Paper Pulse vs Folio
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side โ with what reviewers say about each.
Paper Pulse
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Paper Pulse is packed with features designed to save you time, deepen your understanding, and keep you at the cutting edge of your field. - See daily papers posted from arXiv, bioRxiv, medRxiv, and PubMed - Bookmark and save papers offline - Get concise summaries, extract key findings, and use semantic search that understands your intent - Read papers in the app or export to a PDF viewer
Folio
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Folio turns staying current with research into something you actually look forward to. Instead of cluttered tables and endless tabs, you get one paper per screen โ swipe up for the next, just like your favorite feed. Pulled live from the open-access world: arXiv, bioRxiv, medRxiv, OpenAlex, Europe PMC, and Semantic Scholar. Whether you're a researcher, a grad student, or just science-curious, Folio meets you where your attention already is. WHY FOLIO โข One paper at a time - a calm, full-screen feed instead of noisy lists โข Real coverage - millions of preprints and papers across physics, biology, medicine, CS, and beyond โข Math that renders - equations display properly, not as broken symbols โข Save & tag - build your own library and organize it your way โข Tune your feed - pick the sources and topics you care about โข Fast and private - your library and settings live on your device, no account required OPTIONAL AI (BETA) Want a hand making sense of a paper? Folio's optional AI features can: โข Summarize at your level - explain-like-I'm-12, standard, or expert โข Ask the paper - get answers grounded in the abstract โข Translate - read papers in your language โข Synthesize - pull themes across a set of papers AI is completely optional and off by default. The whole app works without it. During the beta, AI runs on your own Anthropic Claude API key, stored only on your device โ there's no subscription and nothing to buy inside the app. NO ADS. NO TRACKING. NO ACCOUNT. Folio doesn't sell your data and doesn't show ads. Your saved papers, tags, and settings stay on your device. Science moves fast. Folio helps you keep up - one swipe at a time.
Screenshots
Verdict
Paper Pulse and Folio are too close to call on the numbers: across 5 compared parameters โ price, ads, in-app purchases and device support among them โ neither pulls far enough ahead to decide it. What separates them is feature set and interface, not measurable difference.
Scored on Price ยท Rating ยท Positive reviews ยท Number of ratings ยท Update frequency ยท Ads ยท In-app purchases ยท Monetization ยท Best chart rank ยท Devices ยท Requires iOS
Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
| Parameter | Paper Pulse | Folio |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Update frequency | โ | Weekly |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Devices | iPhone, iPod | iPhone, iPad, iPod โ better |
| Requires iOS | 15.6 | 15.0 โ better |
| Further details โ not scored | ||
| Size | 20 MB | 6 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Avaneesa Basappa | Saksham Gupta |
In-app purchases
Paper Pulse
No in-app purchases
Folio
No in-app purchases









