Comparison

Papyrus vs Tertiary Markdown

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

Head to head
About

Papyrus

This native research workspace allows users to read, annotate, organize, and cite PDFs. It offers features for writing directly on pages with Apple Pencil, taking notes beside sources, and organizing research into themed notebooks. The app facilitates turning reading into writing by grouping papers for manuscripts and managing projects.

Highlights
  • Read and annotate PDFs
  • Write on pages with Apple Pencil
  • Take Markdown notes beside sources
  • Organize research into themed notebooks
  • Group papers for manuscript projects
  • Search full text and annotations
  • Import PDFs and BibTeX/RIS files
Features
Read full description

Papyrus is a native research workspace for reading, annotating, organizing, and citing PDFs — built for iPad, iPhone, and Mac. READ AND ANNOTATE Open a paper in a fast built-in reader. Highlight, underline, and mark up pages, and every highlight stays searchable and linked back to its source. Bookmark a page as you go, and pick the paper up later from a Reading card that remembers where you stopped. On iPad, a References tab looks up the open paper's reference list and related work, so you can follow a citation trail and add what matters to your library without leaving the page. WRITE ON THE PAGE WITH APPLE PENCIL Mark up a PDF directly on iPad — annotate a proof, sketch beside a figure, work a derivation out in the margin. Your ink belongs to the paper and travels with it, encrypted, to your other devices. NOTES BESIDE THE SOURCE Keep Markdown notes next to each paper: headings, tables, code blocks, LaTeX math, and [[note]] cross-references. Notes stay with the paper and export as PDF when you need to share them. NOTEBOOKS Gather notes from across your library onto themed shelves — a topic, a chapter you're drafting, a reading group. Filing a note copies nothing and moves nothing: it still belongs to its paper, still says which paper that is, and one tap takes you there and back. A note can sit on several shelves at once. Fill a new shelf from what you've already written, search it by a note's text or by the paper behind it, order it four ways — including oldest paper first, which reads your own notes forward through the literature — and export a whole shelf as one Markdown document. All Notes lists everything you've written in one place, filed or not. ORGANIZE THE WAY YOU THINK Folders — a paper can live in several — plus tags, star ratings, and seven colored flags you can name yourself, each with its own shape so they stay tellable apart at a glance. Smart Collections keep themselves current from rules you set, including flag rules. Review Duplicates finds look-alike papers and merges each set after you confirm, combining tags, folders, projects, notes, and highlights. FIND ANYTHING Search titles, authors, notes, and highlights — or the full text inside your PDFs. TURN READING INTO WRITING Projects are where a reading pile becomes a manuscript. Group the papers behind a chapter or article, give each one a role, and capture evidence — claims, quotes, and your own interpretation — tied back to the source paper and page. Write the project note from a template (related work, method comparison, experiment plan, thesis chapter, reviewer response), keep its revision history, and run a preflight that catches missing citation keys and metadata gaps before you export. Export a bundle with Markdown, a BibTeX bibliography, and the PDFs. IMPORT AND CITE Bring in PDFs, whole folders, or BibTeX and RIS files — including libraries exported from Mendeley and Zotero. Papyrus looks up metadata by DOI or arXiv ID and fills in the details. Save papers straight from Safari with the included extension. Copy citations in the style you write in, and export BibTeX or RIS whenever you need them. READ ANYWHERE Paste an arXiv link, a DOI, or a PDF URL and Papyrus imports it, looks up the details, and fetches the PDF. Add a paper to Read Later and its PDF downloads ahead of time, so a flight or a commute doesn't need a signal. Ask Siri, or search from the Home Screen, to pick up the paper you were last reading on the page you left it. YOUR LIBRARY, YOUR DEVICES Your library syncs over iCloud across iPad, iPhone, and Mac. No account to create, no tracking, no ads. Free to download and use — every feature included, no in-app purchases, no subscription.

About

Tertiary Markdown

A native Markdown notes app for Mac, iPad, and iPhone that manages local files and folders like Obsidian. Your notes are plain .md files, ensuring full ownership and future-proofing.

Highlights
  • Open any folder as a vault
  • Plain Markdown files
  • File & folder management
  • Live preview editor
  • Image embedding
  • Notion-style tables
  • Native experience on all devices
Features
Read full description

Tertiary Markdown is a fast, native Markdown notes app for Mac, iPad, and iPhone. It manages your files and folders the way Obsidian does — open any local folder as a vault and your notes stay as plain .md files you fully own. KEY FEATURES • Open any folder as a vault — fully compatible with your existing Obsidian vault. Your notes are plain Markdown files, never locked into a proprietary format. • File & folder management — browse, create, rename, and delete notes and folders from a clean sidebar. • Live preview editor — switch instantly between Edit, Split, and Preview. Your work autosaves as you type. • Images, Bear-style — embed pictures with standard Markdown ![](image.png) or Obsidian ![[image.png]] embeds, rendered inline. • Tables, Notion-style — GitHub-flavoured tables render as clean, bordered grids. • Everyday Markdown — headings, bold and italic, links, checklists, bullet and numbered lists, block quotes, and code blocks. • One app, every device — a true native experience on macOS, iPadOS, and iOS. Your notes never leave your device. Everything is stored as simple text files on your Mac, iPad, or iPhone, so you stay in control and your library is future-proof. Whether you keep a personal knowledge base, take meeting notes, or write long-form drafts, Tertiary Markdown gives you a distraction-free, Markdown-first workspace that travels with you.

Screenshots

Papyrus4 screens
Tertiary Markdown2 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is rating: Papyrus at 5.0 against Tertiary Markdown's 1.0. On price, ratings volume, 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

Papyrus holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 1.0. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 2 and 1 respectively.

Scorecard1 real difference · 8 level
Papyrus versus Tertiary Markdown: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterPapyrusTertiary Markdown
PriceFreeFree
Rating5.0 (2 ratings) — better1.0 (1 ratings)
Number of ratings2 — better1
Update frequencyWeekly—
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNoNo
MonetizationFreeFree
DevicesiPhone, iPad, Mac — betteriPhone, iPad
Requires iOS17.017.0
Further details — not scored
Size30 MB2 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperZhenda FuAlfred Ang

In-app purchases

None

Papyrus

No in-app purchases

None

Tertiary Markdown

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is Papyrus free?
Papyrus is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is Tertiary Markdown free?
Tertiary Markdown is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Which has better reviews, Papyrus or Tertiary Markdown?
Papyrus is rated higher. Papyrus averages 5.0 out of 5 from 2 ratings, while Tertiary Markdown averages 1.0 from 1 ratings.
Do Papyrus or Tertiary Markdown have ads?
Neither Papyrus nor Tertiary Markdown shows ads.

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