Comparison

PaperNest vs BudgetOnly

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

Head to head
About

PaperNest

Transform your phone into a digital filing cabinet for all your important documents. Easily scan, import, and organize bills, warranties, IDs, and more with smart categorization and powerful search.

Highlights
  • Digital filing cabinet
  • Document scanning and import
  • Smart categorization
  • AI-powered search
  • Cloud sync
  • Document conversion
Features
Read full description

Every paper in your life - bills, warranties, prescriptions, IDs, contracts, receipts - finally has a home. PaperNest turns your phone into an organized digital filing cabinet where every document is easy to find, always with you, and always yours. Other apps scan documents. PaperNest manages them. -- ORGANIZED FROM DAY ONE -- 13 built-in categories cover every area of your life: - Identity - passports, IDs, driver's licenses - Finance - bills, bank statements, tax documents - Health - prescriptions, lab results, insurance cards - Education - diplomas, transcripts, certificates - Work - contracts, pay stubs, expense receipts - Housing - leases, utility bills, insurance policies - Vehicles - registrations, maintenance records - Legal - contracts, court documents, notarized papers - Business - invoices, business licenses - Family - children's documents, vaccination records - Travel - boarding passes, visas, itineraries - Digital - subscriptions, platform accounts - Personal - warranties, receipts, memberships Create your own sections and folders. Rename them, pick icons and colors, organize your way. Each category has country-specific subcategories. 80 country profiles match your life. -- SCAN, IMPORT, FILE -- - Camera scanner with automatic edge detection - Import photos, PDFs, text files, and Office documents - Share from any app - Mail, Safari, WhatsApp, or others - directly to PaperNest - Open password-protected PDFs - enter the password once, access freely - Smart reminders for expiry dates, due dates, and renewals - Combine pages from different sources into one PDF - Remove or rotate individual pages - Lock sensitive PDFs with a password before sharing - Fullscreen viewing for PDFs, images, and text files with pinch-to-zoom -- FIND ANYTHING INSTANTLY -- Search looks inside every document, not just filenames. Type "warranty" and find the certificate you scanned months ago. OCR indexes every word, so nothing hides in plain sight. -- MERASUS ID PREMIUM -- Merasus ID unlocks the full PaperNest experience with services that keep working every day you stay subscribed: - On-device AI assistant: ask questions about your document library in plain language and get answers that link back to the source. AI reads, classifies, summarizes, and auto-tags every new document you add. - Smart OCR correction: AI cleans up scanned text for sharper, more reliable search. - Bidirectional cloud sync: iCloud Drive and Google Drive stay in step across iPhone, iPad, and Mac with delta reconciliation and conflict resolution. - Document conversion: turn PDFs into DOCX and back, with an explicit consent step before any file leaves your device. - Cross-app access: one Merasus ID unlocks premium features across every Merasus app as they launch. - Early access to new premium features. Merasus ID is available as a weekly or yearly subscription. Manage or cancel anytime from Settings. Subscription, duration, price, trial terms, and auto-renewal are shown on the purchase screen. -- YOUR DOCUMENTS, YOUR DEVICE -- Documents are stored locally on your device. AI runs on your phone, not on a server, so your files never leave your hands. Face ID or fingerprint keeps everything private. Cloud sync is opt-in. Document conversion asks for explicit consent before the first upload and is not retained on our servers. Document content stays private; only anonymized purchase events are used for ad campaign measurement, with your permission. Sign In with Apple, Google, or email are all supported. Delete your account in-app anytime from Settings. -- 23 LANGUAGES -- English, Turkish, Arabic, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Hindi and 10 more. --- PaperNest. Your digital filing cabinet, made smart. Scan it. File it. Ask it. Keep it forever. Terms of Use: https://merasus.com/tos/ Privacy Policy: https://merasus.com/policy/

About

BudgetOnly

Read full description

BudgetOnly is one simple ledger that can save your time. Type $ amount, what it is, AI help you tag categories. That's the whole app. -No sign up, no emai, yet iCloud keep app sync across your devices -No trapped data with no limitation to export your data to csv, for your accountant, for AI tools, etc. -Powerful free features with AI supported tagging -Share a ledger with a family, friend, business partner RECORDING TAKES TWO STEPS Pull down anywhere in the ledger. Type the amount. Type what it was. Done. No category to pick, no date to set, no person to choose — each one has a working default you can correct afterwards. CATEGORIES FILL THEMSELVES IN An on-device model reads the description and puts a category on the line a moment after it lands. Wrong? Tap it once. It remembers that correction and never guesses that description again. The model is given the words only — never the amount. A DASH THAT ANSWERS ONE QUESTION AT A TIME Swipe the card above the stream: · How is this month going — spent, remaining, and a pace mark showing where you should be today · Where the money went — categories ranked, each against last month · Who spent it — when more than one person did Set a spend cap, a net target, both, or neither. Goals belong to the month they were set for, so raising this month's cap can't quietly rewrite a month that already went over. BROWSE A MONTH AT A TIME The month row above the stream scopes everything to one month. Tap search and that same row widens into a filter — keyword, person, category, time. "Uncategorized" is one of the choices, which is how you tidy up. MORE THAN ONE LEDGER Household, freelance, a business, a trip. Each ledger has its own currency, its own categories, and its own members. Attribute any line to anyone on the ledger — including people who don't have the app. SHARE ONE WITH SOMEONE Send an eight-character code. They type it in, and they're in. No account to create, no link to tap, no email address to hand over. Anyone who should read but not write gets view-only. EVERY CHANGE IS ON THE RECORD The Trail shows what changed, when, and who changed it — amounts, categories, deletions, settings. Read-only, because it's a record. EXPORT Any ledger to CSV, any time, free. WHERE YOUR MONEY LIVES On your device, and in your own iCloud. There is no BudgetOnly server, and there never will be. Nothing is collected, nothing is tracked, no analytics SDK ships inside the app, and no third party ever sees an amount. Sharing uses iCloud's own sharing — the people you invite, and nobody else. WHAT IT DOESN'T DO No sign-up. No password. No bank connections. No ads. No notifications, no badges, no red dots. No onboarding — the first screen is the app. EIGHT LANGUAGES English, 简体中文, 繁體中文, 日本語, 한국어, Español, Français, Deutsch — switched inside the app, not in system Settings. FREE, AND PLUS Free, permanently: two ledgers you create (ones you're invited into don't count), one person invited to each, iCloud sync and backup, CSV export, and automatic categories. BudgetOnly Plus lifts exactly two limits — unlimited ledgers, and unlimited people on each. Nothing else sits behind it. If a subscription lapses, nothing locks: every ledger and every person you already have keeps reading, recording and syncing. BudgetOnly Plus is an auto-renewing subscription offered yearly and monthly; the price is shown in the app in your local currency. Payment is charged to your Apple Account at confirmation of purchase. It renews automatically unless auto-renew is turned off at least 24 hours before the current period ends, and your account is charged for renewal within 24 hours of that time. Manage or cancel in Settings › your name › Subscriptions. Terms of Use: https://72mn.com/apps/budgetonly/terms/ Privacy Policy: https://72mn.com/apps/budgetonly/privacy/

Screenshots

PaperNest4 screens
BudgetOnly4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is device support: PaperNest at 3 against BudgetOnly's 1. PaperNest also leads on iOS requirement (15.5 vs 26.0). On price, ads and in-app purchases 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. PaperNest sells 2 in-app purchases, starting at $7.99 per 7 days and BudgetOnly sells 2 in-app purchases, starting at $1.99 per month. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.

Scorecard2 real differences · 8 level
PaperNest versus BudgetOnly: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterPaperNestBudgetOnly
PriceFreeFree
Rating3.0 (2 ratings) — better—
Positive reviews100.0% of reviews—
Number of ratings2 — better—
Update frequencyEvery 9 days—
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesYesYes
MonetizationFreemium—
DevicesiPhone, iPad, iPod — betteriPhone
Requires iOS15.5 — better26.0
Further details — not scored
Size96 MB7 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperMERASUS TEKNOLOJI ANONIM SIRKETI72mn LLC

In-app purchases

2 purchases

PaperNest

Subscriptions2
  • Merasus Premium Weekly3 Days trial$7.997 Days
  • Merasus Premium Yearly$39.991 Year
2 purchases

BudgetOnly

Subscriptions2
  • Plus monthly$1.991 Month
  • Plus annual$12.991 Year

Questions

Is PaperNest free?
PaperNest is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is BudgetOnly free?
BudgetOnly is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Do PaperNest or BudgetOnly have ads?
Neither PaperNest nor BudgetOnly shows ads.

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