Comparison

帳(Tobari) vs footnotes

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

Head to head
About

帳(Tobari)

This app provides a digital space to organize notes, photos, and drawings on a freeform board. Create distinct boards for various purposes like journaling or travel memories, and share them securely with trusted individuals.

Highlights
  • Freely place notes and text
  • Add photos to boards
  • Draw sketches and notes
  • Create separate boards
  • Share boards with trusted users
  • End-to-end encryption for shared content
Features
Read full description

帳(Tobari) is an app for placing notes, photos, and hand-drawn moments freely on a spacious board. Tobari comes from the Japanese character 帳, which can mean a notebook or ledger — a place for keeping records. It can also be read as “Tobari,” meaning a curtain or veil. For this app, the name suggests a quiet place where memories, thoughts, and small moments of everyday life can be gently kept. Pin down everyday thoughts like sticky notes, line up photos like printed snapshots, and leave ideas wherever they feel right. Use separate boards for journaling, travel memories, family notes, idea collections, or personal scraps you want to keep close. Alongside text, you can place photos and hand-drawn notes in watercolor or fountain pen ink on the same board. Words, sketches, colors, and small moods can stay together in one quiet place. Boards can also be shared with people you trust. Only invited people can join, and shared content is protected with end-to-end encryption. Instead of a social feed that quickly flows away, Tobari is a calm place to return to and look through again and again. Features: - Freely place notes and text on a board - Add photos to keep visual memories together - Draw sketches and notes in watercolor or fountain pen ink - Create separate boards for journals, travel, ideas, and more - Share boards with close friends or family - Protect shared content with end-to-end encryption

About

footnotes

Capture the full texture of everyday moments with words, photos, video, and voice. Organize these memories into notebooks and create a timeline of your life. Share your moments as little stories.

Highlights
  • Capture moments with text, photos, video, and voice
  • Organize notes into different notebooks
  • Build a timeline of life's moments
  • Create shareable stories from moments
  • Edit and add to old notes
Read full description

footnotes is a quiet notebook for the photographs, voices, passing thoughts, ideas, and ordinary moments that make up a life. you can: - capture the full texture of a moment: in words, photos, video, and voice, all together. - return to old notes, add new moments, and watch a timeline of your life slowly take shape. - make notebooks for different parts of your life, and - turn moments into little stories to share. slices of light sizzling on a wall. laughter of friends sloppy and gold. the loosey goosey fragments. all of which you look back on with tenderness, kept whole. footnotes makes space for the footnotes of a life. the little things that become the story of who you are.

Screenshots

帳(Tobari)4 screens
footnotes4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is update cadence: footnotes at daily against 帳(Tobari)'s fortnightly. footnotes also leads on ratings volume (142 vs 4). 帳(Tobari)'s advantage is rating (5.0 vs 4.8). On price, review sentiment, 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

Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

帳(Tobari) holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 4.8. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: footnotes has 142 ratings behind it against 4, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews point the same way: 100% of 帳(Tobari)'s written reviews are positive against 97% of footnotes's.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

帳(Tobari) ships an update fortnightly, footnotes daily. Both last shipped on October 11, 2026.

Scorecard3 real differences · 7 level
帳(Tobari) versus footnotes: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
Parameter帳(Tobari)footnotes
PriceFreeFree
Rating5.0 (4 ratings) — better4.8 (142 ratings)
Positive reviews100.0% of reviews — better96.9% of reviews
Number of ratings4142 — better
Update frequencyFortnightlyDaily — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNoNo
MonetizationFreeFree
DevicesiPhoneiPhone
Requires iOS17.0 — better18.0
Further details — not scored
Size29 MB26 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperShikaka, Inc.Doppler HQ, Inc

Customer experience

帳(Tobari)

All ratings4 ratings
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%
Written reviews21 reviews
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%

footnotes

All ratings142 ratings
Positive96.5%
Neutral0.7%
Negative2.8%
Written reviews32 reviews
Positive96.9%
Neutral0.0%
Negative3.1%

In-app purchases

None

帳(Tobari)

No in-app purchases

None

footnotes

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is 帳(Tobari) free?
帳(Tobari) is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is footnotes free?
footnotes is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Which has better reviews, 帳(Tobari) or footnotes?
帳(Tobari) is rated higher. 帳(Tobari) averages 5.0 out of 5 from 4 ratings, while footnotes averages 4.8 from 142 ratings.
Do 帳(Tobari) or footnotes have ads?
Neither 帳(Tobari) nor footnotes shows ads.
Which is updated more often, 帳(Tobari) or footnotes?
帳(Tobari) ships an update fortnightly, and footnotes daily. Most recently, 帳(Tobari) was updated on October 11, 2026 and footnotes on October 11, 2026.

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