Comparison

Margina vs FocusPiece

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

Head to head
About

Margina

A private reader for your documents that allows you to highlight, annotate, and organize your reading materials. It offers a distraction-free experience with customizable reading settings and powerful search capabilities. Your library is stored locally for maximum privacy.

Highlights
  • Supports PDF, EPUB, Word, Markdown, and plain text
  • Highlight and annotate passages
  • Organize library into folders
  • Fast search across documents and annotations
  • Customizable reading experience
  • Private by design, local storage
Read full description

Margina is a calm, private home for everything you read. Send yourself a PDF, EPUB, Word doc, Markdown file, or plain text. Margina opens them all in one distraction-free reader that remembers exactly where you left off. No account, no cloud requirement, no clutter: just you and the page. A LIBRARY THAT LOOKS LIKE ONE Your documents live on a clean shelf of covers, each showing its format and how far you have read. Prefer rows? Switch to list view with one tap. Filter by what you are reading now, what is new, and what you have finished, and pin the book you keep coming back to. HIGHLIGHT AND ANNOTATE Mark passages in five colors, attach a note in the margin, and drop bookmarks anywhere. Drag across a PDF page to select and highlight in one motion. Every annotation is gathered in one place, ready to browse, filter, and revisit. Tap any highlight to jump straight back to its page. FIND ANYTHING, FAST Search across titles, authors, highlights, and notes at once. Matches light up inside the results exactly like highlights on a page, grouped by document so you always know where a passage came from. STAY ORGANIZED Sort your library into color-coded folders for work, study, research, or that stack of essays you have been meaning to get to. Jump back into any book at the exact spot, or the exact highlight, you were last at. MADE FOR LONG READING A reading experience designed like a well-set book: quiet paper tones, generous margins, and your progress drawn as a thin rule in the margin itself. Choose paper, sepia, or dark. Tune font, size, line spacing, and margins right in the reader. Includes a dyslexia-friendly typeface option and respects your system accessibility settings, from Dynamic Type to VoiceOver, Reduce Motion, and Reduce Transparency. EVERY FORMAT YOU ACTUALLY USE PDF reader, EPUB reader, Word document viewer, Markdown reader, and plain text, all in one app. Import from the share sheet, the Files app, email attachments, or anywhere else you can tap Share. Everything works offline, on the train, on a plane, or at the cabin with no signal. EXPORT AND SHARE Turn your highlights and notes into a clean Markdown file or a formatted PDF and send them to your notes app, your research workflow, or a friend. PRIVATE BY DESIGN Your library lives on your device. No account, no sign-up, no tracking, nothing to set up. Margina hosts nothing about you. Reading is personal; your reading data should be too. MARGINA PRO Upgrade to back up your library to your OWN iCloud, unlock the sepia reading theme, export your annotations, and add unlimited documents. Available monthly, annually, or as a one-time lifetime purchase. Your backup stays in your iCloud, never on our servers, so even Pro keeps your data yours. WHO MARGINA IS FOR Students annotating readings and lecture notes. Researchers working through papers. Book club readers who argue in the margins. Writers collecting passages. Anyone who sends themselves things to read later and actually wants to read them, without ads, feeds, or noise. Read anything. Mark it up. Keep it yours. Terms of Use (EULA): https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/ Privacy Policy: https://margina.app/privacy Margina Pro is offered as a monthly or annual auto-renewable subscription or a one-time Lifetime purchase. Subscriptions renew automatically unless cancelled at least 24 hours before the end of the current period. Manage or cancel anytime in your App Store account settings.

About

FocusPiece

Features
Read full description

FocusPiece – Where Focus Becomes Art Concentration has become rare. FocusPiece makes it visible. Set the timer, put your phone down and sink into your work. While you stay focused, a hidden masterpiece emerges from the mist, piece by piece. At the end of every session you hold a fully revealed work of art that you have earned. No points. No aggressive streaks. No guilt. Just a calm, beautiful space for deep concentration. HOW IT WORKS • Choose your time: 15, 25, 45 or 60 minutes of undisturbed focus. • Stay in the picture: as long as you remain in the app, the hidden painting sharpens with every minute. Leave, and the reveal gently pauses. • Collect masterpieces: every completed session unlocks a work and places it in your personal gallery. A GALLERY YOU EARN Your collection does not fill up by chance, but through real concentration. Every unlocked work carries the date, the length of your session and the story behind the original. Browse van Gogh's "Almond Blossom", Hokusai's "Great Wave", Monet's "Sunrise", Friedrich's "Wanderer" and many more classics of art history: public-domain masterpieces, curated for quiet moments. ON YOUR WRIST AS WELL With Apple Watch you start, pause and follow a session without reaching for your iPhone. On the Lock Screen and in the Dynamic Island your progress stays in view. DELIBERATELY MINIMAL FocusPiece was designed around a single principle: nothing that distracts. Warm paper white, a calm terracotta accent, clear typography. No loud notifications, no endless statistics, no mechanics designed to hook you. The app steps back so your focus and the art can step forward. FEATURES AT A GLANCE • Focus timer with a freely selectable duration • Progressive art reveal in real time, tied to your concentration • Apple Watch: start, pause and follow a session from your wrist • Live Activity on the Lock Screen and in the Dynamic Island • Personal gallery with every unlocked work • Challenges that unlock further works • One overview in the gallery: focus time collected, rounds and works revealed • Detail views with title, artist, year and collection context • Set a work as your lock screen • Optional ambient sounds, such as rain • Gentle completion chime and subtle haptic feedback • "Soft start" for a calm beginning to every session • Light mode that lets the artworks shine • Works entirely without an account; your data stays on your device WHO IS IT FOR? For everyone who wants to work more deeply: students studying for finals, creatives in flow, developers and writers, anyone who works with the Pomodoro technique, and everyone looking for a more beautiful, quieter alternative to noisy productivity apps. Concentration is a gift you give yourself. FocusPiece turns it into something you can see.

Screenshots

Margina4 screens
FocusPiece4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is update cadence: Margina at daily against FocusPiece's fortnightly. Margina also leads on iOS requirement (16.4 vs 18.0). FocusPiece's advantage is device support (3 vs 1). On price, 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. Margina sells 3 in-app purchases, starting at $2.99 per month and FocusPiece sells 3 one-off in-app purchases. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Margina ships an update daily, FocusPiece fortnightly. The most recent releases landed on August 15, 2026 and September 15, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard3 real differences · 7 level
Margina versus FocusPiece: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterMarginaFocusPiece
PriceFreeFree
Rating5.0 (1 ratings) — better—
Positive reviews100.0% of reviews—
Number of ratings1 — better—
Update frequencyDaily — betterFortnightly
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesYesYes
MonetizationFreemium—
DevicesiPhoneiPhone, iPad, Apple Watch — better
Requires iOS16.4 — better18.0
Further details — not scored
Size68 MB29 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperEcho Persona LLCChristoph Hesse

In-app purchases

3 purchases

Margina

Subscriptions2
  • Margina Pro Monthly$2.991 Month
  • Margina Pro Annual$14.991 Year
One-time1
  • Margina Lifetime$39.99
3 purchases

FocusPiece

One-time3
  • Impressions$0.99
  • Nocturnes$0.99
  • Dutch Golden Age$0.99

Questions

Is Margina free?
Margina is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is FocusPiece free?
FocusPiece is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Do Margina or FocusPiece have ads?
Neither Margina nor FocusPiece shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Margina or FocusPiece?
Margina ships an update daily, and FocusPiece fortnightly. Most recently, Margina was updated on August 15, 2026 and FocusPiece on September 15, 2026.

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