Comparison

Candor vs Aloud

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

Head to head
About

Candor

This app uses AI to analyze your written notes, revealing patterns, themes, and contradictions you might miss. It offers on-device and cloud-based AI models, with a strong emphasis on end-to-end encryption and user privacy. Chat with your notes and map clusters by theme for deeper reflection.

Highlights
  • AI-powered note analysis
  • Theme and pattern identification
  • On-device and cloud AI options
  • End-to-end encryption
  • Chat with your notes
  • Note clustering by theme
  • Data export options
Features
Read full description

Candor is a AI Note Eighteen AI lenses surface the patterns you'd never see otherwise the themes you keep returning to, the loops you don't notice, the questions you're quietly carrying. Every entry is encrypted with your master password before it leaves the writing surface. No analytics. No cloud-scraping. No support backdoor. Honest writing, in your hands. THE AI HUB Reflect runs your scoped notes through one of these lenses: • Themes — what you keep returning to, ranked by frequency • Recent mind — the 2–3 threads pulling at you this week • Loop — unconscious cycles running through your writing • Salience — what you say you care about vs. what your attention keeps landing on • Contradictions — beliefs you hold that don't fit together • Open questions — the ones you keep asking yourself • What's missing — topics you'd expect to write about but don't • The Outside View — what a stranger reading your journal would assume • Steel Man — the most generous reading of a flaw you keep naming • The Crucible — calibrated challenges at the edge of your capacity • Trajectory — where the next 6–12 months go if nothing changes • Spark for writing — open scenes to write into • Plus: Story, Timeline, Period summary, Growth, Preferences, Key choices Chat with your notes for open-ended dialogue. Map clusters your entries by theme. TWO AIs TO CHOOSE FROM • Apple Intelligence — on-device, fast, included with Backup & Export • Candor AI — cloud, frontier reasoning, included with Bundle Switch any time in Settings. The same notes feed either one. PRIVACY YOU CAN AUDIT Your master password derives a 256-bit key locally with Argon2id. Every entry is sealed with XChaCha20-Poly1305 before it leaves the writing surface. Search runs in memory and forgets. Nothing leaves your phone unless you turn on iCloud sync — and even then, Apple sees ciphertext only. There is no support backdoor. Lose your password and your recovery key, and the data is gone. That's the point. FREE CANDOR INCLUDES • Writing with auto-save • Voice dictation (on-device — Apple Speech and Omnilingual for 100+ languages) • End-to-end encryption • Full-text and semantic search • Categories, widgets, daily reminders • Local-only — no account required SUBSCRIPTIONS • Backup & Export — $2.99/month or $24.99/year Apple Intelligence on-device + Gemini cloud (bring your own API key) + iCloud sync across iPhone, iPad, Mac + .ilbk / ZIP / Obsidian export and import. • Bundle — $5.99/month or $49.99/year Everything in Backup, plus Candor AI — our most capable model, server-managed, no API key needed. 7-day free trial on the Bundle. Cancel anytime in iOS Settings. Family Sharing supported on both tiers. AUTO-RENEWAL DISCLOSURE Subscriptions renew at the price shown above unless cancelled at least 24 hours before the renewal date. Your Apple ID is charged for renewal within 24 hours of the end of the current period. Manage or cancel in iOS Settings → [your name] → Subscriptions. Payment is charged to your Apple ID at confirmation of purchase. Subscriptions auto-renew unless turned off at least 24 hours before the end of the current period. Manage or cancel any time in iOS Settings → Apple ID → Subscriptions. Privacy Policy: https://belvantis.com/candor/privacy Terms of Use (EULA): https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/ Made by Belvantis. Email info@belvantis.com or visit belvantis.com.

About

Aloud

Convert any readable content into spoken audio with natural-sounding voices. Save articles, PDFs, or pasted text to listen to later, even offline. Customize playback speed and enjoy a private, ad-free listening experience.

Highlights
  • Convert articles, PDFs, and text to speech
  • On-device voice generation for privacy
  • Offline listening support
  • Adjustable playback speed (0.5x to 3x)
  • Hands-free autoplay and lock-screen controls
  • Save and organize content for later
Features
Read full description

No subscription. No ads. No tracking. Nothing you read ever leaves your iPhone. Aloud turns anything you can read into something you can listen to. Share an article from any browser, open a PDF or an EPUB from Files, or paste any text — Aloud reads it aloud in a natural voice, sentence by sentence, with your place kept perfectly. FOR THE READING LIST YOU NEVER GET TO Saving articles is easy; finding an hour to sit and read them is not. Aloud turns that pile into something you get through on the commute, the walk, the washing-up — so you keep up with the world without giving up an evening. Turn on autoplay and it announces the next piece and keeps going, hands free. AND FASTER, IF YOU WANT IT Read from 0.5× to 3× without the voice turning into a chipmunk, and switch on Shorten Pauses to trim the silence at every full stop. At 2× a thirty-minute article fits a fifteen-minute walk. The voices are generated entirely on your iPhone. There is no server doing the talking, which is why Aloud never needs an account, never meters your listening, and keeps working in airplane mode. Each voice downloads its model once — about 190 MB for the English voices, about 390 MB for the one that reads the other thirty languages — and after that, the internet is optional. LISTEN TO ANYTHING • Web articles — share from any browser or paste a link, Aloud extracts just the story • PDFs — including scanned ones, recognized on-device • Books — open an EPUB without copy protection and start from any chapter • Any text you paste, from notes to your own drafts • Your reading list — import your saves from Pocket or Instapaper TWO LANGUAGES, AND IPHONE DUO • Translate a piece on your iPhone and read the original and the translation together • On iPhone Duo, the cover screen is a large player and the open display shows the page A READER, NOT A MEDIA PLAYER • The sentence being spoken is lit; the rest of the page waits quietly • A margin rail shows the whole document — hold and slide to scrub • Your position is saved the moment it changes, per document • A speed dial from 0.5× to 3×, and time remaining that respects it • A sleep timer that fades out instead of cutting you off mid-word • Reader mode: hide the player, lift the whole page, read with your eyes • Find in article, and your choice of size, font, paper and column width MADE FOR LISTENING ON THE MOVE • Keeps reading with the screen locked • Lock-screen and AirPods controls: play, pause, skip 15 seconds • Optional autoplay: when a piece ends, Aloud announces the next and keeps reading • Two shelves — to read, and read — each sorted your way by date, length, or title, with search across titles and sites • An optional unread count on the app icon • Your place remembered in everything FOURTEEN NATURAL VOICES Ten US and UK English voices with real warmth, and four voices that read thirty more languages — all generated on your iPhone. Anything else falls back to the system voice that speaks it. Audition any voice with a tap. PRIVATE BY ARCHITECTURE Once a voice is on your iPhone, Aloud makes no network requests to read to you. Articles are fetched by your phone the way a browser would, the voice models download once from a public host, and everything after that — extraction, speech, your library, your listening history — stays on the device. The App Privacy label says "Data Not Collected" because there is nowhere to collect it to. ONE PURCHASE, YOURS FOREVER Aloud is free to try: the shelf holds three pieces, with every feature included — the natural voices, PDFs and scans, the lock-screen player, all of it. A single purchase lets the shelf hold as many pieces as you like, forever. No subscription, nothing recurring, and your listening is never metered either way. If you read with your ears — long articles, research papers, contracts, fan fiction, your own writing — Aloud was built for you. And if you rely on spoken text every day, we would especially love to hear what you need next.

Screenshots

Candor4 screens
Aloud4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is monetization model: Aloud at free against Candor's free with in-app purchases. Aloud also leads on iOS requirement (17.0 vs 26.0). On price, rating, ratings volume and update cadence 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. Candor sells 4 in-app purchases, starting at $2.99 per month and Aloud sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 5.0 for Candor against 5.0 for Aloud. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 1 and 2 respectively.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Candor ships an update every 9 days, Aloud every 2 weeks. The most recent releases landed on October 7, 2026 and October 25, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard2 real differences · 8 level
Candor versus Aloud: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterCandorAloud
PriceFreeFree
Rating5.0 (1 ratings)5.0 (2 ratings)
Positive reviews—100.0% of reviews
Number of ratings12 — better
Update frequencyEvery 9 days — betterEvery 2 weeks
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesYesYes
MonetizationFree with in-app purchasesFree — better
DevicesiPhone, iPadiPhone, iPad
Requires iOS26.017.0 — better
Further details — not scored
Size23 MB30 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperBenyamin FamiliFotios Avgidis

Customer experience

Candor

All ratings1 ratings
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%

Aloud

All ratings2 ratings
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%
Written reviews1 reviews
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%

In-app purchases

4 purchases

Candor

Subscriptions4
  • Backup & Export$2.991 Month
  • Bundle$5.991 Month
  • Backup & Export7 Days trial$24.991 Year
Show 1 more
  • Bundle7 Days trial$49.991 Year
1 purchases

Aloud

One-time1
  • Lifetime Unlock$9.99

Questions

Is Candor free?
Candor is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is Aloud free?
Aloud is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Which has better reviews, Candor or Aloud?
Candor and Aloud are both rated 5.0 out of 5 on the App Store, from 1 and 2 ratings respectively.
Do Candor or Aloud have ads?
Neither Candor nor Aloud shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Candor or Aloud?
Candor ships an update every 9 days, and Aloud every 2 weeks. Most recently, Candor was updated on October 7, 2026 and Aloud on October 25, 2026.

Other comparisons