Comparison

Penso Notes vs Papyrus

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

Head to head
About

Penso Notes

Read full description

Penso Notes: Write freely. Find easily. Never lose a brilliant idea again. Penso Notes transforms how you capture, organise, and rediscover your thoughts. Whether you're planning your day, tracking goals, or preserving memories, this powerful digital journal adapts to your life. Why Choose Penso Notes? - Bullet Journaling Perfected:Inspired by Ryder Carroll's proven Bullet Journal and Rapid Logging Methods, enhanced for the digital age. - Multimedia Memory Keeping:Add formatted text, photos, voice and camera recordings. - Multiple Journals, One App: Keep diaries for work, personal life, travel, or projects. - Find Anything Instantly: Search by text, tags, dates, or even bullets. Smart Organisation - Customisable bullets for quick scanning of tasks, notes, and events - Note Colours, tags and categories - Day dividers with mood and weather tracking - Priority highlighting and reactions - Calendar integration for events and reminders - Quick swipe gestures for migration and scheduling - Customisable themes and stickers Privacy You Can Trust Your thoughts are yours alone. Secure diary locking, private keys, and on-device storage mean your personal information stays personal. Perfect For: - Professionals managing projects and ideas - Creatives capturing inspiration - Anyone wanting better life organisation - Students organising research and deadlines - Bullet journal enthusiasts going digital Key Features: - Text, audio, photo, video, and file entries - Cross-journal search and tags - Customisable bullets and colour coding - Integrated Calendar and reminders - Multiple diary support - Mood and day dividers - Privacy controls - Beautiful themes and stickers From Scattered to Organised Stop losing important thoughts across sticky notes, random apps, and forgotten notebooks. Penso Notes creates one trusted space where every idea, plan, and memory has its place. Join thousands worldwide who trust Penso Notes to stay organised and keep ideas safe. Ready to Transform Your Thinking? Download Penso Notes today and experience the perfect blend of creative freedom and digital organisation.

About

Papyrus

Organize, annotate, and cite research papers within a native Apple ecosystem. This workspace allows you to import PDFs and citation records, take notes, and manage your reading collections as structured projects. It offers local-first storage with optional cloud sync and various export formats.

Highlights
  • Read and annotate PDFs
  • Organize citation records
  • Take Markdown notes
  • Search entire library
  • Create structured projects
  • Local-first storage
  • Optional iCloud/WebDAV sync
Features
Read full description

Papyrus is a native research workspace for reading, annotating, organizing, and citing PDFs — built for iPad, iPhone, and Mac. READ AND ANNOTATE Open a paper in a fast built-in reader. Highlight, underline, and mark up pages, and every highlight stays searchable and linked back to its source. Bookmark a page as you go, and pick the paper up later from a Reading card that remembers where you stopped. On iPad, a References tab looks up the open paper's reference list and related work, so you can follow a citation trail and add what matters to your library without leaving the page. WRITE ON THE PAGE WITH APPLE PENCIL Mark up a PDF directly on iPad — annotate a proof, sketch beside a figure, work a derivation out in the margin. Your ink belongs to the paper and travels with it, encrypted, to your other devices. NOTES BESIDE THE SOURCE Keep Markdown notes next to each paper: headings, tables, code blocks, LaTeX math, and [[note]] cross-references. Notes stay with the paper and export as PDF when you need to share them. NOTEBOOKS Gather notes from across your library onto themed shelves — a topic, a chapter you're drafting, a reading group. Filing a note copies nothing and moves nothing: it still belongs to its paper, still says which paper that is, and one tap takes you there and back. A note can sit on several shelves at once. Fill a new shelf from what you've already written, search it by a note's text or by the paper behind it, order it four ways — including oldest paper first, which reads your own notes forward through the literature — and export a whole shelf as one Markdown document. All Notes lists everything you've written in one place, filed or not. ORGANIZE THE WAY YOU THINK Folders — a paper can live in several — plus tags, star ratings, and seven colored flags you can name yourself, each with its own shape so they stay tellable apart at a glance. Smart Collections keep themselves current from rules you set, including flag rules. Review Duplicates finds look-alike papers and merges each set after you confirm, combining tags, folders, projects, notes, and highlights. FIND ANYTHING Search titles, authors, notes, and highlights — or the full text inside your PDFs. TURN READING INTO WRITING Projects are where a reading pile becomes a manuscript. Group the papers behind a chapter or article, give each one a role, and capture evidence — claims, quotes, and your own interpretation — tied back to the source paper and page. Write the project note from a template (related work, method comparison, experiment plan, thesis chapter, reviewer response), keep its revision history, and run a preflight that catches missing citation keys and metadata gaps before you export. Export a bundle with Markdown, a BibTeX bibliography, and the PDFs. IMPORT AND CITE Bring in PDFs, whole folders, or BibTeX and RIS files — including libraries exported from Mendeley and Zotero. Papyrus looks up metadata by DOI or arXiv ID and fills in the details. Save papers straight from Safari with the included extension. Copy citations in the style you write in, and export BibTeX or RIS whenever you need them. READ ANYWHERE Paste an arXiv link, a DOI, or a PDF URL and Papyrus imports it, looks up the details, and fetches the PDF. Add a paper to Read Later and its PDF downloads ahead of time, so a flight or a commute doesn't need a signal. Ask Siri, or search from the Home Screen, to pick up the paper you were last reading on the page you left it. YOUR LIBRARY, YOUR DEVICES Your library syncs over iCloud across iPad, iPhone, and Mac. No account to create, no tracking, no ads. Free to download and use — every feature included, no in-app purchases, no subscription.

Screenshots

Penso Notes4 screens
Papyrus4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is in-app purchases: Penso Notes at none against Papyrus's 2. Penso Notes also leads on iOS requirement (15.6 vs 17.0). Papyrus's advantage is update cadence (weekly vs every 3 weeks). 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

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Both are free to download. Papyrus sells 2 one-off in-app purchases. Penso Notes asks for nothing beyond the download.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Penso Notes ships an update every 3 weeks, Papyrus weekly. The most recent releases landed on October 6, 2026 and October 12, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard3 real differences · 6 level
Penso Notes versus Papyrus: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterPenso NotesPapyrus
PriceFreeFree
Rating—5.0 (2 ratings) — better
Number of ratings—2 — better
Update frequencyEvery 3 weeksWeekly — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNo — betterYes
Monetization—Free with in-app purchases
DevicesiPhone, iPad, iPodiPhone, iPad, Mac
Requires iOS15.6 — better17.0
Further details — not scored
Size124 MB25 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperSuchitra EnterpriseZhenda Fu

In-app purchases

None

Penso Notes

No in-app purchases

2 purchases

Papyrus

One-time2
  • Papyrus Lifetime Unlock$3.99
  • Papyrus Lifetime Unlock$5.99

Questions

Is Penso Notes free?
Penso Notes is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is Papyrus free?
Papyrus is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Do Penso Notes or Papyrus have ads?
Neither Penso Notes nor Papyrus shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Penso Notes or Papyrus?
Penso Notes ships an update every 3 weeks, and Papyrus weekly. Most recently, Penso Notes was updated on October 6, 2026 and Papyrus on October 12, 2026.

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