Comparison

Raven vs FoldNotes

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

Head to head
About

Raven

Create, organize, and manage notes using Markdown on your Apple devices. Turn checkboxes into actionable tasks with local reminders. Your notes are stored locally, ensuring offline access and no vendor lock-in.

Highlights
  • Native Markdown editor
  • Create notes with tables, images, code blocks
  • Checkboxes to tasks with due dates
  • Local reminders for tasks
  • Offline access
  • iCloud Drive sync
  • Full-text search
Read full description

Beautiful notes. Never locked in. Raven is a native Markdown notes app for iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Write, journal, capture articles, and turn checkboxes into reminders—without putting your work in a proprietary note format. WRITE WITH CONTEXT Create notes with tables, images, checklists, code blocks, wiki links, and backlinks. Organize them with folders and tags, pin what matters, and find anything with full-text search. TURN NOTES INTO ACTION A checkbox can become a task with a due date and time. Raven gathers open tasks from across your notes, keeps each one linked to its source, and can send a local reminder when it is due. Complete or snooze it from the notification. JOURNAL WITHOUT ANOTHER SILO Daily and weekly journals live beside the rest of your writing. Save articles to Read Later, or capture a thought from widgets, Shortcuts, and the share sheet. MARKDOWN YOU CAN KEEP Raven works offline without an account. Keep notes on this device, choose a folder on Mac, or use iCloud Drive to keep the same Markdown files available in Files and Finder across iPhone, iPad, and Mac. No proprietary note format. No forced account. One purchase, with no subscription.

About

FoldNotes

Organize long notes by collapsing completed sections, allowing you to focus on current tasks. This app uses plain Markdown files stored in iCloud Drive or locally, ensuring your data is accessible and future-proof. It offers robust Markdown support, task management, and powerful search capabilities.

Highlights
  • Collapse any heading or list item
  • Hoist sections for focused work
  • Live Markdown styling
  • GFM tables with editor
  • Code blocks with syntax highlighting
  • Wiki-links with previews
  • Task management with four states
  • Search with regular expressions
Features
Read full description

Some notes are short. Others grow into chapters, plans and running logs you scroll past a hundred times. FoldNotes lets you fold the finished parts away, so a long note stays as small as the part you are actually working on. Every note is a plain Markdown file. No database, no proprietary format, no export step. Your notes sit in iCloud Drive or on your device, and any other app can open them, today or in ten years. It is also a real iOS app, written in Swift. Not a web page in a wrapper. It opens instantly, works offline, handles a hardware keyboard properly, and does not sit in the background eating your battery. FOLD ANYTHING • Collapse any heading or list item and everything beneath it folds away • Hoist a section to work on it alone, with everything else out of sight • Task counts stay on the folded heading, so you can see what is left without unfolding WRITTEN FOR MARKDOWN • Live styling as you type — headings, lists, quotes, code, links • Six heading levels, and GFM tables with a real table editor • Code blocks with syntax highlighting • Wiki-links [[like this]], with previews and automatic backlinks • Nested tags TASKS WHERE YOU WROTE THEM • Four states: to do, in progress, done and cancelled • Due dates and priorities written inline, in plain text • Assign them to a project and add context and comments • Counts roll up to the section above them BUILT FOR IPAD • Library, notes and editor side by side • Hardware keyboard shortcuts throughout • An inspector with outline, tasks, references, properties and a note graph • Scan printed text straight into a note with the camera FIND ANYTHING • Search every note, including regular expressions • Saved queries and database views across your whole collection • Daily notes with a calendar COMING FROM ANOTHER APP • Import from Bear or Obsidian in a tap • Or simply point FoldNotes at the Markdown files you already have MAKE IT YOURS • Light and dark themes, including Nord, Dracula and Catppuccin • Choose your body, heading and code fonts • Paragraph focus, sentence focus and typewriter scrolling Folding is not a formatting trick. A long document asks you to hold every section in your head at once; folding lets you put the finished ones down. That is the whole idea, and everything else here is built around it. Your notes will outlive this app, and every app like it. That is rather the point.

Screenshots

Raven4 screens
FoldNotes4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is price: FoldNotes at Free against Raven's $19.99. FoldNotes also leads on iOS requirement (18.0 vs 26.0). Raven's advantage is rating (4.0 vs 3.0). On ratings volume, update cadence, 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

FoldNotes is free to download; Raven costs $19.99 up front. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

Raven holds the better App Store score, 4.0 against 3.0. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 4 and 2 respectively.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Both ship on a similar rhythm, roughly every 3 days. The most recent releases landed on November 13, 2026 and November 10, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard4 real differences · 6 level
Raven versus FoldNotes: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterRavenFoldNotes
Price$19.99Free — better
Rating4.0 (4 ratings) — better3.0 (2 ratings)
Positive reviews57.1% of reviews—
Number of ratings4 — better2
Update frequencyEvery 3 daysEvery 3 days
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNoNo
MonetizationPaidFree — better
DevicesiPhone, iPad, Mac — betteriPhone, iPad
Requires iOS26.018.0 — better
Further details — not scored
Size133 MB26 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperThomas SivilayFoldsoft Pty Ltd

Customer experience

Raven

All ratings4 ratings
Positive75.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative25.0%
Written reviews7 reviews
Positive57.1%
Neutral0.0%
Negative42.9%

FoldNotes

All ratings2 ratings
Positive50.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative50.0%

In-app purchases

None

Raven

No in-app purchases

None

FoldNotes

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is Raven free?
Raven costs $19.99, with no in-app purchases.
Is FoldNotes free?
FoldNotes is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Which has better reviews, Raven or FoldNotes?
Raven is rated higher. Raven averages 4.0 out of 5 from 4 ratings, while FoldNotes averages 3.0 from 2 ratings.
Do Raven or FoldNotes have ads?
Neither Raven nor FoldNotes shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Raven or FoldNotes?
Raven ships an update every 3 days, and FoldNotes every 3 days. Most recently, Raven was updated on November 13, 2026 and FoldNotes on November 10, 2026.

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