external storages/apps/services, such as iPhone's documents folder(which syncs with iCloud), Dropbox app, GoogleDrive app and so on. [Search and find at once.] *See all items in the place or search with keyword(s) -You can see all the ITEMS belonging to particular PLACE. -You can search an ITEM by keyword(s). AND/OR search is available. -You can search a PLACE as well. (but only AND search is available.)
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is price: PaperCode at Free against Scribes PRO's $2.99. PaperCode also leads on rating (5.0 vs 2.0) and review sentiment (50% vs 20%). On ratings volume, 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
PaperCode is free to download; Scribes PRO costs $2.99 up front. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
PaperCode holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 2.0. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 1 and 1 respectively. Written reviews point the same way: 20% of Scribes PRO's written reviews are positive against 50% of PaperCode's.
Scribes PRO ships an update every 38 months, PaperCode every 3 weeks. The most recent releases landed on November 1, 2026 and November 12, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Scribes PRO | PaperCode |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $2.99 | Free — better |
| Rating | 2.0 (1 ratings) | 5.0 (1 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 20.0% of reviews | 50.0% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 1 | 1 |
| Update frequency | Every 38 months | Every 3 weeks — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Paid | Free — better |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad | iPhone, iPad |
| Requires iOS | 18.0 | 16.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 7 MB | 25 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Gianluca Natalini | Yuichiro Momosaki |
Customer experience
Scribes PRO
PaperCode
In-app purchases
Scribes PRO
No in-app purchases
PaperCode
No in-app purchases









