Comparison

AI Notes vs Longhand Transcribe

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

Head to head
About

AI Notes

Features
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AI Notes: Smart Writing helps you capture ideas, edit notes, and use intelligent tools to work faster and more effectively. Write naturally, organize your content, and access helpful AI features directly inside your notes. Clean Note Editing Create and edit notes in a simple, focused workspace designed for clarity and productivity. Built-in AI Tools Access smart tools while writing: - Chat โ€” ask questions and get instant help - Quiz โ€” review content with practice questions - Translate โ€” understand text across languages - AI Summary โ€” turn long notes into short highlights Import Content Easily Bring information into your notes using: - Speech - OCR - PDF - Image Stay Organized Keep your notes structured and easy to manage so you can find important information quickly. One Workspace for Everything From writing and reviewing to translating and summarizing, AI Notes: Smart Writing brings everything together in one smooth experience. AI Notes: Smart Writing is designed to help you stay organized, save time, and make better use of your ideas.

About

Longhand Transcribe

Features
Read full description

Longhand records or imports a conversation and gives you back a transcript with every speaker's words attributed to them. All of it runs on your device. Nothing is uploaded, and there is no account. WHAT IT DOES Record on iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch or Mac, or import an audio file you already have. Read a transcript split into turns, each turn labelled with who was speaking. Rename a speaker once and every one of their turns changes with it. Teach it your own voice, so you are named rather than numbered in later recordings. Search across your whole library, or find a phrase inside one transcript. Tap any word to move the audio to that moment. Correct a turn when the machine got it wrong. Corrections are stored apart from the transcript, so re-processing a recording never erases them. Export as Markdown, plain text, or the full transcript as JSON. IT RUNS ON YOUR DEVICE Transcription and speaker separation both happen locally. There is no server, no account and no analytics. The only network activity anywhere in the app is a one-time download of a speech model, and only when the language you are recording needs one. LANGUAGES Apple's own speech recognition covers a long list of languages and needs no download at all. For the rest, including Hebrew and Russian, Longhand uses a Whisper model that runs on your device after one download. It can also detect the language passage by passage, which keeps a conversation that switches languages readable. YOUR VOICE STAYS YOURS Voice profiles are biometric-like data. They are held on your device only, are never part of any export, and can be deleted completely whenever you want. ON EVERY SCREEN YOU OWN The same app runs full width on iPad, with a sidebar and hardware keyboard shortcuts. The Apple Watch app records a take on your wrist and hands it to your iPhone to process. The Mac app keeps its own library and takes files by drag and drop. Longhand does not summarise your conversations, score them, or send them anywhere. It writes down what was said, and tells you who said it.

Screenshots

AI Notes4 screens
Longhand Transcribe4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is ads: Longhand Transcribe at none against AI Notes's shown. Longhand Transcribe also leads on update cadence (daily vs monthly) and device support (4 vs 2). AI Notes's advantage is iOS requirement (16.0 vs 26.5). On price and in-app purchases there is nothing between them.

Scored on Price ยท Rating ยท Positive reviews ยท Number of ratings ยท Update frequency ยท Ads ยท In-app purchases ยท Monetization ยท Best chart rank ยท Devices ยท Requires iOS

CostPrice ยท In-app purchases ยท Ads ยท Monetization

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

UpkeepUpdate frequency

AI Notes ships an update monthly, Longhand Transcribe daily. The most recent releases landed on November 9, 2026 and November 6, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard4 real differences ยท 2 level
AI Notes versus Longhand Transcribe: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterAI NotesLonghand Transcribe
PriceFreeFree
Update frequencyMonthlyDaily โ€” better
AdsYesNo โ€” better
In-app purchasesNoNo
DevicesiPhone, iPadiPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch โ€” better
Requires iOS16.0 โ€” better26.5
Further details โ€” not scored
Size57 MB22 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperThu Bui Thi MinhPavel Ferencz

In-app purchases

None

AI Notes

No in-app purchases

None

Longhand Transcribe

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is AI Notes free?
AI Notes is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is Longhand Transcribe free?
Longhand Transcribe is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Do AI Notes or Longhand Transcribe have ads?
AI Notes shows ads; Longhand Transcribe does not.
Which is updated more often, AI Notes or Longhand Transcribe?
AI Notes ships an update monthly, and Longhand Transcribe daily. Most recently, AI Notes was updated on November 9, 2026 and Longhand Transcribe on November 6, 2026.

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