Marginalis vs Vellumark
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Marginalis
This app helps you capture and organize highlights from physical books. It allows you to save quotes, ideas, and summaries, and track your reading habits. Enjoy private AI-powered book summaries and share your favorite passages.
- Capture highlights with Live Text
- Organize books into custom lists
- Five types of notes (quote, idea, etc.)
- Share passages as image cards
- Reading activity insights
- On-device AI book summaries
- Home Screen widget for quotes
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Every great book leaves a mark. Marginalis makes sure you never lose it. A reading journal for physical book readers — capture highlights, organise your library, and revisit the passages that changed how you think. Capture quotes without the friction Point your camera at any page. iOS Live Text does the rest — your highlight is captured in seconds, no typing, no losing your place. Prefer to highlight in other apps? Send any selected text straight to Marginalis from Kindle, Apple Books, Safari, or anywhere with a share sheet. Five kinds of notes, because not every thought is the same Quote. Idea. Question. Reaction. Summary. Each note type gives your thinking room to breathe — and makes it easy to find exactly what you were looking for when you come back. Your library, the way you actually read Organise books across Reading, Up Next, Wishlist, and Finished. Browse by genre or reading status. Add any title by scanning its barcode, searching by name, or entering it manually. Cover images fetch automatically. Share the passages that moved you Turn any note into a beautiful image card — paper or editorial style, portrait or square. Edit inline, then share anywhere. Because some quotes deserve more than a screenshot. Explore your reading with AI Synthesis lets you have a real conversation with your reading. Select books or tags, then ask anything — what themes keep coming back, what tensions you noticed, what remains unresolved. Your reading assistant answers from your own notes, citing exactly where each idea came from. When something is worth keeping, save it as a permanent insight. On supported devices, Marginalis can also generate an intelligent summary of your notes for any book — powered by Apple Intelligence, processed entirely on your iPhone. Understand your reading life A heatmap of your annotation activity. Note type breakdowns. Most highlighted books. Favourite authors. A tag cloud built from your own words. Marginalis reflects your reading back to you in ways that are actually interesting. Your favourite quotes, on your Home Screen The Marginalis widget brings a daily highlight to your iPhone's Home Screen — a small reminder of why you read. Seamless iCloud sync Your library and notes sync automatically across your devices via iCloud. Private, seamless, requiring nothing beyond your Apple ID. Built for privacy, from the ground up No account required. No subscription. No analytics. No advertising SDKs. Your library, your notes, and your reading life belong entirely to you. Free to start. Yours forever. Marginalis is free to download. Up to 5 books, unlimited notes, every feature available to try. A one-time unlock gives you unlimited books, Markdown export, and full reading stats. No subscription. Ever. Reading that leaves a mark.
Vellumark
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Vellumark — Scan Book Highlights to Markdown Notes Vellumark turns your physical book highlights and handwritten notes into structured, searchable Markdown. Built for readers who annotate with highlighters, pencils, and margin notes, and want to bring those insights into Obsidian, Notion, or Apple Notes. --- Capture Your Thinking — Not Just the Text • Handwritten Note Recognition Automatically transcribe marginalia, pencil notes, and annotations. • Smart Highlight Linking AI connects handwritten thoughts to highlighted passages using spatial context. • Clean Markdown Export Convert scanned pages into structured, editable Markdown files. --- Fast, Private, Offline-storage • Batch Page Scanning Capture multiple pages quickly. Processing runs in the background. • On-Device Privacy No account required. All data stays on your device using native storage. • One-Tap Share Export a complete Markdown “book” to Obsidian, Notion, Apple Notes, or any app via Share Sheet. --- Designed for Serious Readers • Works with highlights, underlines, and margin notes • Preserves reading context and structure • Built for knowledge management workflows • Offline-first AI processing • Clean, portable Markdown output --- Contact qiuyuexp@gmail.com Privacy Policy qiuyuexp.github.io/public/vellumark/privacy-policy.html Terms of Use qiuyuexp.github.io/public/vellumark/terms-of-use.html
Screenshots
Verdict
Marginalis and Vellumark are too close to call on the numbers: across 6 compared parameters — price, update cadence, ads and in-app purchases among them — neither pulls far enough ahead to decide it. What separates them is feature set and interface, not measurable difference.
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. Marginalis sells 1 one-off in-app purchase and Vellumark sells 3 in-app purchases, starting at $6.99 per month. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.
Marginalis ships an update every 5 weeks, Vellumark every 3 weeks. The most recent releases landed on October 24, 2026 and October 12, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Marginalis | Vellumark |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 5.0 (3 ratings) — better | — |
| Number of ratings | 3 — better | — |
| Update frequency | Every 5 weeks | Every 3 weeks — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | Yes |
| Monetization | Free with in-app purchases | — |
| Devices | iPhone | iPhone |
| Requires iOS | 17.0 | 17.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 8 MB | 6 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | TIAGO KHZOUZ SANCHEZ | Yue Qiu |
In-app purchases
Marginalis
- Marginalis Unlock$4.99
Vellumark
- Vellumark Pro Monthly$6.991 Month
- Vellumark Pro for 3 months$14.993 Months
- Vellumark Pro Yearly$39.991 Year









