Normal Notes vs Pentip
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Normal Notes
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Normal Notes is the fastest and easiest way to keep a daily journal and a personal knowledge base. Built on plain Markdown and compatible with Obsidian vaults, it opens straight to Today's Note with heading pre-filled. Supports tags, suggests older notes worth attention, view vault pins on a map. Share anything from anywhere so you don't lose it. No account or subscription, and no tracking. No lock-in — your notes stay as ordinary .md files you own. DAILY JOURNALING • One tap to today's note. Yesterday and tomorrow are a swipe away. • Auto-headings with date, place, and journaling prompts. • Capture by voice — record a memo and it's transcribed straight into today. A KNOWLEDGE BASE THAT CONNECTS • [[Wikilinks]] and live backlinks, so notes link themselves together. • Related notes surfaced automatically. • Pin places to notes and see them all on a map. FAST AND NATIVE • Best-in-class Markdown editor experience — headings, checklists, formatting — that stays out of your way. • Instant search across your whole vault. • Share text and images into today from any app. PRIVATE BY DESIGN • Your notes sync through your own iCloud. Nothing is collected. No trackers, no ads, no analytics. If you've wanted Obsidian's plain-text freedom with the speed and polish of Apple Notes, Normal Notes is it.
Pentip
This app combines typed notes, handwriting recognition, and PDF annotation. It allows you to seamlessly switch between typing and drawing on the same page, with your annotations intelligently linked to your text. Import PDFs, mark them up, and fill out forms with support for multiple languages.
- Handwriting recognition and search
- Type and handwrite on the same page
- Drawings move with text
- Smart Dark mode for reading
- PDF import and markup
- Multi-language support
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Pentip is a notebook for people who take a lot of notes, and who write some of them by hand and type the rest. FIND WHAT YOU WROTE BY HAND Search your notes and Pentip reads your handwriting. It also searches typed text, floating text frames, the text inside any PDF you imported, and the values you filled into PDF form fields. Search your whole library, or find every match inside the document you have open and jump straight to it. Handwriting is recognised in all ten languages Pentip speaks, Arabic and Turkish included. Searching costs nothing extra. TYPE AND HANDWRITE ON THE SAME PAGE Type straight onto the page. Your text flows from one page to the next, the way it does in a word processor, instead of sitting in a small box you have to drag around. Then pick up your Apple Pencil and draw on that same page. There is no drawing mode to switch into: the Pencil draws, the keyboard types where the cursor is, and your finger scrolls. YOUR DRAWINGS MOVE WITH YOUR TEXT Every pen stroke remembers the line of text it was drawn beside. So if you come back weeks later and add a paragraph, the arrow you drew still points at the same sentence, even once that sentence has moved onto the next page. READ IN THE DARK WITHOUT CHANGING YOUR WORK Turn on Smart Dark and a light document is drawn dark while you read and write it. It is a viewing mode, so what you export is exactly what you made. TOOLS THAT FEEL RIGHT Pen, brush, highlighter and a precise eraser, all with Apple Pencil pressure and tilt. Hold at the end of a stroke and it snaps into a clean shape. Straighten lines with the ruler or turn it into a protractor to measure an angle. Squeeze an Apple Pencil Pro and a small palette of colours and sizes opens at the tip of the pen. WORK ON YOUR HANDOUTS Import a lecture PDF and mark it up like paper, or scan pages straight in with the camera. Tap a form field and type into it, in any script, right to left included. Select the text in the PDF itself to copy, look up or translate it. And if your lecturer sends a corrected version, swap it in and every note you made stays where it was. BUILT FOR BIG DOCUMENTS Notebooks of any length, page templates, five layers, and sections that hold several canvases in a single file. Star the ones you live in and they gather on a Favorites page. TEN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING RIGHT TO LEFT Arabic, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Polish, Russian, Spanish and Turkish. Text direction is set for each paragraph, so an Arabic note sits correctly next to an English source. Export to PDF or as an image, and sync across your devices with iCloud. Pentip runs on iPhone and Mac too. Terms of Service: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/ Privacy Policy: https://pentip.app/privacy/
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is in-app purchases: Normal Notes at none against Pentip's 2. Pentip's advantage is iOS requirement (18.2 vs 26.0). On price, ads and device support 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
Both are free to download. Pentip sells 2 in-app purchases, starting at $0.99 per month. Normal Notes asks for nothing beyond the download.
| Parameter | Normal Notes | Pentip |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | — | 1.0 (1 ratings) — better |
| Number of ratings | — | 1 — better |
| Update frequency | — | Every 5 weeks |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No — better | Yes |
| Monetization | — | Freemium |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, Mac | iPhone, iPad, Mac |
| Requires iOS | 26.0 | 18.2 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 4 MB | 48 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Thomas McKenzie | Khalil Khalil |
In-app purchases
Normal Notes
No in-app purchases
Pentip
- Pentip Pro Monthly7 Days trial$0.991 Month
- Pentip Pro Yearly7 Days trial$8.991 Year









