BookStax vs Hjarni Notes
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
BookStax
Access and manage your self-hosted BookStack knowledge base natively on iPhone. Edit pages with a Markdown editor, search your content, and access it offline. Prioritizes privacy with secure API token storage.
- BookStack hierarchy navigation
- Full-text search with filters
- Markdown editor with live preview
- Offline read access
- Secure API token connection
- Light/Dark/System mode
- Multi-language support
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BookStax brings your self-hosted BookStack wiki to iPhone and iPad as a native app. Read, write and search – directly on your own server. Read • Shelves, books, chapters and pages – the same structure as in BookStack • Images, callouts, tables and collapsible blocks look like they do on the web • Favorites and recently opened pages on the home screen Write • Markdown editor with preview, or the visual editor • Upload images, add tags, insert callouts • Quick Note: capture an idea – without a connection it is uploaded later Search • Full-text search with filters for content type and tag • Find downloaded pages in Spotlight, too Notifications (Pro) • Push notifications from your wiki: new and updated pages, comments, new chapters and books • For admins: keep an eye on new users, registrations, API tokens and changed settings • Choose the events per server – BookStax sets up the webhook in BookStack Offline and widgets • Download books and shelves and browse them without a connection, images included • Widgets for your favorites and an overview of your wiki AI helpers for your pages • Summarize, translate or proofread your own pages • With Apple Intelligence right on your device, or with an AI service you connect yourself Privacy • Your API token is stored in the iOS Keychain. If you like, Face ID or Touch ID locks the app. • BookStax connects to your BookStack server. AI requests go only to the service you set up yourself. • For notifications, BookStack sends events to the BookStax push service. It only forwards the ones you choose to Apple and stores no content. • Anonymous usage statistics (e.g. first launch, server connected) help improve the app – no server addresses, content or personal data. You can turn them off in Settings under "Security". Free and Pro Reading, writing, search, offline reading, widgets and AI are free. BookStax Pro, a one-time purchase, adds: • Notifications from BookStack: pages, comments, books and administration • Shortcuts & Siri: search, open and create pages, fetch content for your own automations • Sharing & export: share page links, export as PDF, Markdown, HTML or text, save text, links and photos from other apps to BookStack • Offline editing with automatic sync • Multiple server profiles • Three premium reader themes, a custom accent colour, one colour per server Requirements • Your own BookStack instance and an API token from your BookStack profile • No server yet? You can try BookStax with the BookStack demo server right in the app. Good to know — BookStax is an independent client and not an official product of the BookStack project. It requires your own self-hosted BookStack server and does not include a server of its own. About the project: https://www.bookstackapp.com / BookStax Pro is a one-time purchase – no subscription, no automatic renewal. Purchases can be restored in the app. / Terms of use (Apple's standard EULA): https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/
Hjarni Notes
This app acts as a persistent memory for AI assistants, allowing you to write notes once and have them accessible across different AI models. It organizes information in plain Markdown, supports team collaboration, and lets you control AI instructions.
- Persistent AI memory
- Markdown knowledge base
- Team collaboration
- Customizable AI instructions
- Plain text notes
- Versioned note history
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Your AI starts from zero every conversation. Hjarni fixes that. Write a note on your phone. Ask Claude or ChatGPT about it on your laptop, and it already knows. Hjarni is a Markdown knowledge base with an official MCP server. Notes, folders, tags. That is the whole product. MCP is not a plugin bolted on afterwards. The app was built around it. HOW IT WORKS Save a note once. Connect Claude, ChatGPT, or any MCP client. Your AI reads your notes, follows your instructions, and writes new notes that fit your system. Stop re-explaining your stack, your customers, or your style guide at the start of every conversation. Write once. You both remember. ON YOUR IPHONE Capture a note in seconds from the New tab. Triage it later from the Inbox. Search everything you have written. Read anywhere. This is the capture and read-anywhere companion. The long editing sessions happen on the web. That is on purpose. ONE BRAIN, EVERY ASSISTANT Claude and ChatGPT each keep their own memory, and neither one shares. Hjarni sits outside both. Switch assistants, keep your context. Works with Claude, ChatGPT, Claude Code, Cursor, and anything else that speaks MCP. MEMORY YOU CAN ACTUALLY READ Assistant memory is a black box. Hjarni is not. Every note is plain Markdown you can open, search, and edit. Every change is versioned, so you can see what your AI wrote, diff it, and revert it. Export everything, any time, in a format that opens anywhere. SHARE A BRAIN WITH YOUR TEAM Team folders give everyone the same context. Your conventions, your decisions, your onboarding docs. Every teammate's AI reads the same thing, so nobody has to be the person who remembers. YOU OWN THE INSTRUCTIONS Set instructions per folder and per team. Tell your AI how to format notes, which tags to use, what tone to write in. Your AI works the way you work. SIMPLE ON PURPOSE We left features out on purpose. No databases. No kanban boards. No page builders. Hjarni is a place to write and organize. The constraint is the feature. WHO IT IS FOR Developers, teams, founders, researchers, writers, travelers. Anyone who has typed the same context into a chat window twice. HJARNI PRO Hjarni is free to use, with a limit on how many notes you can keep. Pro removes the limit and adds file attachments, imports, email capture, and folder collaborators. Pro is an auto renewing subscription, monthly or annual. Payment is charged to your Apple Account at confirmation of purchase. It renews unless you turn off auto renew at least 24 hours before the end of the current period, and your account is charged for the renewal within 24 hours before that. Manage the subscription and turn off auto renew in your Apple Account settings. Terms of Use (EULA): https://hjarni.com/terms Privacy Policy: https://hjarni.com/privacy
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is monetization model: BookStax at free against Hjarni Notes's freemium. Hjarni Notes's advantage is update cadence (every 4 days vs every 9 days) and iOS requirement (16.0 vs 18.6). 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. BookStax sells 4 one-off in-app purchases and Hjarni Notes sells 2 in-app purchases, starting at $11.99 per month. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.
On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 5.0 for BookStax against 5.0 for Hjarni Notes. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 1 and 1 respectively.
BookStax ships an update every 9 days, Hjarni Notes every 4 days. The most recent releases landed on October 24, 2026 and October 25, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | BookStax | Hjarni Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 5.0 (1 ratings) | 5.0 (1 ratings) |
| Number of ratings | 1 | 1 |
| Update frequency | Every 9 days | Every 4 days — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | Yes |
| Monetization | Free — better | Freemium |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad | iPhone, iPad |
| Requires iOS | 18.6 | 16.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 16 MB | 5 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Sven Uwe Hanold | evert van den bruel |
Customer experience
BookStax
Hjarni Notes
In-app purchases
BookStax
- Page$2.99
- Themes & more Servers$5.99
- Book$5.99
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- Encyclopaedia$12.99
Hjarni Notes
- Hjarni Pro Monthly$11.991 Month
- Hjarni Pro Yearly$119.991 Year









