ZS Diary vs Micro Journal
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
ZS Diary
This app transforms daily entries into unique, hand-painted illustrations. Track your monthly moods with a visually appealing calendar and share your creations. Offers multiple art styles and language support.
- Illustrated diary entries
- Monthly mood calendar
- Multiple illustration styles
- Sharing capabilities
- Diary backup and restore
- Multilingual support
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A diary that paints your day. Some days are special. Most are quiet at home. ZS Diary treasures both — turning each daily entry into a hand-painted illustration, and gathering a month of moods into a soft calendar. — Features — • Painted Diary Write a short note about your day and choose how you feel. ZS Diary draws it as an illustration in your chosen style. • Mood Calendar Track how a month feels, at a glance. Each day's emotion shimmers as a glass jelly on a soft monthly calendar. • Sharing Share your illustrated diary and mood calendar wherever you like. • Four Illustration Styles Warm — soft, hand-drawn watercolor Pixel — playful retro pixel art Cinematic — emotional, semi-realistic illustration (Vivid only) Painterly — fine art oil painting (Vivid only) • Nine Languages Available in Korean, English, Japanese, Chinese (Simplified/Traditional), Spanish, French, German, and Portuguese (Brazil). • Diary Backup & Restore — Subscriptions — ZS Diary is free to try. New accounts receive 1,500 credits to start drawing right away. Pastel — Monthly or Yearly ZS Diary's standard illustration model, Pastel-exclusive diary covers and styles, and a steady supply of credits each month. Vivid — Monthly or Yearly All ZS Diary illustration models, Vivid-exclusive Cinematic & Painterly styles, the largest credit pool, and limited-edition diary covers (custom photo covers and animated covers). Subscriptions automatically renew until canceled. — Privacy — Your diary stays on your device. Entries and illustrations are stored locally and never uploaded to a server. — From MilkbockLab — ZS Diary is made by MilkbockLab, an independent studio designing soft, considered software for the quiet hours. Privacy Policy: https://milkbock.github.io/zipsoon-legal/privacy-policy-en.html Terms of Use (EULA): https://milkbock.github.io/zipsoon-legal/terms-of-service-en.html Support: hello@milkbocklab.com
Micro Journal
Effortlessly capture your daily thoughts with a simple, private journal. Focus on writing one entry per day without pressure from streaks or notifications. An optional one-time purchase allows for lifetime export of your entries.
- Private journaling
- One entry per day
- No streaks or notifications
- Automatic saving
- Lifetime export option
- No account required
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Micro Journal is a private daily journal for people who will not keep a long one. Write one sentence or a full page, mark how the day felt, and find it again later. Nothing leaves your device. There is no account, no social feed, no ads, and no behavioral analytics. WRITE TODAY IN UNDER A MINUTE Open the app and the page for today is already waiting. Start from a blank page or a writing prompt. Your entry saves itself as you type, when you leave the editor, and when you background the app. ADD AS MUCH OR AS LITTLE AS YOU WANT Mark the day bright, good, even, low, or hard. Add themes such as Family, Rest, Work, Health, or Growth. Both are optional, and an entry is complete without them. FIND ANY DAY AGAIN Browse the calendar, search the full journal, filter by mood or theme, favorite the entries that matter, and write for a past day you missed. NO STREAKS, NO SCORES, NO GUILT Micro Journal never counts the days you skipped. The daily reminder is a gentle one, and you can turn it off. THE FREE JOURNAL HAS NO ENTRY LIMIT Writing, back-dated entries, moods, themes, the calendar, search, favorites, light and dark appearance, and sharing a single entry are free forever. MICRO JOURNAL PLUS Plus adds weekly summaries and week-over-week comparisons, mood and theme counts, your most active writing days, entries from this day in past years, the complete prompt library, more app colors, and full-journal exports as plain text or Markdown. PRIVATE BY DESIGN Journal entries live in on-device storage, and every insight is calculated on your device. Micro Journal has no journal server and never uploads what you write. You can lock the app behind Face ID, Touch ID, or your passcode, back up to a JSON file you control, and erase everything from inside the app. Micro Journal Plus is an optional auto-renewing subscription: $2.99 per month or $19.99 per year. Payment is charged to your Apple Account at confirmation of purchase. Your subscription renews automatically unless it is canceled at least 24 hours before the end of the current period. You can manage or cancel your subscription in your Apple Account settings. Terms of Use (EULA): https://petalformllc.com/apps/microjournal/terms/ Privacy Policy: https://petalformllc.com/apps/microjournal/privacy/ Write today. Find it later.
Screenshots
Verdict
ZS Diary and Micro Journal are too close to call on the numbers: across 8 compared parameters — price, rating, ratings volume and ads 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. ZS Diary sells 6 in-app purchases, starting at $4.99 per month and Micro Journal sells 3 in-app purchases, starting at $2.99 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 ZS Diary against 5.0 for Micro Journal. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 2 and 2 respectively.
| Parameter | ZS Diary | Micro Journal |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 5.0 (2 ratings) | 5.0 (2 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | — | 100.0% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | 2 | 2 |
| Update frequency | — | Every 5 days |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | Yes |
| Monetization | Free with in-app purchases | Free with in-app purchases |
| Devices | iPhone, iPod | iPhone, iPod |
| Requires iOS | 15.1 | 15.1 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 59 MB | 43 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Kyounghwan Kang | PETALFORM LLC |
In-app purchases
ZS Diary
- Pastel Monthly$4.991 Month
- Vivid Monthly$9.991 Month
- Pastel Yearly$50.991 Year
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- Vivid Yearly$101.991 Year
- 825 Credits$0.49
- 2,750 Credits$1.49
Micro Journal
- Micro Journal Plus Monthly$2.991 Month
- Micro Journal Plus Annual7 Days trial$19.991 Year
- Micro Journal Plus$1.99









