PaperTrail vs Terrapin
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
PaperTrail
Effortlessly track business expenses and mileage for tax season. Automatically scan receipts with OCR, log miles with GPS, and generate organized reports for your accountant. Never miss a deduction again.
- Automatic receipt scanning with OCR
- Background GPS mileage tracking
- Client and project tagging
- Annual tax summary PDF export
- Cloud backup
- Visual spending breakdowns
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Stop losing deductions. Snap a receipt. Log a mile. Done. PaperTrail is the expense organizer and mileage log built for contractors, freelancers, and self-employed workers who can't afford to miss a write-off at tax time. "I own a small business and this has been exactly what I needed. Helps out a ton with tracking my expenses for tax time." — John, App Store Review With PaperTrail, you can: - Scan and capture receipts in seconds — OCR extracts merchant, category, date, and total automatically - Track mileage with automatic GPS — start a trip, drive, end it. Miles calculated for you - Get instant IRS rate estimates for business, medical, and charity mileage - Tag receipts to clients or projects for billing, reimbursement, and job costing - Organize with folders, tags, and categories so every business expense is exactly where you need it - Search and filter by date, amount, category, merchant, client, and more - Export your receipt log and mileage log to PDF or CSV for taxes or reimbursements - Generate an annual tax summary PDF combining receipt totals and mileage in one clean report - Back up everything to iCloud — your receipt storage is protected even if you lose your phone - Track spending with visual breakdowns by category PaperTrail is built for the way 1099 workers actually operate. You're not sitting at a desk with a filing cabinet. You're on job sites, in client properties, running between appointments, buying materials on the fly. Every tax receipt matters. Every mile is a deduction you've earned. PaperTrail makes sure none of it slips through. Thermal receipts fade. Paper gets lost in the truck, the wash, or the junk drawer. Miles go unlogged because you forgot by the time you got home. PaperTrail captures everything the moment it happens — and keeps it searchable, backed up, and ready when your accountant needs it. Whether you're a contractor tracking job expenses across multiple projects, a gig worker separating business from personal, a freelancer managing 1099 income and deductions, or a real estate agent logging trip after trip between showings — PaperTrail handles the recordkeeping so you can focus on the work. No spreadsheets. No shoeboxes. No scrambling in April trying to reconstruct six months of business expenses from memory. Just a clean, organized expense journal that's always current, always backed up, and always ready. Your deductions are worth real money. The average self-employed worker leaves thousands on the table every year simply because they didn't track it. PaperTrail makes it effortless to capture every receipt and every mile — so when tax time comes, you hand your accountant a complete record instead of a pile of guesses. Download PaperTrail free. Every receipt. Every mile. Every deduction. https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/
Terrapin
Automate your expense tracking and tax preparation. This app automatically finds, categorizes, and organizes receipts from emails, photos, and bank transactions. Prepare and export comprehensive tax reports for your accountant with ease.
- Automatic receipt finding from email, photos, and banks
- Expense categorization (business/personal)
- Speed Sort for quick manual categorization
- Mileage tracking with automatic trip detection
- Customizable classification rules
- Exportable reports (PDF, CSV, images)
- SOC 2 Type II certified security
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Put your receipts on autopilot. Terrapin finds them from email, photos, and bank transactions - then organises everything for tax time. No manual entry. No shoebox of paper. Just clean, categorised expenses ready to export to your accountant. How it works Connect your email, photo library, and bank accounts. Terrapin runs on autopilot - scanning for receipts, matching them to transactions, and categorising them as business or personal. Set rules once and they apply to every receipt going forward. Anything left over takes seconds, not evenings: Speed Sort deals you each unsorted receipt like a card - swipe right for business, left for personal. Done. When tax season arrives, export a complete package - summary report, itemised CSV, and receipt images - direct to your CPA in minutes. What Terrapin does Finds receipts from Gmail, Outlook, Apple Mail, and your photo library Matches receipts to bank transactions automatically Shows you exactly which card transactions are still missing a receipt - so nothing slips through before tax time Speed Sort: swipe through unsorted receipts and classify a month's backlog in minutes Catches mistakes for you - flags possible duplicates and lets you double-check your highest amounts, so OCR misreads never inflate your books Tracks mileage with automatic trip detection Reports built in: monthly spend, top categories, top vendors, and recurring charges at a glance Filter everything by business or personal and tax year - clear totals so you always know where you stand Captures receipts from anywhere: share from any app, snap at the register when you pay with Apple Pay, or start from your Lock Screen Lets you set classification rules that stick Exports PDF reports, CSV files, and receipt images for your accountant Built for freelancers and small businesses If you're self-employed, a 1099 contractor, or running a small business, Terrapin replaces the spreadsheet, the folder of photos, and the end-of-year panic. Your receipts are on autopilot - organised continuously, not just at tax time. Your accountant will thank you Share a clean, audit-ready export with your CPA. Summary report, categorised expenses, and receipt images - all in one download. No more chasing clients for missing documentation. Security you can verify: Terrapin is SOC 2 Type II certified - independently audited for security, availability, and confidentiality. We use read-only access to every connected source, AES-256 encryption at rest, and TLS 1.3 in transit. No passwords to steal. No data sold. Full report available at tryterrapin.com/trust. Download Terrapin. Put your receipts on autopilot.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is ads: Terrapin at none against PaperTrail's shown. Terrapin also leads on rating (5.0 vs 4.6). PaperTrail's advantage is update cadence (every 3 days vs every 8 days) and ratings volume (19 vs 3). On price, review sentiment, 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
Both are free to download. PaperTrail sells 4 in-app purchases, starting at $7.99 per month and Terrapin sells 4 in-app purchases, starting at $12.99 per month. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.
Terrapin holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 4.6. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: PaperTrail has 19 ratings behind it against 3, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews split almost evenly too, at 100% and 100% positive.
PaperTrail ships an update every 3 days, Terrapin every 8 days. The most recent releases landed on October 30, 2026 and November 6, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | PaperTrail | Terrapin |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.6 (19 ratings) | 5.0 (3 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 100.0% of reviews | 100.0% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | 19 — better | 3 |
| Update frequency | Every 3 days — better | Every 8 days |
| Ads | Yes | No — better |
| In-app purchases | Yes | Yes |
| Monetization | Free with in-app purchases | Free with in-app purchases |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad | iPhone, iPad |
| Requires iOS | 17.0 | 16.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 33 MB | 138 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Nexverge LLC | Terrapin Software Inc. |
Customer experience
PaperTrail
Terrapin
In-app purchases
PaperTrail
- PaperTrail Business3 Days trial$7.991 Month
- Paper Trail Pro Yearly$24.991 Year
- PaperTrail Business Yearly Discount$37.491 Year
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- PaperTrail Business Yearly7 Days trial$49.991 Year
Terrapin
- Standard$12.991 Month
- Extended$17.991 Month
- Standard$119.991 Year
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- Extended$149.991 Year









