Comparison

Raven vs MDReader

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

Head to head
About

Raven

This app allows you to quickly open and write markdown notes as plain .md files. It offers fast launch times, native performance on iPhone and Mac, and seamless syncing between devices. Your notes are stored directly in your file system for easy access and integration with other tools.

Highlights
  • Plain .md file storage
  • Under a second launch time
  • Native iPhone and Mac app
  • Full-text search
  • Nested folders and pinned notes
  • Syncs between Mac and iPhone
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

MDReader

Features
Read full description

MDReader opens your Markdown files and folders and renders them properly. There is no library to import into, no account to create and no sync service in the middle. Your .md files stay exactly where you put them, and MDReader reads and writes them in place. FAST, EVEN ON BIG FILES A two-tier parser scans a document in a single pass and only fully parses the blocks you can actually see. A 10 MB file opens before other editors have finished showing a spinner, and scrolling stays smooth all the way down. RENDERS THE WHOLE OF MARKDOWN GitHub-flavoured Markdown with tables, task lists you can tick straight from reading mode, footnotes that jump both ways, YAML front matter shown as a card, LaTeX math inline and display, fenced code with syntax highlighting, and Mermaid diagrams rendered offline. AN EDITOR THAT STAYS OUT OF THE WAY Live syntax highlighting, lists that continue and renumber themselves, bold/italic/link shortcuts, find and replace, table and formula inserters, and paste an image to save it next to the document. Autosave goes through the system file coordinator, so editing alongside Obsidian, git or iCloud is safe. PICKS UP WHERE YOU LEFT OFF Reading position is restored to the pixel, per document, across relaunches, rotation and window resizes. FOLDER WORKSPACES (PRO) Open a whole folder: a repository's docs, an Obsidian vault, a Zettelkasten. Fuzzy quick-open, full-text search across every file in the folder, [[wiki-links]] with a backlinks panel, a front-matter tag browser, and read-only git status per file. Changes made by other apps are picked up in place, without losing your position. MORE IN PRO PDF export and print, publishing to GitHub Gist and Telegraph, presentation mode for slides, a custom theme editor with imported fonts, focus and typewriter modes, word-count goals, reading statistics, text-to-speech with follow-along highlighting, local version history with diffs, snippets, Vim keybindings, and an AI pack that summarises and rewrites entirely on device. BUILT FOR APPLE PLATFORMS One purchase covers iPhone, iPad and Mac. Keyboard shortcuts throughout, multiple windows, menu bar commands, a Share extension, Shortcuts actions, widgets, a URL scheme, Spotlight indexing, VoiceOver labels and Dynamic Type. PRIVACY MDReader collects nothing. No analytics SDK, no account, no server of ours to talk to. The only network traffic is what your own documents ask for, such as remote images, plus the publishing integrations you set up yourself. FREE AND PRO The reader and the single-file editor are free forever: all rendering including math and syntax highlighting, the base themes, table of contents, in-file search, HTML, Markdown and plain-text export, and position restore. Pro unlocks folder workspaces and the power features above, as a one-time purchase or as a yearly subscription with a free trial. SUBSCRIPTION AND PURCHASE DETAILS MDReader Pro (Yearly) - auto-renewable subscription, 1 year, USD 9.99 per year, including a 7-day free trial for new subscribers. MDReader Pro (Lifetime) - one-time purchase, USD 24.99, not a subscription. Payment is charged to your Apple Account at confirmation of purchase. A yearly subscription renews automatically unless auto-renew is turned off at least 24 hours before the end of the current period, and your account is charged for renewal within 24 hours before the period ends. You can manage or cancel the subscription in your Apple Account settings after purchase. Any unused portion of a free trial is forfeited when a subscription is purchased. Terms of Use (EULA): https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/ App Terms of Service: https://gelfand.dev/mdreader/terms Privacy Policy: https://gelfand.dev/mdreader/privacy

Screenshots

Raven4 screens
MDReader4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is price: MDReader at Free against Raven's $12.99. Raven's advantage is in-app purchases (none vs 2) and update cadence (every 2 days vs every 2 weeks). On ads, device support and iOS requirement 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

MDReader is free to download; Raven costs $12.99 up front. MDReader sells 2 in-app purchases, starting at $9.99 per year. Raven asks for nothing beyond the download.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Raven ships an update every 2 days, MDReader every 2 weeks. Both last shipped on September 28, 2026.

Scorecard3 real differences · 7 level
Raven versus MDReader: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterRavenMDReader
Price$12.99Free — better
Rating5.0 (3 ratings) — better—
Positive reviews75.0% of reviews—
Number of ratings3 — better—
Update frequencyEvery 2 days — betterEvery 2 weeks
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNo — betterYes
MonetizationPaid—
DevicesiPhone, iPad, MaciPhone, iPad, Mac
Requires iOS26.026.0
Further details — not scored
Size88 MB22 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperThomas SivilayDaniil Nuzhdin

In-app purchases

None

Raven

No in-app purchases

2 purchases

MDReader

Subscriptions1
  • MDReader Pro Yearly7 Days trial$9.991 Year
One-time1
  • MDReader Pro$24.99

Questions

Is Raven free?
Raven costs $12.99, with no in-app purchases.
Is MDReader free?
MDReader is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Do Raven or MDReader have ads?
Neither Raven nor MDReader shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Raven or MDReader?
Raven ships an update every 2 days, and MDReader every 2 weeks. Most recently, Raven was updated on September 28, 2026 and MDReader on September 28, 2026.

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