PaperTrail vs TripStub
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/
TripStub
Effortlessly track business travel expenses and generate professional reimbursement reports. Capture receipts with your camera, categorize spending, and manage outstanding reimbursements with ease. All your data stays private on your device.
- Automated receipt scanning
- Customizable expense categories
- One-tap PDF expense reports
- Reimbursement status tracking
- Home screen widget
- Private, on-device data storage
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TripStub is a fast, private expense tracker built for business travel and reimbursement — log a receipt in seconds and send a finished report when the trip's done. HOW IT WORKS Create a trip, then add expenses as they happen. Photograph a receipt and TripStub reads the total and date for you automatically. No typing required unless you want to fix something. BUILT-IN CATEGORIES, YOUR WAY Rideshare, food, hotel, airfare, parking, and more — rename any category, give it your own icon and color, add entirely custom ones, and reorder the whole list to match how you actually spend. ONE-TAP EXPENSE REPORTS Every trip exports as a polished PDF — a category breakdown, a detailed expense table, and every receipt photo attached — ready to email straight to finance or a client. TRACK WHAT'S OWED TO YOU Mark trips active, submitted, or archived, so you always know what's still outstanding and what's already been reimbursed. A HOME SCREEN WIDGET See your current trip's running total and expense count without opening the app. PRIVATE BY DESIGN No account. No server. No analytics. Every trip, expense, and receipt photo stays on your iPhone — TripStub simply doesn't have anywhere else to send it.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is ads: TripStub at none against PaperTrail's shown. TripStub also leads on rating (5.0 vs 4.6). PaperTrail's advantage is update cadence (every 3 days vs every 6 weeks) and ratings volume (19 vs 1). On price, in-app purchases, monetization model 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. PaperTrail sells 5 in-app purchases, starting at $4.99 per month and TripStub sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.
TripStub 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 1, so its average is the more settled of the two.
PaperTrail ships an update every 3 days, TripStub every 6 weeks. The most recent releases landed on October 28, 2026 and October 29, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | PaperTrail | TripStub |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.6 (19 ratings) | 5.0 (1 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 100.0% of reviews | — |
| Number of ratings | 19 — better | 1 |
| Update frequency | Every 3 days — better | Every 6 weeks |
| 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, Mac — better |
| Requires iOS | 17.0 — better | 26.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 33 MB | 19 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | +4 |
| Developer | Nexverge LLC | BSR Films, LLC |
Customer experience
PaperTrail
TripStub
In-app purchases
PaperTrail
- PaperTrail Pro$4.991 Month
- PaperTrail Business3 Days trial$7.991 Month
- Paper Trail Pro Yearly$24.991 Year
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- PaperTrail Business Yearly Discount$37.491 Year
- PaperTrail Business Yearly7 Days trial$49.991 Year
TripStub
- TripStub Pro$4.99









