Comparison

LinkGraph vs Papyrus

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

Head to head
About

LinkGraph

Features
Read full description

Stop pasting links into your notes and forgetting them. LinkGraph saves the link to any article, video, recipe or post from any app, with its title and thumbnail, and turns everything you save into a visual map of your ideas. SAVE FROM ANYWHERE • Share a link from Safari or any app, or paste it: the title, description and thumbnail fill in automatically. • Save now, organize later: everything lands in your Inbox until you're ready. • Save screenshots too. Their text is recognized on your device, so you can search them later. FIND IT AGAIN • Universal search across titles, links, notes, tags and the text inside your screenshots. • Color tags and @mentions to add context and link ideas together. • Rediscover brings back older saves you may have forgotten, every day. SEE HOW YOUR IDEAS CONNECT • An interactive map groups your links by topic. Zoom, pan and tap any node to see its connections. • On-device suggestions show related links you might have missed, with the reason why. PRIVATE BY DESIGN • No account needed. Your collection stays on your iPhone. • Home screen widget, plus light, dark and black themes. LinkGraph saves links and their previews; it does not download videos or other content. TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and other names are trademarks of their respective owners; LinkGraph is not affiliated with or endorsed by them.

About

Papyrus

This app is a native research workspace designed for reading, annotating, organizing, and citing PDFs across iPad, iPhone, and Mac. It allows users to mark up documents, take notes, manage collections, and prepare manuscripts with integrated citation tools.

Highlights
  • Read and annotate PDFs
  • Write on pages with Apple Pencil
  • Take Markdown notes beside source
  • Organize papers with folders and tags
  • Search titles, authors, notes, and full text
  • Group papers into projects for manuscript writing
  • Import PDFs and BibTeX/RIS files
Features
Read full description

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

LinkGraph4 screens
Papyrus4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is in-app purchases: Papyrus at none against LinkGraph's 1. Papyrus also leads on ads (none vs shown) and update cadence (weekly vs every 4 months). On price, device support and iOS requirement 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. LinkGraph sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. Papyrus asks for nothing beyond the download.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

LinkGraph ships an update every 4 months, Papyrus weekly. The most recent releases landed on November 5, 2026 and November 9, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard3 real differences · 6 level
LinkGraph versus Papyrus: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterLinkGraphPapyrus
PriceFreeFree
Rating—5.0 (2 ratings) — better
Number of ratings—2 — better
Update frequencyEvery 4 monthsWeekly — better
AdsYesNo — better
In-app purchasesYesNo — better
Monetization—Free
DevicesiPhone, iPadiPhone, iPad, Mac — better
Requires iOS17.017.0
Further details — not scored
Size33 MB31 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperJuan CambizacaZhenda Fu

In-app purchases

1 purchases

LinkGraph

One-time1
  • LinkGraph Plus$1.99
None

Papyrus

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is LinkGraph free?
LinkGraph is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is Papyrus free?
Papyrus is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Do LinkGraph or Papyrus have ads?
LinkGraph shows ads; Papyrus does not.
Which is updated more often, LinkGraph or Papyrus?
LinkGraph ships an update every 4 months, and Papyrus weekly. Most recently, LinkGraph was updated on November 5, 2026 and Papyrus on November 9, 2026.

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