Comparison

Prism Notes vs Plain and Simple Thoughts

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

Head to head
About

Prism Notes

Capture thoughts and links quickly with a familiar texting interface. Organize ideas with AI-suggested tags and develop them across linked threads. Review notes to keep what matters and easily search by keyword or meaning.

Highlights
  • Texting-like note capture
  • AI-suggested tags
  • Threaded idea development
  • Review mode for notes
  • Sync across devices
  • Natural language reminders
  • Lock screen capture
Features
Read full description

Prism is the private place for quick thoughts and links. It feels like texting, rather than writing in a document. Capture easily, organize with tags, develop ideas across threads, review to keep only what matters. Free to try! Features: - Private and on-device - Opt in to iCloud sync between iPhone and Mac - Voice transcription and voice memos - Lock screen widgets for text and voice capture - AI-suggested tags to make organizing easy or automatic AI tagging (requires apple intelligence) - Review mode to keep notes alive or let them go - Threads to evolve a thought and link them together - Search by keyword - Natural language reminders - just say "remind me tomorrow at 2pm" (requires apple intelligence)

About

Plain and Simple Thoughts

Save articles, recipes, receipts, and important documents from any app. Automatically categorizes saved items and displays them as they were originally saved. Offers a clean reading experience and smart organization for your digital life.

Highlights
  • Save links and text from any app
  • Automatic categorization of saved items
  • Preserves original page appearance
  • Extracts recipe ingredients and methods
  • Organizes receipts and warranties
  • Stores important papers like IDs
  • Offline indexing for Home Screen search
Features
Read full description

Share a link. It is waiting when you want it. For anyone who keeps meaning to read something later and has run out of places to put it — a pile of open tabs, a message sent to themselves, a bookmark folder nobody opens. It has since grown three more shelves for the other things that end up in a drawer: recipes, receipts and warranties, and papers like a passport or a licence. Each stands on its own, and the ones you do not need can be ignored. HOW IT WORKS In any app — Safari, a message, a social app — tap Share and choose it. That is the whole of using it. The sheet saves and closes by itself. Start typing before it does and you can leave yourself a note about why you kept it, which three weeks later is the harder thing to reconstruct. It works whether the other app hands over a web address or a lump of text with an address buried inside it. If you would rather not use the share button at all, there is a + on your library: paste an address straight in. IT SORTS ITSELF Saved things are grouped by what they are — an article, a video, code, a reference page, a post — and by where they came from. A long list stays findable without you filing anything. What you have not read yet is what you see first. They turn up in your Home Screen search as well, from an index built on your own device and offered to nobody. IT LOOKS LIKE THE THING YOU SAVED It fetches the page's title and its preview picture, so a saved link reads as the thing it is rather than as a row of characters. That request goes to the site you saved and to nowhere else. It is the one thing this app sends anywhere, and it is described in full on the privacy page rather than left to a label. It strips the tracking parameters off a link before storing it, so what you keep is the page rather than a record of where you found it. READING Tap to read it inside the app, in Safari's reader. Archive it when you are done, or delete it. You can pick several at once to archive them or mark them read — there is deliberately no way to delete a pile, because archiving can be undone and deleting cannot. RECIPES Share a recipe page and the ingredients and the method are pulled out as you save it. That is reading rather than guesswork — recipe sites publish their recipes as structured data — so nothing is invented and no step is dropped. You can also paste an address, write one out yourself, or photograph a cookbook page and let the phone read the words off it. Amounts double, halve and convert, and a cooking mode shows one step at a time with the screen kept on. RECEIPTS AND WARRANTIES What it cost, where it came from, and when the cover runs out — listed by whatever expires soonest. Photograph the receipt and your iPhone reads the shop, the total and the serial number off the picture and offers them to you before anything is saved. Search finds them by the serial number too. PAPERS A passport, a licence, an insurance card: the number, the expiry, and a picture of it. The tab can be put behind Face ID or your passcode, and that is off until you turn it on. Pin one and its number can sit on your Home Screen or Lock Screen. A warranty or a paper can carry a reminder before the date, scheduled and delivered by your own iPhone. There is none unless you ask for one. YOUR OWN iCLOUD Your library syncs through your own iCloud account, so a link saved on the phone is on the iPad — where it lays itself out as an iPad app rather than a stretched phone screen. It sits in your private database, under your Apple Account. There is no server of mine — I have no access to it and no way to read it. WHAT IT DOES NOT DO • No adverts, no purchases, no subscription • No account to create and nothing to sign into • No analytics, no tracking, no reading history shared with anyone One thing to know before you start: iOS makes you switch a share button on by hand the first time. Tap Share, scroll the icons to the right, tap More, and switch it on. You only do it once, and the app explains it.

Screenshots

Prism Notes4 screens
Plain and Simple Thoughts4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is in-app purchases: Plain and Simple Thoughts at none against Prism Notes's 2. Prism Notes's advantage is ratings volume (33 vs 1) and device support (4 vs 2). On price, rating, update cadence 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. Prism Notes sells 2 one-off in-app purchases. Plain and Simple Thoughts asks for nothing beyond the download.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 4.9 for Prism Notes against 5.0 for Plain and Simple Thoughts. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Prism Notes has 33 ratings behind it against 1, so its average is the more settled of the two.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Both ship on a similar rhythm, roughly every 4 days. The most recent releases landed on October 17, 2026 and October 6, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard3 real differences · 7 level
Prism Notes versus Plain and Simple Thoughts: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterPrism NotesPlain and Simple Thoughts
PriceFreeFree
Rating4.9 (33 ratings)5.0 (1 ratings) — better
Positive reviews100.0% of reviews—
Number of ratings33 — better1
Update frequencyEvery 4 daysEvery 4 days
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesYesNo — better
MonetizationFreeFree
DevicesiPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch — betteriPhone, iPad
Requires iOS18.618.0 — better
Further details — not scored
Size19 MB4 MB
Age rating4+17+
DeveloperTommy JosephPlain and Simple Solutions LLC

Customer experience

Prism Notes

All ratings33 ratings
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%
Written reviews14 reviews
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%

Plain and Simple Thoughts

All ratings1 ratings
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%

In-app purchases

2 purchases

Prism Notes

One-time2
  • Lifetime Unlock$6.99
  • Lifetime Unlock$12.99
None

Plain and Simple Thoughts

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is Prism Notes free?
Prism Notes is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is Plain and Simple Thoughts free?
Plain and Simple Thoughts is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Which has better reviews, Prism Notes or Plain and Simple Thoughts?
Plain and Simple Thoughts is rated higher. Prism Notes averages 4.9 out of 5 from 33 ratings, while Plain and Simple Thoughts averages 5.0 from 1 ratings.
Do Prism Notes or Plain and Simple Thoughts have ads?
Neither Prism Notes nor Plain and Simple Thoughts shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Prism Notes or Plain and Simple Thoughts?
Prism Notes ships an update every 4 days, and Plain and Simple Thoughts every 4 days. Most recently, Prism Notes was updated on October 17, 2026 and Plain and Simple Thoughts on October 6, 2026.

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