Memex vs Countdown
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Memex
Organize your Markdown notes and PDFs on an infinite canvas. Connect documents, sketch with Apple Pencil, and use an AI chat to ask questions about your gathered information. Your files remain private and accessible via iCloud Drive.
- Infinite canvas for notes and PDFs
- AI chat to query your documents
- Apple Pencil handwriting and sketching
- Markdown rendering as live cards
- Organize and connect content with arrows
- Export content as images
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Memex puts your Markdown notes and PDFs on an infinite canvas, with an AI chat that reads them. Any document can sit on the canvas as a live, readable card. Arrange and connect your cards, write around them with Apple Pencil, and ask the chat about what you have gathered. ON THE CANVAS - Markdown documents render as live cards, not links - PDFs sit on the canvas as cards showing their first page - Draw arrows between cards and gather them into groups - Handwrite and sketch next to your typed notes with Apple Pencil - On iOS 27, search finds your handwriting as well as your typed notes - Push cards to another canvas as your thinking changes - Type @ to link to anything in your library, or @here to link the spot you are on - Add text, code blocks, tables, images and embeds CHAT WITH YOUR NOTES - Add a card, a whole document or a PDF to the chat, or type straight in - Ask about your notes in plain words - Put any reply back on your canvas as a card - The chat is there on canvases, documents and PDFs MAKE IMAGES - Select typed text, or handwriting on iOS 27, and tap Make image - The picture lands on your canvas and in your library YOUR FILES STAY YOURS - Documents and canvases are plain files in your iCloud Drive, visible in the Files app - No Memex account, no lock-in - The AI sees only what you add to the chat. Your messages and that context go through our server, which stores none of it, to OpenAI via OpenRouter BUILT FOR IPAD AND APPLE PENCIL Memex is designed for iPad first, with Pencil writing directly on the canvas. It also runs on iPhone and Mac. ONE SUBSCRIPTION One Memex subscription unlocks the complete app, including 500 AI credits a month: a chat message uses 1 credit and an image uses 10. Credits reset on the 1st of each month (UTC) and don't roll over. Take the hands-on welcome tour, then try the chat with 5 free messages before you subscribe. Eligible new subscribers get a 7-day free trial. Choose $9.95 monthly or $79.99 yearly. Subscriptions renew automatically until cancelled in your Apple Account settings. Terms of Use (EULA): https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/
Countdown
Track upcoming events like birthdays and trips with customizable widgets for your Home and Lock Screens. Receive timely reminders and sync seamlessly across your devices via iCloud. Enjoy all features for free without ads or in-app purchases.
- Customizable event widgets
- Home and Lock Screen support
- Yearly repeating event options
- Multiple reminder options
- iCloud sync across devices
- Private by design
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Days until the dates you care about: on your Home Screen and Lock Screen. Every feature is free: every widget, every reminder, iCloud sync, all 123 icons and 12 colors. No subscription, no in-app purchases, no ads, no account, no tracking. Add an event, pick a date, and see one big number: the days to go. On the day it reads Today. Afterwards it counts up. EVENTS • A name, a date, one of 123 icons and one of 12 colors for each event. • Birthdays and anniversaries can repeat every year, so they always count down to the next one. • Upcoming events first, soonest at the top. Past events in their own section. • Whole days only. The count changes at midnight, wherever you are. WIDGETS • Small: one event in its own color. Pick the event, or let it follow your next one. • Medium: your next event, and the two after it. • Large: your next six events. • Lock screen: circular, rectangular and inline, each for one event. • Tap any event in a widget to open it. REMINDERS • Choose any of six for each event: on the day, 1 day, 3 days, 1 week, 2 weeks or 1 month before. • They arrive at the time you set, 9:00 AM to begin with. • Tap a reminder to open its event. IPHONE AND IPAD • Events sync through your own iCloud. There is nothing to sign in to. • Add an event on one device and it appears on the other. • Without iCloud, everything still works on the device. PRIVATE BY DESIGN Your events are kept on your devices and in your own iCloud, where only you can read them.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is update cadence: Countdown at every 2 days against Memex's fortnightly. Countdown also leads on monetization model (free vs freemium). Memex's advantage is iOS requirement (17.0 vs 26.0). 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. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 5.0 for Memex against 5.0 for Countdown. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 1 and 1 respectively.
Memex ships an update fortnightly, Countdown every 2 days. Both last shipped on October 31, 2026.
| Parameter | Memex | Countdown |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 5.0 (1 ratings) | 5.0 (1 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | — | 100.0% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | 1 | 1 |
| Update frequency | Fortnightly | Every 2 days — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Freemium | Free — better |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad | iPhone, iPad |
| Requires iOS | 17.0 — better | 26.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 35 MB | 6 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Alex Morris | Jack Isherwood |
Customer experience
Memex
Countdown
In-app purchases
Memex
No in-app purchases
Countdown
No in-app purchases









