Zealous Notes vs Marginalias
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
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.
Marginalias
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Keep the quote with its source Evidence Board collects exact passages across your documents, with topics and notes. Verify each clip against the local source and share a focused Markdown evidence sheet. • Open a document → Clip evidence. Enter an exact passage of at least three characters and choose its occurrence. • Save a topic and note with the clip. Open Evidence Board from the library to find and review clips. • Open a clip to verify its quote and source hash, edit notes, or share the visible board. Exact case-sensitive matching shows up to 32 occurrences. A source hash identifies the local text version; it is not proof of authorship or truth. Up to 256 clips and 1 MiB are retained. Unavailable or changed sources are reported. Marginalias is a private reading companion for your own documents. Import text-based PDFs, plain text, or Markdown notes, then use on-device intelligence to summarize, ask questions, and pull out useful structure without sending your content to a developer server. Build a local library of documents, open the source text whenever you need it, and keep AI output close to the material it came from. Marginalias is designed for focused review, research, note cleanup, study, and document triage. Features: - Import text-based PDFs, plain text, and Markdown - Keep a searchable local document library - Generate concise document summaries - Ask questions grounded in document excerpts - Inspect exact evidence excerpts, character ranges, and PDF pages behind generated claims - See the retrieved context used for each answer - Extract key points, action items, outlines, and glossary terms - Copy and share generated output - Use light, dark, or system appearance - Review a bundled sample document before importing your own files Privacy: Marginalias does not require an account, does not include analytics or advertising SDKs, and does not collect your documents or AI output. Documents and generated output stay on your device. Device note: AI features use Apple on-device intelligence. If Apple Intelligence is unavailable or not enabled, importing and reading documents still work and the app explains the requirement.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is update cadence: Zealous Notes at every 8 days against Marginalias's every 5 weeks. Marginalias's advantage is price ($3.99 vs $4.99). On ads, in-app purchases, 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
Zealous Notes costs $4.99 and Marginalias $3.99 up front. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
Zealous Notes ships an update every 8 days, Marginalias every 5 weeks. The most recent releases landed on October 10, 2026 and October 9, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Zealous Notes | Marginalias |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $4.99 | $3.99 — better |
| Rating | 4.3 (3 ratings) — better | — |
| Number of ratings | 3 — better | — |
| Update frequency | Every 8 days — better | Every 5 weeks |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Paid | — |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad | iPhone, iPad |
| Requires iOS | 26.0 | 26.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 265 MB | 1 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Jason Browning | Robert Corbin |
In-app purchases
Zealous Notes
No in-app purchases
Marginalias
No in-app purchases









