Comparison

grug vs footnotes

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

Head to head
About

grug

Receive a daily dose of simple, profound wisdom to help you navigate life's challenges. This app offers straightforward truths and accompanying artwork to inspire personal growth and contentment. It focuses on mindfulness and taking small steps each day.

Highlights
  • Daily wisdom sharing
  • Accompanying artwork
  • Home screen widget
  • Customizable themes
  • Light and dark modes
  • No login or tracking
Features
Read full description

grug know: big scary just many small rock wearing fur coat. every sunrise grug share one wisdom. help you break today rock into small piece. no fancy word. no complicated. just simple truth that work. **what grug do:** - share daily wisdom when sun rise - draw grug dream on wisdom - share with other grug - widget show wisdom on cave - grug work in light and dark cave or give grug shiny color grug not guru. grug just know: small step every day make mountain move. perfect never come. better start with broken stick today than wait for perfect stick tomorrow. wisdom come from real life. fear work love pain growth. grug speak simple but truth hit deep. like "fear just smoke. real but not solid.” and "wanting make poor. grateful make rich." each day different wisdom. truth waiting. grug help see: you already enough. just need pick up one small rock today. app simple like grug brain. open. read wisdom. maybe draw feeling. that all. no login. no cloud. no follow. just you and today truth. remember. tomorrow not here. only today real. grug help make today count. Terms of Service: https://ocho.so/terms Privacy Policy: https://ocho.so/privacy

About

footnotes

Capture the full texture of everyday moments with words, photos, video, and voice. Organize these memories into notebooks and create a timeline of your life. Share your moments as little stories.

Highlights
  • Capture moments with text, photos, video, and voice
  • Organize notes into different notebooks
  • Build a timeline of life's moments
  • Create shareable stories from moments
  • Edit and add to old notes
Read full description

footnotes is a quiet notebook for the photographs, voices, passing thoughts, ideas, and ordinary moments that make up a life. you can: - capture the full texture of a moment: in words, photos, video, and voice, all together. - return to old notes, add new moments, and watch a timeline of your life slowly take shape. - make notebooks for different parts of your life, and - turn moments into little stories to share. slices of light sizzling on a wall. laughter of friends sloppy and gold. the loosey goosey fragments. all of which you look back on with tenderness, kept whole. footnotes makes space for the footnotes of a life. the little things that become the story of who you are.

Screenshots

grug4 screens
footnotes4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is update cadence: footnotes at daily against grug's weekly. grug's advantage is ratings volume (3.3K vs 158). On price, rating, review sentiment and ads 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. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 4.8 for grug against 4.8 for footnotes. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: grug has 3.3K ratings behind it against 158, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews are what separate them: 96% of grug's written reviews are positive against 97% of footnotes's.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

grug ships an update weekly, footnotes daily. The most recent releases landed on October 16, 2026 and October 15, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard2 real differences · 8 level
grug versus footnotes: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
Parametergrugfootnotes
PriceFreeFree
Rating4.8 (3.3K ratings)4.8 (158 ratings)
Positive reviews96.3% of reviews97.3% of reviews — better
Number of ratings3.3K — better158
Update frequencyWeeklyDaily — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNoNo
MonetizationFreeFree
DevicesiPhoneiPhone
Requires iOS18.018.0
Further details — not scored
Size22 MB26 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperOchoDoppler HQ, Inc

Customer experience

grug

All ratings3,280 ratings
Positive96.6%
Neutral1.8%
Negative1.7%
Written reviews645 reviews
Positive96.3%
Neutral1.9%
Negative1.9%

footnotes

All ratings158 ratings
Positive96.8%
Neutral0.6%
Negative2.5%
Written reviews37 reviews
Positive97.3%
Neutral0.0%
Negative2.7%

In-app purchases

None

grug

No in-app purchases

None

footnotes

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is grug free?
grug is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is footnotes free?
footnotes is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Which has better reviews, grug or footnotes?
grug and footnotes are both rated 4.8 out of 5 on the App Store, from 3.3K and 158 ratings respectively.
Do grug or footnotes have ads?
Neither grug nor footnotes shows ads.
Which is updated more often, grug or footnotes?
grug ships an update weekly, and footnotes daily. Most recently, grug was updated on October 16, 2026 and footnotes on October 15, 2026.

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