Comparison

Element Note vs PenPro

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

Head to head
About

Element Note

This app offers a distraction-free digital notebook experience with advanced handwriting, PDF annotation, and sketching capabilities. It features unique brushes, a powerful rendering engine, and smart organization tools. Sync your notes across devices and collaborate with others seamlessly.

Highlights
  • Unique handwriting brushes
  • Smooth drawing engine
  • PDF annotation
  • Text, shape, and image attachments
  • On-device OCR search
  • Smart dark mode
  • iCloud sync and collaboration
Features
Read full description

Element Note is the next-gen note taking, PDF annotation, and light sketching app. We stripped down the unnecessaries and carefully polished the elemental functions for a digital notebook. With a modern look and powerful features, Element Note strives to provide an elegant writing space free of distractions. Features: Unique brushes - Pencil (HB Pencil, Mechanical Pencil) - Pen (Pen, Line Pen, Fountain Pen) - Brush (Art Brush, Round Brush) - Marker (Marker, Round Marker) Best-in-class note rendering engine - Smooth and fluid drawing powered by Metal technology - Support gradient ink for more expressive notes Powerful attachments - Text - Shape - Sticker - Image Universal Search - Search through your PDF & Handwritting using on device OCR Smart Darkmode - Smartly adapts all of your notes to the system darkmode without changing the paper or stroke colors. iCloud Sync & Collaboration - Sync via your personal iCloud (No data is passed to our server) - Collaborate through iCloud collaboration for up to 100 users. Desktop class organization - Intuitive multi-select drag and drop gesture to organize your notes or pages Element Note is free to try for up to 3 notes. Unlock the full app with an in app purchase to create unlimited notes. Terms and Conditions https://elementnote.app/terms Privacy Policy https://elementnote.app/privacy

About

PenPro

Features
Read full description

PenPro is a notebook app for iPad, iPhone and iPhone Duo. Write with Apple Pencil, type, add pictures, tables and recordings, and place everything exactly where you want it on the page. WRITE AND DRAW • Write with Apple Pencil on lined, squared, dotted or blank pages, in A4, A5, US Letter or US Legal. • Draw a line, a circle, a rectangle or a triangle and hold the Pencil still: the shape becomes perfect. • Pens, colors, the eraser, the lasso and the ruler are Apple's own tools. TYPE AND ARRANGE • Text boxes with bold, italic, underline, four sizes, colors and lists. Align the text left, center or right. • Drag a text box by its corner, and its words grow or shrink with it. • Paste code, and PenPro colors it as a code editor does. • Tables you can resize, sort and total. Paste them from Excel, Numbers or a web page. • Pictures from your library, your camera or the clipboard, cropped and turned, with a border if you want one. • Move and resize everything with a finger. Things snap to the middle of the page and to each other. STICKERS • Five sticker packs, free: a red panda, a cat, an owl, a ninja and a penguin, with 44 stickers each. Put them on any page, move them and resize them. RECORD • One tap records a lecture or a meeting while you write. • When you play it back, your notes light up at the moment you wrote them. • Tap a note to hear what was said at that moment. HANDWRITING TO TEXT • Draw a frame around your handwriting, and PenPro turns it into text. Copy it, add it to the page, or put it in place of the ink. In English, French, Spanish, German, Turkish and more. SEARCH • Search the library: PenPro finds notebook names, page titles and the words you typed in text boxes, tables and code, and opens the notebook at that page. • "New notebook" and "Open a notebook" in the Shortcuts app and with Siri. Your notebooks and page titles in the iPhone and iPad search. NOTEBOOKS • Notebooks with sections and pages, in linen covers of sixteen colors. • Put your notebooks on shelves, one shelf for each category. Arrange them by hand, or sort them by name or by date. • Give a page a short title. It shows in the page list and in the table of contents of the PDF. • Lock PenPro, or one notebook, with Face ID or Touch ID, a PIN or a password. • Import a PDF and write on it. • Save any notebook as a PDF, share it or print it. • PenPro speaks English, French, Spanish, German, Estonian and Turkish. PENPRO EXTRAS One-time purchases. Each is yours forever, on every device with your Apple Account. • iCloud sync: your notebooks on every iPad and iPhone. • AI features: transcripts of your recordings, written on your device, and a handwriting font. • PDF notebooks: as many PDF notebooks as you want. One is free. • All three together, for less. IPHONE DUO • PenPro fits both screens of iPhone Duo: the iPhone layout on the outer screen, and on the large inner screen the page list beside the page. Its toolbars stay clear of the fold. PRIVATE No account, no ads, no tracking. Your notes stay on your device, or in your own iCloud. Recordings are written out and handwriting is read on your device.

Screenshots

Element Note4 screens
PenPro4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is iOS requirement: Element Note at 17.0 against PenPro's 26.0. On price, update cadence, ads and in-app purchases 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. Element Note sells 3 in-app purchases, starting at $3.49 per year and PenPro sells 4 one-off in-app purchases. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Element Note ships an update fortnightly, PenPro weekly. The most recent releases landed on November 3, 2026 and November 6, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard1 real difference · 9 level
Element Note versus PenPro: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterElement NotePenPro
PriceFreeFree
Rating4.6 (2.6K ratings) — better—
Positive reviews69.8% of reviews—
Number of ratings2.6K — better—
Update frequencyFortnightlyWeekly — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesYesYes
MonetizationFree with in-app purchases—
DevicesiPhone, iPad, Mac — betteriPhone, iPad
Requires iOS17.0 — better26.0
Further details — not scored
Size129 MB26 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperSoysauce LabHADRIAN TECHNOLOGIES

Bugs and requests

Element Note

Reported bugs

4 issues
  • Notes and files randomly disappearing
  • Inconsistent behavior when using the floating keyboard
  • Handwriting recognition not working as expected
  • Exported PDFs losing formatting and background colors

Requested features

6 requests
  • Ruler tool
  • Ability to resize/rotate selections
  • Improved text editing and formatting
  • Presentation mode for connecting to displays
  • Ability to import/export multiple files at once
Show 1 more
  • Seasonal or custom sticker packs

PenPro

Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.

In-app purchases

3 purchases

Element Note

Subscriptions2
  • Element Note Yearly$3.491 Year
  • Element Note Yearly$4.991 Year
One-time1
  • Lifetime$14.99
4 purchases

PenPro

One-time4
  • PDF notebooks$1.99
  • Sync on every device$2.99
  • AI features$2.99
Show 1 more
  • All features offer$4.99

Questions

Is Element Note free?
Element Note is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is PenPro free?
PenPro is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Do Element Note or PenPro have ads?
Neither Element Note nor PenPro shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Element Note or PenPro?
Element Note ships an update fortnightly, and PenPro weekly. Most recently, Element Note was updated on November 3, 2026 and PenPro on November 6, 2026.

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