Bamboo vs Hinata
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Bamboo
This app is a Markdown note-taking tool for organizing knowledge and utilizing AI features. It allows users to capture ideas, write long-form content, and connect notes with wiki links. AI assistance is available for drafting, summarizing, and brainstorming, with users controlling their AI provider.
- Markdown editor with syntax highlighting
- Wiki link creation for connecting notes
- AI assistance for drafting and summarizing
- Organize notes into collections
- Cross-device synchronization
- Import and export content
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Bamboo is a Markdown notes app for writing, organizing knowledge, and using AI on your own terms. Available on iPhone, iPad, and Mac, with Web Clipper support, Bamboo helps you capture ideas anywhere and continue working across devices. Capture quick notes, long-form documents, tasks, reminders, research, meeting notes, reading highlights, and personal knowledge. Bamboo keeps your notes in Markdown so they stay portable, readable, and easy to manage. WRITE AND CAPTURE Use a focused Markdown editor with syntax highlighting, task lists, tables, wiki links, footnotes, highlights, math, images, and attachments. Keep ideas, notes, reminders, and tasks together so writing, thinking, and planning stay in one place. ORGANIZE AND CONNECT Organize notes into collections for projects, areas, archives, or research spaces. Connect ideas with wiki links, pin important notes, star favorites, and build a knowledge base that stays easy to navigate as it grows. AI ASSISTANCE, UNDER YOUR CONTROL Bamboo Pro lets you connect supported AI providers and use assistant features directly in your notes. Draft, rewrite, summarize, brainstorm ideas, and work with selected content without leaving your workspace. You stay in control of the provider and model you use. KEEP YOUR NOTES YOURS Your notes stay in Markdown, making them easy to move, back up, and keep for the long term. Search across notes, revisit recent work, import and export your content, create backups, and keep your work available across devices with optional Bamboo Pro features such as iCloud Sync, HTML export, and PDF export. Bamboo includes optional auto-renewable monthly and yearly Pro subscriptions. Payment will be charged to your Apple ID account at confirmation of purchase. Subscriptions automatically renew unless canceled at least 24 hours before the end of the current billing period. You can manage subscriptions in your App Store account settings. Privacy Policy: https://zhigui.github.io/app-docs/bamboo/privacy_policy.html Terms of Use: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/
Hinata
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Hinata is an open-source app for planning projects and tracking issues. It connects to a Hinata Server that you or your organization run, so your team's work stays on your own infrastructure. There is no per-user price and no limit on boards. The same app runs on phones, tablets and computers, fits its layout to the screen and has a light and a dark theme. It speaks English, German, Chinese, Hindi, Spanish, Japanese, French, Russian and Arabic, and lays out right to left in Arabic. PLANNING AND BOARDS • Scrum and Kanban boards: drag cards between columns, set WIP limits, group the board by epic, assignee or project • Board, backlog and timeline views of the same work • Sprints with capacity, story points, burndown and velocity • Issues in a hierarchy from epic to story to sub-task, with dependencies and labels. You can watch, clone, archive or move them to another project • Print an issue, or export it as PDF, Excel, Word or XML • Gantt chart with dependencies, milestones and the critical path • Project templates: copy a project and set deadlines relative to the project's date, in calendar or working days TIME AND ABSENCES • A timer that works as a stopwatch, a countdown or a Pomodoro • Log time in a list, a calendar or a weekly timesheet, and hand in your timesheet for approval • Request time off, have it approved and see who is away in a shared team calendar • Working hours, public holidays and leave balances in one place • Time reports with a summary, single entries and workload, plus CSV import and export WORKING TOGETHER • Comments with replies, emoji reactions and voice messages • Attach files, photos and videos and open them in a full-screen viewer • A knowledge base with spaces, sub-pages and Markdown articles. Type @ to link an issue, an article or a colleague • Project reports with burndown and breakdowns by state, priority and assignee, exported as PDF, CSV or JSON • A dashboard you arrange yourself, and a weekly summary of what your team finished • A command palette that searches projects, issues, people and articles • Notifications in the app, by e-mail and as push for assignments, @mentions and due dates. You choose the days and hours when e-mail and push may reach you • Git integration with GitHub, GitLab and Bitbucket FOR ORGANIZATIONS • Projects and teams with their own workflows, keys and members • An organization admin role for working hours, approvals, absences, holidays and billing • Sign in with a password and optional two-factor authentication (TOTP), or through SSO with OpenID Connect, OAuth 2.0, SAML or LDAP • Self-registration with e-mail verification, and password reset • Save several servers and switch between them. Each one keeps its own secure session ACCESSIBILITY Text colors meet WCAG contrast, touch targets are large and controls have labels for screen readers. Nothing gets cut off at twice the normal text size. YOUR DATA STAYS ON YOUR SERVER Hinata collects nothing for itself. Everything you create is stored on the Hinata Server you connect to. Push notifications go through Firebase Cloud Messaging and use only a device token. The app has no tracking and no analytics. You need a Hinata Server to sign in. hinata.ahmadre.com explains how to host one yourself. PERMISSIONS AND WHY HINATA ASKS FOR THEM • Notifications: assignments, @mentions, replies to your comments and due dates • Microphone: voice comments, and sound in videos you attach • Camera and photos: take or pick photos and videos to attach to issues Hinata asks for each permission the first time you use the feature that needs it.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is in-app purchases: Hinata at none against Bamboo's 2. Hinata also leads on update cadence (every 4 days vs every 2 months) and iOS requirement (15.0 vs 26.0). 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
Both are free to download. Bamboo sells 2 in-app purchases, starting at $2.99 per month. Hinata asks for nothing beyond the download.
Bamboo ships an update every 2 months, Hinata every 4 days. The most recent releases landed on October 24, 2026 and October 23, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Bamboo | Hinata |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 5.0 (1 ratings) — better | — |
| Number of ratings | 1 — better | — |
| Update frequency | Every 2 months | Every 4 days — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | No — better |
| Monetization | Freemium | — |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, Mac | iPhone, iPad, iPod, Mac — better |
| Requires iOS | 26.0 | 15.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 56 MB | 52 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | 志贵 陈 | Rebar Ahmad |
In-app purchases
Bamboo
- Monthly Pro7 Days trial$2.991 Month
- Annual Pro7 Days trial$29.991 Year
Hinata
No in-app purchases









