Comparison

Finalist vs Noted Note

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

Head to head
About

Finalist

This app combines your calendar, tasks, reminders, and weather into a single, visually appealing timeline. It integrates with your journal and activity data to inspire your planning. Enjoy a beautiful and joyful planning experience without complex workflows.

Highlights
  • Unified timeline view
  • Calendar, task, and reminder integration
  • Weather forecast display
  • Journal and activity ring integration
  • Customizable themes
  • Native Apple technology integration
Features
Read full description

Inspired by paper planners, Finalist shows your calendar, tasks, notes, reminders and weather forecast in one beautiful timeline. It even pulls in your Journal Suggestions and Activity Rings to keep you inspired. Gorgeous themes make planning a joy, not a chore. Finalist is built for people who finish things, no complex workflows or productivity theater. NOTES, IN YOUR PLANNER Your planner remembers what you wrote. A dedicated Notes tab gives you notebooks, tags and search. Keep native notes that sync over iCloud, or connect a folder of plain markdown files, including your Obsidian vault, and edit them in place. Tasks inside your markdown files become real Finalist tasks: dated, tagged and checkable anywhere in the app. YOUR DAY, ON YOUR WRIST The Apple Watch app puts your whole day one glance away: events, tasks, reminders and habits in one scrollable view, topped by a Now card that always knows what matters next. Check off pinned lists from the wrist, grocery list included, and add tasks by keyboard, scribble or dictation. Complications and a Smart Stack widget round it out. (Requires watchOS 26.) DESIGN YOUR DAY Choose between two Daily designs: Daybook, the classic stacked layout, or Broadsheet, a newsprint-inspired look that shines on iPad and Mac. Rearrange sections with the layout editor and save your own presets. On the rebuilt Timeline, drag tasks onto the grid to sketch your day in pencil, then commit when it's real. "I've tried dozens of planning apps, this is the one that finally works." - Beta user "The integration of Reminders and Lists reduces the apps I need daily and makes planning actually fun." - Beta user Built with native Apple technologies: no accounts to create, syncs over iCloud, supports Family Sharing, and runs on iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Vision Pro and Mac. Full database backup, export and import via JSON and OPML. Finalist is a love letter to paper planners. Give it a try, it feels great :) Purchasing information To get the full functionality in Finalist you will need to either purchase a subscription or a one time In-App Purchase for Lifetime access. The purchase amount will be applied to your iTunes account. Subscriptions will automatically renew unless canceled within 24-hours before the end of the current period. You can cancel anytime with your iTunes account settings. Lifetime purchase is a one-time fee. For more information, see our Terms of Use at https://finalist.works/eula/ and our Privacy Policy at https://finalist.works/privacy-policy/

About

Noted Note

This app simulates a physical notebook for your iPhone, allowing you to type notes that appear as handwriting. It offers various writing styles, pens, paper types, and the ability to add doodles and photos. Notes are organized chronologically and searchable.

Highlights
  • Simulated handwriting typing
  • Multiple pen and paper styles
  • Doodle and photo integration
  • Scratch-out deletion effect
  • Chronological note organization
  • Searchable notes
  • Customizable sounds
Features
Read full description

noted. is a little paper notebook for your iPhone. Type, and your words appear in handwriting on paper with a bit of grain. No folders to manage, no toolbars to learn. Just a page and a pen. WRITING • Four hands: scrawl, the house hand, which inks itself stroke by stroke as you type, plus marker, looseleaf and rafikki • Four pens: ballpoint, marker, fountain and pencil • Change the hand or pen for a selection, or for just what you type next; settings picks the hand new notes start in • Plain, lined, squared or dotted paper, chosen note by note CROSSING OUT • Delete more than a few letters and they are scratched out in ink instead of vanishing; a quick typo fix still simply deletes • Keep the scratch-out, or let it go DOODLES AND PHOTOS • Draw with your finger and put the doodle on the page • Add photos from your library: as the full photo, as a cutout with the background removed, as a cutout with a white border, or held on with a binder clip or a paper clip • Move doodles and photos around the page YOUR NOTES • Every note on one wall, most recently written first, grouped by day • Search what your notes say (crossed-out words are left out) • Hold a note to crumple it up PAPERS AND SOUNDS • Cream paper by day and charcoal at night, following your iPhone • Five more papers: charcoal, spring, terracotta, violet and sea • Soft pencil sounds when you cross out, crumple a note, or pick a paper, pen or hand, with a loudness control, or turn them off ON IPHONE DUO • Closed, the outside screen is your notebook's cover, with windows cut through it to your latest page • Open it, and your notes become a book: turn the pages, with a soft page-turn sound • Tap a page and write right on it with the keyboard • A handwritten index of your notes, with dates • Eight covers: bottle green, charcoal, ink navy, rust, burgundy, kraft, and two cloth covers, breakfast and horses • Lined, squared, dotted or plain pages; blue, black or sepia ink; turn the pages or scroll • Warm, faded paper after dark LANGUAGES • noted. speaks English, Danish, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, Swedish, Ukrainian, and Simplified and Traditional Chinese • The handwriting writes all of them. The four hands and the self-inking scrawl are for the Latin alphabet; Cyrillic, Japanese, Korean and Chinese each have a handwriting face of their own FREE, AND THE WHOLE DRAWER Free to use, with no time limit: the scrawl, the ballpoint, cream paper (charcoal at night), scratch-outs, doodles, photos, search, sounds and the whole iPhone Duo notebook. One optional purchase, the whole drawer, adds: • the five more papers • every pen: marker, fountain and pencil • every hand: marker, looseleaf and rafikki • iCloud sync, so your notes follow you to your other iPhones One payment, kept forever. No subscription. Restore it any time from the purchase page. PRIVATE Notes stay on your device or in your own iCloud. Apple handles purchases; RevenueCat receives receipts and app/device IDs for validation and purchase statistics. No advertising tracking or data sales. Privacy Policy: https://walnut-burst-160.notion.site/Noted-Note-Privacy-Policy-3a93971e7add8199a7e4d91c688d6069 Terms of Use: https://walnut-burst-160.notion.site/Noted-Note-Terms-of-Use-3a93971e7add80428a0fdaad90470a72 Apple Standard EULA: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/

Screenshots

Finalist4 screens
Noted Note4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is rating: Finalist at 4.7 against Noted Note's 4.0. Finalist also leads on review sentiment (76% vs 50%) and ratings volume (528 vs 2). Noted Note's advantage is update cadence (every 3 days vs every 10 days). On price, ads, in-app purchases 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

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Both are free to download. Finalist sells 7 in-app purchases, starting at $2.99 per 7 days and Noted Note sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

Finalist holds the better App Store score, 4.7 against 4.0. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Finalist has 528 ratings behind it against 2, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews point the same way: 76% of Finalist's written reviews are positive against 50% of Noted Note's.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Finalist ships an update every 10 days, Noted Note every 3 days. The most recent releases landed on November 3, 2026 and November 5, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard7 real differences · 4 level
Finalist versus Noted Note: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterFinalistNoted Note
PriceFreeFree
Rating4.7 (528 ratings) — better4.0 (2 ratings)
Positive reviews76.2% of reviews — better50.0% of reviews
Number of ratings528 — better2
Update frequencyEvery 10 daysEvery 3 days — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesYesYes
MonetizationFree with in-app purchasesFree with in-app purchases
Best chart rank#205 — better—
DevicesiPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, Vision Pro — betteriPhone
Requires iOS18.0 — better26.5
Further details — not scored
Size121 MB115 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperDiversion Marketing IncJerry Munyoka Nkongolo

Customer experience

Finalist

All ratings519 ratings
Positive92.5%
Neutral2.7%
Negative4.8%
Written reviews126 reviews
Positive76.2%
Neutral6.3%
Negative17.5%

Noted Note

All ratings2 ratings
Positive50.0%
Neutral50.0%
Negative0.0%
Written reviews2 reviews
Positive50.0%
Neutral50.0%
Negative0.0%

Bugs and requests

Finalist

Reported bugs

9 issues
  • Settings/preferences crash the app
  • Pro subscription not recognized after canceling auto-renewal
  • Weather widget fails to display without manual toggling
  • App freezes and becomes unresponsive on iPad
  • Empty tasks cannot be permanently deleted
Show 4 more
  • App crashes when accessing certain reminder lists
  • Slow performance after force closing and reopening
  • Widget functionality discontinued or broken
  • macOS version crashes and lacks performance

Requested features

18 requests
  • Apple Watch native app
  • Recurring/repeating tasks and reminders
  • Subtasks functionality
  • Task tagging and filtering
  • Event location and travel time details
Show 13 more
  • Natural language input for tasks and events
  • Snooze reminder functionality
  • Task comments and checklist support
  • List grouping and archiving options
  • Menubar-only mode for macOS
  • Early/advance reminders for tasks
  • Notes section for daily journaling
  • School/team collaboration version
  • Chinese language support
  • Dark mode option
  • Family sharing features
  • Multiple calendar visibility in month view
  • Invite others to meetings and add conferencing

Noted Note

Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.

In-app purchases

7 purchases

Finalist

Subscriptions5
  • Finalist Pro Weekly3 Days trial$2.997 Days
  • Finalist Monthly$4.991 Month
  • Finalist Pro Monthly$4.991 Month
Show 2 more
  • Finalist Yearly7 Days trial$29.991 Year
  • Finalist Pro Yearly7 Days trial$29.991 Year
One-time2
  • Finalist Lifetime$59.99
  • Finalist Pro Lifetime$59.99
1 purchases

Noted Note

One-time1
  • the whole drawer$9.99

Questions

Is Finalist free?
Finalist is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is Noted Note free?
Noted Note is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Which has better reviews, Finalist or Noted Note?
Finalist is rated higher. Finalist averages 4.7 out of 5 from 528 ratings, while Noted Note averages 4.0 from 2 ratings.
Do Finalist or Noted Note have ads?
Neither Finalist nor Noted Note shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Finalist or Noted Note?
Finalist ships an update every 10 days, and Noted Note every 3 days. Most recently, Finalist was updated on November 3, 2026 and Noted Note on November 5, 2026.

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