Qrio vs Papyrus
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Qrio
Easily scan, create, and manage QR codes and barcodes. Offers intelligent content recognition for quick actions like opening URLs, connecting to Wi-Fi, or saving contacts. Organize your scanned history with search and filtering options.
- Scan QR codes and 10+ barcode formats
- Automatic content recognition
- Generate QR codes for URLs, Wi-Fi, contacts, and more
- Customize QR code appearance
- Smart history with search and filtering
- Scan from photo gallery
- Light, Dark, and System themes
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Qrio is the smartest QR code and barcode scanner for your iPhone. Scan, create, and manage QR codes with incredible speed and intelligent content recognition. ◆ SMART SCANNING Scan QR codes and 10+ barcode formats including Code 128, EAN-13, Data Matrix, and more. Qrio automatically detects what you scanned — URLs, WiFi networks, contacts, calendar events, phone numbers, and emails — then offers one-tap actions to open, save, call, or connect. ◆ POWERFUL QR CODE GENERATOR Create professional QR codes for any purpose: • URLs & Websites • WiFi Network Sharing • Contact Cards (vCard) • Calendar Events • Email, Phone & SMS • Location Coordinates Customize your QR codes with different dot styles and share or save them instantly. ◆ SMART HISTORY & ORGANIZATION Every scan and creation is saved automatically. Search, filter by type, mark favorites, and batch manage your QR code collection with smart date grouping. ◆ DESIGNED FOR YOU • 12 Languages with in-app switching • Light, Dark & System themes • Haptic feedback throughout • Auto-copy to clipboard • Scan from photo gallery ◆ QRIO PRO (One-Time Purchase) • Custom QR dot styles: Rounded & Circle • Export full history as CSV • Support independent development Download Qrio — the only QR scanner you'll ever need.
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.
- Read and annotate PDFs
- Organize citation records
- Take Markdown notes
- Search entire library
- Create structured projects
- Local-first storage
- Optional iCloud/WebDAV sync
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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
Verdict
The clearest difference is in-app purchases: Papyrus at none against Qrio's 1. Qrio's advantage is iOS requirement (14.0 vs 17.0). On price, rating, ratings volume 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
Both are free to download. Qrio sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. Papyrus asks for nothing beyond the download.
On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 5.0 for Qrio against 5.0 for Papyrus. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 1 and 2 respectively.
| Parameter | Qrio | Papyrus |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 5.0 (1 ratings) | 5.0 (2 ratings) |
| Number of ratings | 1 | 2 — better |
| Update frequency | — | Weekly |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | No — better |
| Monetization | Free with in-app purchases | Free with in-app purchases |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod | iPhone, iPad, Mac |
| Requires iOS | 14.0 — better | 17.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 6 MB | 30 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | 浩 王 | Zhenda Fu |
Customer experience
Qrio
Papyrus
In-app purchases
Qrio
- Qrio Pro - Lifetime$0.99
Papyrus
No in-app purchases









