Monu vs Dayleaf
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Monu
Organize your day, monitor habits, and enhance focus with a simple, private interface. This app integrates daily planning, goal setting, and attention tools into a single, free experience.
- Daily, monthly, and yearly planning views
- Habit and goal tracking
- Pomodoro timer for focus sessions
- Offline functionality
- Privacy-focused, no tracking
- Progress visualization dashboard
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MONU is a calm iOS planner built around one idea: your daily habits should connect to the person you're becoming. Most to-do apps are just inboxes for tasks — brilliant at capturing what you need to do, but they forget the point. MONU keeps your dreams at the top. Each dream breaks down into small, keepable habits. Those habits show up on your Today screen. And every time you keep one, the dream you're chasing moves a little closer. FOUR TABS. NOTHING YOU WON'T USE. Today, at a glance Your intention, habits, tasks, and calendar in one view. Switch between Day, Week, and Month — every date is tappable, so you can plan ahead. Vision & Dreams Write who you're becoming, then break each dream into small, keepable habits. View them as a list, or as an Ohtani-style Mandalart grid — a 3×3 goal map with your vision at the center and eight dreams around it. A Real Bucket List Life isn't only work. Sort your somedays into Need, Want, Adventure, and Growth, and tick them off as you live them. Focus Timer A gentle Pomodoro built right in. Pick 15, 25, 45, or 60 minutes, minimize it, and keep working — it resumes right where you left off. Calendar Sync Bring your Apple and Google events into your day, week, and month view, merged and de-duplicated so nothing shows up twice. Home Screen Widget Your progress ring, streak, and top tasks right on your home screen — a quiet nudge toward the day you meant to have. WHY MONU IS DIFFERENT A dream doesn't move forward when you check a box — it moves forward as its habits become consistent. Keep a habit for 21 days and it's built. You watch yourself change, not just clear a list. No feature soup. No dashboard fatigue. We cut everything that didn't earn its place, including features we'd already built. What's left is what matters. As James Clear puts it in Atomic Habits: your results reflect your systems, not just your goals. Free to download. No ads, no tracking. Works offline. Your data stays yours. Requires iPhone with iOS 18 or later.
Dayleaf
This app offers a digital journaling experience that mimics a physical paper planner. It features multiple calendar views, customizable planners for different life areas, and quick entry options. Cloud backup and export capabilities ensure your notes are safe and accessible.
- Monthly, Weekly, and Day calendar views
- Multiple color-coded planners
- Quick entry and editing
- Instant search functionality
- Cloud backup and restore
- Printable calendar views
- Email export of entries
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The warmth of a paper planner, the power of your iPhone. Write your days, stick stickers on your dates, and watch your life fill a beautiful calendar: journal, diary, goals, and planner in one quiet, ad-free app. Free to start; Pro is a one-time purchase or a subscription, your choice. Open it to a calendar, not a blank page: your entries, photos, and stickers live right inside the month, week, and day views, so every glance tells the story of your life. **New: Your Second Brain in an Agentic World** Switch on Headless Dayleaf and Meta Muse, Claude, Gemini or your own scripts can write the day's weather, your steps and sleep, or a summary of what you shipped into the right planner, labelled "via muse" so your words and theirs never blur, and read back what you wrote. Your whole journal also exports as Markdown files, one note per day, ready for Obsidian and any AI tool. Off by default; text only, never your photos or audio. **Switching from Day One?** Bring your entire journal home in minutes: every entry, photo, and voice recording. Choose your export in Settings → Import and Dayleaf does the rest, even for journals with a decade of memories. Free, forever. **Photos & Voice Notes** Attach photos to any entry and see them right on your calendar. Tap the mic to capture a voice note on the spot. Some days deserve to be heard, not typed. **Planner Stickers** Birthday, Pay day, Trip, Deadline, Date night… stick them on any date like a real paper planner, or design your own with your choice of icon and color. **Twenty Hand-Crafted Themes** Paper, Forest, Ocean, Lavender, Rosé, Ink & Gold, Sunset, Olive, Retro, Clay, Frost, Linen, Kraft, Pop: each tuned by hand with a light and a dark face, several with their own page construction. Your journal, your mood. **Set Goals. Reflect. Grow.** Daily, weekly, and monthly goals with a Notes & Reflection space to look back and write how it really went, just like the review pages of a great paper planner. **Private Diary with Lock. Your Year in Review.** App Lock (Pro) guards your diary with a 4-digit passcode; forgot it? A code sent to your email resets it. Year in Review (Pro) shows streaks, words written, busiest days and a globe lit by every city you've written from. Tag entries with your location, write your own reminder messages, and switch on a persistent reminder that nudges until you open the app. **Private. Backed Up. Always Yours.** One-tap backups to your own iCloud: entries, photos, voice notes, stickers, everything. No account required, no tracking, and your journal stays in your own Apple account. Restore anywhere, anytime. Key Features: - Day One import: entries, photos & audio, free forever - App Lock passcode, Year in Review, places globe, blog-post entries (Pro) - Headless Dayleaf: local API, `dayleaf` command line and MCP server (Mac); cloud access for Meta Muse and other agents - Markdown export: one note per day, ready for Obsidian and AI tools - Photo attachments with calendar thumbnails - On-the-spot voice notes - 20 planner stickers + design your own - 20 hand-crafted themes, each with light & dark - Per-planner icons, fonts, and text sizes - Daily, weekly, and monthly goals with reflection - Monthly, Weekly, and Day calendar views with zoom - Daily reminder at your chosen time - Instant search and a fast, beautiful Timeline - iCloud backup and restore: no account needed - Print your calendar; export by email (text/CSV) DAYLEAF EVERYWHERE Capture on Apple Watch: dictate an entry, record voice memos with automatic transcripts, tick off goals from your wrist, and add the watch-face complication. And with the Mac app, your whole journal is at home on your desktop too. Perfect for daily journaling, gratitude and mood tracking, habit reflection, work notes, reading lists, travel plans, and memory keeping. Your memories deserve a beautiful home. Start today. Terms of Use: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is in-app purchases: Monu at none against Dayleaf's 3. Monu also leads on rating (5.0 vs 4.8). Dayleaf's advantage is update cadence (weekly vs every 6 months) and ratings volume (13 vs 1). On price, ads, monetization model and iOS requirement 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. Dayleaf sells 3 in-app purchases, starting at $2.99 per month. Monu asks for nothing beyond the download.
Monu holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 4.8. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Dayleaf has 13 ratings behind it against 1, so its average is the more settled of the two.
Monu ships an update every 6 months, Dayleaf weekly. The most recent releases landed on October 30, 2026 and November 5, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Monu | Dayleaf |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 5.0 (1 ratings) — better | 4.8 (13 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | — | 100.0% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | 1 | 13 — better |
| Update frequency | Every 6 months | Weekly — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No — better | Yes |
| Monetization | Free | Free |
| Devices | iPhone | iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch — better |
| Requires iOS | 18.0 | 17.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 16 MB | 13 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Wun Jing Chang | iMobiApp |
Customer experience
Monu
Dayleaf
In-app purchases
Monu
No in-app purchases
Dayleaf
- Dayleaf Pro Monthly$2.991 Month
- Dayleaf Pro Yearly7 Days trial$9.991 Year
- Dayleaf Pro$19.99









