Comparison

SafeNotes vs Rune Secure Notes

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

Head to head
About

SafeNotes

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This app encrypts and save notes locally on your device. For enchanted security it does not save to the cloud. All your notes are protected. Use Apple'a built in biometrics to login. If your device does not support biometrics then you can use a password.

About

Rune Secure Notes

Features
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Rune is a calm, fast notes app for people who don't want to trust an app with their data. Your notes never leave your device, they are encrypted at rest, and the app makes no network connections at all. There is no account, no cloud, and no sign-up. Privacy by construction, not by promise: • No telemetry, no analytics, no crash reporting, no advertising, no tracking, none, not "anonymised", not "aggregated". • No networking code. Put your device in airplane mode and everything still works. If anything ever tries to reach the network, that is a bug. • No account and no server. There is no "we" that could hold your data. Real encryption: • Your passphrase derives a key with Argon2id; notes are sealed with XChaCha20-Poly1305 authenticated encryption. Only ciphertext is ever written to disk. • The passphrase is never stored and is not recoverable. If you forget it, your notes are gone, no reset, no backdoor. That is the price of real privacy. • A wrong passphrase simply cannot decrypt your notes. • Optional Face ID / Touch ID unlock: opt in to unlock with biometrics. Even then the passphrase is never stored — only the in-memory key is cached behind the biometric prompt. What you can do: • Create, edit, search, and organise plain-text notes with a clean, calm layout. • Auto-lock on inactivity and lock-on-background; the app starts locked. • Export an encrypted backup (safe to keep anywhere); plaintext export is gated behind an explicit warning. • Capture voice notes and transcribe them to text entirely on your device with on-device speech recognition — no audio and no transcript ever leaves your phone. Free and open source under the GNU GPLv3. The security-critical code is a small, dependency-light core so it can be read and audited. Releases ship with cryptographic provenance and are built reproducibly, so you can verify the binary was built from this source.

Screenshots

SafeNotes3 screens
Rune Secure Notes4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is update cadence: Rune Secure Notes at every 2 days against SafeNotes's every 3 months. Rune Secure Notes also leads on iOS requirement (15.0 vs 18.0). On price, ads, in-app purchases and device support there is nothing between them.

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

CostPrice Ā· In-app purchases Ā· Ads Ā· Monetization

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

UpkeepUpdate frequency

SafeNotes ships an update every 3 months, Rune Secure Notes every 2 days. The most recent releases landed on October 4, 2026 and October 9, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard2 real differences Ā· 4 level
SafeNotes versus Rune Secure Notes: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterSafeNotesRune Secure Notes
PriceFreeFree
Update frequencyEvery 3 monthsEvery 2 days — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNoNo
DevicesiPhone, iPad, MaciPhone, iPod, Mac
Requires iOS18.015.0 — better
Further details — not scored
Size10 MB58 MB
Age rating4+12+
DeveloperAlltech Service Engineers LimitedRory Standley

In-app purchases

None

SafeNotes

No in-app purchases

None

Rune Secure Notes

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is SafeNotes free?
SafeNotes is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is Rune Secure Notes free?
Rune Secure Notes is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Do SafeNotes or Rune Secure Notes have ads?
Neither SafeNotes nor Rune Secure Notes shows ads.
Which is updated more often, SafeNotes or Rune Secure Notes?
SafeNotes ships an update every 3 months, and Rune Secure Notes every 2 days. Most recently, SafeNotes was updated on October 4, 2026 and Rune Secure Notes on October 9, 2026.

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