Comparison

NotePile vs FoldNotes

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

Head to head
About

NotePile

Organize your thoughts with color-coded notes and reminders. Add voice notes, files, links, and create custom views. Integrates seamlessly with Siri, Spotlight, iCloud, and Shortcuts for enhanced productivity.

Highlights
  • Color-coded notes
  • Customizable reminders
  • Voice notes
  • File and link attachments
  • Widget support
  • Siri and Spotlight integration
  • iCloud and Shortcuts compatibility
Features
Read full description

Color-coded notes and reminders. Give colors your own meaning, create views, add reminders, voice notes, files, links and widgets. Works with Siri, Spotlight, iCloud and Shortcuts.

About

FoldNotes

Organize long notes by collapsing completed sections, keeping your workspace focused. This app uses plain Markdown files stored in iCloud or locally, ensuring your data is accessible across devices and applications. It offers advanced text styling, task management, and powerful search capabilities.

Highlights
  • Collapsible sections and list items
  • Plain Markdown file storage
  • Live Markdown styling with syntax highlighting
  • Task management with four states
  • Wiki-links with automatic backlinks
  • Powerful search with regular expressions
  • Customizable themes and fonts
Read full description

Some notes are short. Others grow into chapters, plans and running logs you scroll past a hundred times. FoldNotes lets you fold the finished parts away, so a long note stays as small as the part you are actually working on. Every note is a plain Markdown file. No database, no proprietary format, no export step. Your notes sit in iCloud Drive or on your device, and any other app can open them, today or in ten years. It is also a real iOS app, written in Swift. Not a web page in a wrapper. It opens instantly, works offline, handles a hardware keyboard properly, and does not sit in the background eating your battery. FOLD ANYTHING • Collapse any heading or list item and everything beneath it folds away • Hoist a section to work on it alone, with everything else out of sight • Task counts stay on the folded heading, so you can see what is left without unfolding WRITTEN FOR MARKDOWN • Live styling as you type — headings, lists, quotes, code, links • Six heading levels, and GFM tables with a real table editor • Code blocks with syntax highlighting • Wiki-links [[like this]], with previews and automatic backlinks • Nested tags TASKS WHERE YOU WROTE THEM • Four states: to do, in progress, done and cancelled • Due dates and priorities written inline, in plain text • Assign them to a project and add context and comments • Counts roll up to the section above them BUILT FOR IPAD • Library, notes and editor side by side • Hardware keyboard shortcuts throughout • An inspector with outline, tasks, references, properties and a note graph • Scan printed text straight into a note with the camera FIND ANYTHING • Search every note, including regular expressions • Saved queries and database views across your whole collection • Daily notes with a calendar COMING FROM ANOTHER APP • Import from Bear or Obsidian in a tap • Or simply point FoldNotes at the Markdown files you already have MAKE IT YOURS • Light and dark themes, including Nord, Dracula and Catppuccin • Choose your body, heading and code fonts • Paragraph focus, sentence focus and typewriter scrolling Folding is not a formatting trick. A long document asks you to hold every section in your head at once; folding lets you put the finished ones down. That is the whole idea, and everything else here is built around it. Your notes will outlive this app, and every app like it. That is rather the point.

Screenshots

NotePile3 screens
FoldNotes4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is rating: FoldNotes at 5.0 against NotePile's 4.6. FoldNotes also leads on iOS requirement (17.0 vs 26.0). NotePile's advantage is ratings volume (5 vs 1). 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. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

FoldNotes holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 4.6. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: NotePile has 5 ratings behind it against 1, so its average is the more settled of the two.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

NotePile ships an update daily, FoldNotes every 2 days. The most recent releases landed on September 21, 2026 and September 25, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard3 real differences · 7 level
NotePile versus FoldNotes: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterNotePileFoldNotes
PriceFreeFree
Rating4.6 (5 ratings)5.0 (1 ratings) — better
Positive reviews100.0% of reviews—
Number of ratings5 — better1
Update frequencyDaily — betterEvery 2 days
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNoNo
MonetizationFreeFree
DevicesiPhone, iPad, Mac — betteriPhone, iPad
Requires iOS26.017.0 — better
Further details — not scored
Size10 MB21 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperAlias Labs Pty LtdFoldsoft Pty Ltd

Customer experience

NotePile

All ratings5 ratings
Positive80.0%
Neutral20.0%
Negative0.0%
Written reviews1 reviews
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%

FoldNotes

All ratings1 ratings
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%

In-app purchases

None

NotePile

No in-app purchases

None

FoldNotes

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is NotePile free?
NotePile is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is FoldNotes free?
FoldNotes is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Which has better reviews, NotePile or FoldNotes?
FoldNotes is rated higher. NotePile averages 4.6 out of 5 from 5 ratings, while FoldNotes averages 5.0 from 1 ratings.
Do NotePile or FoldNotes have ads?
Neither NotePile nor FoldNotes shows ads.
Which is updated more often, NotePile or FoldNotes?
NotePile ships an update daily, and FoldNotes every 2 days. Most recently, NotePile was updated on September 21, 2026 and FoldNotes on September 25, 2026.

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