Cipher vs SA_agent
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side ā with what reviewers say about each.
Cipher
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Cipher turns your voice into organized notes ā and now into reminders and calendar events too. 100% free. 100% on-device. Speak freely, AI does the rest. No account. No cloud. No subscription. Open the app and talk. WHAT IT DOES Tap record and speak. Cipher transcribes you in real time, then AI structures everything automatically: ⢠A clean title and short summary ⢠A project tag (Personal, Work, Health, Finance, or your own) ⢠Searchable keywords NEW: AI THAT ACTUALLY DOES THINGS Cipher's AI doesn't just read your notes ā it acts on them. ⢠"Remind me to call Mom on Friday" ā real reminder, on your iPhone ⢠"Schedule a call with Sarah next Tuesday at 3pm" ā calendar event, created ⢠"Find me a free hour this week" ā AI checks your calendar and suggests slots ⢠Todos with deadlines can become reminders automatically Every action asks for your confirmation first. Nothing happens behind your back. ASK FLOW ā CHAT WITH YOUR NOTES A built-in AI chat that already knows what you've recorded. ⢠Ask anything about your past notes ā "what did I say about Q3?" ⢠Summarize a day, a week, or a project in one tap ⢠Brainstorm with an AI that builds on your own ideas PRIVATE BY DESIGN ⢠100% on-device AI ā works offline, on a plane, anywhere ⢠No login, no sign-up, no tracking, no analytics ⢠Your voice and notes never leave your phone ⢠Stored in your iPhone's secure storage FREE FOREVER No subscription. No paywall. No in-app purchases. Use every feature, forever, without paying. CHOOSE YOUR AI Pick from a wide range of free open-source AI models that run entirely on your device ā from lightweight options that work on any iPhone to larger, higher-quality models for newer devices. Cipher recommends the right one for your phone. Prefer cloud AI? Bring your own key from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Groq, DeepSeek, or OpenRouter. Your key, direct to the provider ā no middleman, no markup. SMART TODO EXTRACTION AI catches action items from natural speech ā "I need to," "remember to," "should," "have to" ā and pulls out deadlines automatically. View every todo across every note in one place. PROJECT ORGANIZATION Notes auto-sort into projects. Create your own. See note counts and todo progress at a glance. WHO IT'S FOR ⢠Students capturing lecture thoughts ⢠Founders dumping ideas between meetings ⢠Writers thinking through drafts out loud ⢠Anyone whose best ideas show up while walking, driving, or in the shower Cipher is for people who think out loud. Capture the thought ā let AI do the organizing, and now, the scheduling too.
SA_agent
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SA_agent is a Safari Web Extension for researchers who use Google Scholar on iPhone and iPad. It adds local journal context to supported result pages. A 7-day free trial, then $4.99 per year, unlocks the extension. Summaries use Apple Intelligence on your device. RESEARCH WITH LOCAL JOURNAL CONTEXT ⢠See color-coded SJR quartiles and available JCR, CAS, CiteScore, indexing, and discipline-list fields beside supported Scholar results. ⢠Match journals on device with an ISSN hit, a result cache, a Bloom filter, a sorted prefix index, a token index, and a trigram index that checks plausible titles with a banded edit-distance test. ⢠Search more than 35,000 bundled journals by title or ISSN without contacting a journal-ranking service. ⢠Choose, reorder, and hide ranking badges to match your workflow. ⢠Import a private custom journal list from CSV or JSON and display its ranks alongside bundled data. Custom datasets stay in extension-local storage. OPTIONAL AI RESEARCH TOOLS ⢠Create focused paper summaries from Scholar results. ⢠Choose a 30ā1,000-word target and Academic, Formal, or Casual tone. ⢠Regenerate or improve a summary, then copy it or download it as text. ⢠Connect an optional Zotero Web API account, format up to 50 library items in APA, Chicago, MLA, or Harvard style, and generate a downloadable literature-review draft. ⢠Summaries and literature reviews are created with Apple Intelligence on your device. SUBSCRIPTION Start a 7-day free trial in the SA_agent app, then subscribe for $4.99 per year. Apple confirms the price before the trial begins. Cancel during the trial and you will not be charged. An active trial or subscription unlocks Scholar rankings, Journal Search, custom datasets, summaries, and Zotero literature reviews. You do not paste an extension token. Earlier credit packs do not unlock the subscription. PRIVACY BY ACTION Journal matching, ranking lookup, and custom datasets are processed locally. Summaries and literature reviews use Apple Intelligence on your device and are not sent to an SA Agent server. Optional Zotero credentials are used for Zotero API requests. SA_agent does not sell personal information, collect general browsing history, or run advertising analytics. See the Privacy Policy for complete details. GET STARTED 1. Open SA_agent and start the 7-day free trial. After the trial, the subscription is $4.99 per year. 2. Enable the SA_agent extension in Safari and allow access to supported Google Scholar pages. 3. Open the extension Options page to choose badges, search journals, add a custom dataset, or connect Zotero. Availability of optional ranking fields depends on the licensed data included in the installed release. SA_agent is intended for academic research workflows. Google Scholar and Zotero are trademarks of their respective owners. SA_agent is not affiliated with or endorsed by Google Scholar or Zotero. Terms of Use (EULA): https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/ Privacy Policy: https://swiphtgroup.com/sa-agent/privacy/
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is in-app purchases: Cipher at none against SA_agent's 4. SA_agent's advantage is device support (5 vs 1). On price, update cadence, ads and iOS requirement there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price Ā· Rating Ā· Positive reviews Ā· Number of ratings Ā· Update frequency Ā· Ads Ā· In-app purchases Ā· Monetization Ā· Best chart rank Ā· Devices Ā· Requires iOS
Both are free to download. SA_agent sells 4 in-app purchases, starting at $4.99 per year. Cipher asks for nothing beyond the download.
Cipher ships an update every 5 weeks, SA_agent every 3 weeks. Both last shipped on October 31, 2026.
| Parameter | Cipher | SA_agent |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Update frequency | Every 5 weeks | Every 3 weeks ā better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No ā better | Yes |
| Devices | iPhone | iPhone, iPad, iPod, Mac, Vision Pro ā better |
| Requires iOS | 16.0 | 15.0 ā better |
| Further details ā not scored | ||
| Size | 69 MB | 6 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Agrima Pandey | é¹åø åøø |
In-app purchases
Cipher
No in-app purchases
SA_agent
- SA_agent Annual7 Days trial$4.991 Year
- SA Agent Credits$0.99
- SA Agent Credits$4.99
- SA Agent Credits$19.99









