Comparison

Plan&Journal vs Jottle

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

Head to head
About

Plan&Journal

Features
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* Get a birds-eye view of your week. * Capture your todos in one place to be dealt with later * Keep on top of life on a week by week basis * Keep a record of your accomplishments

About

Jottle

Features
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Jottle is for the thought you need to get down before it's gone. Open it and there's a blank line, waiting. Type the thought, tap Add Note, and get on with your day. There's nothing to set up and nothing to file. A note is a piece of plain text with a date on it. The first line becomes the title. That's the whole model, and it's why capture takes a second instead of a minute. EACH DEVICE GETS ITS OWN SHAPE โ€ข iPhone: the list and the editor, and nothing between you and the blank line โ€ข iPad: your notes on the left and a full page for writing on the right โ€ข Apple Watch: a real app, not a mirror. Dictate or scribble from your wrist. It syncs straight from iCloud, so it works with your phone out of range โ€ข Mac: Jottle is there too, as a notepad that drops in over whatever you're doing with one keystroke Notes sync through your own iCloud account. There's no Jottle account, no sign-in, and no server of ours in the middle. WIDGETS AND COMPLICATIONS Pin the notes that matter and they show up in the Pinned Notes widget, small, medium or large, on the Home Screen, the Lock Screen or in Notification Center. On the watch, put New Note on your face to dictate with one tap, or Recent Notes to read your latest at a glance. LOCKED NOTES, ACTUALLY LOCKED Lock any note and its body is encrypted with AES-256-GCM under a passphrase only you know, derived with PBKDF2-SHA256 at 600,000 iterations. Only the ciphertext is stored and only the ciphertext syncs, so a locked note is unreadable everywhere except on a device where you've entered the passphrase. Face ID or Touch ID unlocks it after the first time, and an open locked note is hidden from the app switcher. There's no recovery and no backdoor. Forget the passphrase and the note is gone for good. That's not an oversight. It's the feature. PLAIN TEXT, NOT A TRAP Export one note or all of them as ordinary Markdown files, with the dates kept in the front matter. Import a folder of them back. They open in any editor and are already covered by whatever backup you run. You are never locked in. THE REST OF IT Pin a note to keep it at the top. Archive one to get it out of the way without deleting it. Search across everything, or find within the note you're editing. MAKE IT YOURS Eight accent colors, light or dark, on a Paper or Bright background, and a text size your eyes agree with. Your watch keeps a color of its own. FREE Jottle on iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch is free, with every feature. The Mac app is a separate choice: a free 14-day trial, then a one-time purchase. WHAT IT DOESN'T DO No account. No subscription. No analytics, no advertising, no crash reporting, no third-party SDKs of any kind. Jottle makes no network requests of its own. The only thing it talks to is your iCloud, at your instruction. Nothing about you or your notes is collected, because there is nothing in it to collect them with. Requires iOS or iPadOS 26. The Apple Watch app requires watchOS 26. Syncing needs an Apple Account signed in with iCloud Drive on. Without one, Jottle runs perfectly well on a single device and tells you plainly that it isn't syncing.

Screenshots

Plan&Journal4 screens
Jottle4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is update cadence: Jottle at weekly against Plan&Journal's monthly. Jottle also leads on device support (4 vs 2). Plan&Journal's advantage is iOS requirement (18.6 vs 26.0). On price, ads and in-app purchases there is nothing between them.

Scored on Price ยท Rating ยท Positive reviews ยท Number of ratings ยท Update frequency ยท Ads ยท In-app purchases ยท Monetization ยท Best chart rank ยท Devices ยท Requires iOS

CostPrice ยท In-app purchases ยท Ads ยท Monetization

Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Plan&Journal ships an update monthly, Jottle weekly. The most recent releases landed on October 1, 2026 and October 17, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard3 real differences ยท 3 level
Plan&Journal versus Jottle: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterPlan&JournalJottle
PriceFreeFree
Update frequencyMonthlyWeekly โ€” better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNoNo
DevicesiPhone, iPadiPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch โ€” better
Requires iOS18.6 โ€” better26.0
Further details โ€” not scored
Size5 MB5 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperDAN CONSTANTIN CONDURATMike Shear

In-app purchases

None

Plan&Journal

No in-app purchases

None

Jottle

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is Plan&Journal free?
Plan&Journal is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is Jottle free?
Jottle is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Do Plan&Journal or Jottle have ads?
Neither Plan&Journal nor Jottle shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Plan&Journal or Jottle?
Plan&Journal ships an update monthly, and Jottle weekly. Most recently, Plan&Journal was updated on October 1, 2026 and Jottle on October 17, 2026.

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