Comparison

Vanta vs MDReader

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

Head to head
About

Vanta

Features
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Vanta is a private Markdown notes app for iPhone with AI that runs entirely on your phone, and real GTD built in. Your notes stay as plain Markdown you own. Start with a local vault in seconds: no account, no servers, nothing uploaded. ON-DEVICE AI โ€ข Turn a messy, rambled note into clean Markdown โ€ข "Clarify with AI" sorts your whole GTD inbox into Next Actions, Waiting For, Someday, Done, or Trash โ€ข Clean up dictation, summarize, and suggest tags โ€ข Powered by Apple's on-device models, so it works offline and nothing ever leaves your phone GETTING THINGS DONE, BUILT IN โ€ข Capture to your Inbox in a tap, by typing or voice, even from the Share Sheet โ€ข Process your inbox to zero, by hand or with AI โ€ข Next Actions by @context, plus Waiting For, Someday, and Projects โ€ข A weekly review that surfaces stalled projects and what you're waiting on โ€ข Inbox and Next Actions pinned to the top of your vault A REAL MARKDOWN NOTES APP โ€ข Folders, favorites, and instant full-text search, all offline โ€ข Syntax-highlighted code, callouts, tables, images, SVG, and tasks โ€ข Tap [[wikilinks]] to jump between notes, and see backlinks โ€ข Light and true-black dark themes YOURS, EVERYWHERE โ€ข Start on-device with no account โ€ข Sync across your devices with iCloud, or your own private GitHub repo โ€ข Obsidian-compatible: open the same vault on your Mac, and favorites sync with Obsidian bookmarks โ€ข No subscription. No analytics. No tracking. Vanta works great as a standalone local notes app, and plugs into your existing Obsidian or Markdown vault whenever you want. On-device AI features require an iPhone that supports Apple Intelligence.

About

MDReader

Features
Read full description

MDReader opens your Markdown files and folders and renders them properly. There is no library to import into, no account to create and no sync service in the middle. Your .md files stay exactly where you put them, and MDReader reads and writes them in place. FAST, EVEN ON BIG FILES A two-tier parser scans a document in a single pass and only fully parses the blocks you can actually see. A 10 MB file opens before other editors have finished showing a spinner, and scrolling stays smooth all the way down. RENDERS THE WHOLE OF MARKDOWN GitHub-flavoured Markdown with tables, task lists you can tick straight from reading mode, footnotes that jump both ways, YAML front matter shown as a card, LaTeX math inline and display, fenced code with syntax highlighting, and Mermaid diagrams rendered offline. AN EDITOR THAT STAYS OUT OF THE WAY Live syntax highlighting, lists that continue and renumber themselves, bold/italic/link shortcuts, find and replace, table and formula inserters, and paste an image to save it next to the document. Autosave goes through the system file coordinator, so editing alongside Obsidian, git or iCloud is safe. PICKS UP WHERE YOU LEFT OFF Reading position is restored to the pixel, per document, across relaunches, rotation and window resizes. FOLDER WORKSPACES (PRO) Open a whole folder: a repository's docs, an Obsidian vault, a Zettelkasten. Fuzzy quick-open, full-text search across every file in the folder, [[wiki-links]] with a backlinks panel, a front-matter tag browser, and read-only git status per file. Changes made by other apps are picked up in place, without losing your position. MORE IN PRO PDF export and print, publishing to GitHub Gist and Telegraph, presentation mode for slides, a custom theme editor with imported fonts, focus and typewriter modes, word-count goals, reading statistics, text-to-speech with follow-along highlighting, local version history with diffs, snippets, Vim keybindings, and an AI pack that summarises and rewrites entirely on device. BUILT FOR APPLE PLATFORMS One purchase covers iPhone, iPad and Mac. Keyboard shortcuts throughout, multiple windows, menu bar commands, a Share extension, Shortcuts actions, widgets, a URL scheme, Spotlight indexing, VoiceOver labels and Dynamic Type. PRIVACY MDReader collects nothing. No analytics SDK, no account, no server of ours to talk to. The only network traffic is what your own documents ask for, such as remote images, plus the publishing integrations you set up yourself. FREE AND PRO The reader and the single-file editor are free forever: all rendering including math and syntax highlighting, the base themes, table of contents, in-file search, HTML, Markdown and plain-text export, and position restore. Pro unlocks folder workspaces and the power features above, as a one-time purchase or as a yearly subscription with a free trial. SUBSCRIPTION AND PURCHASE DETAILS MDReader Pro (Yearly) - auto-renewable subscription, 1 year, USD 9.99 per year, including a 7-day free trial for new subscribers. MDReader Pro (Lifetime) - one-time purchase, USD 24.99, not a subscription. Payment is charged to your Apple Account at confirmation of purchase. A yearly subscription renews automatically unless auto-renew is turned off at least 24 hours before the end of the current period, and your account is charged for renewal within 24 hours before the period ends. You can manage or cancel the subscription in your Apple Account settings after purchase. Any unused portion of a free trial is forfeited when a subscription is purchased. Terms of Use (EULA): https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/ App Terms of Service: https://gelfand.dev/mdreader/terms Privacy Policy: https://gelfand.dev/mdreader/privacy

Screenshots

Vanta4 screens
MDReader4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is in-app purchases: Vanta at none against MDReader's 2. Vanta also leads on update cadence (every 3 days vs every 2 weeks) and iOS requirement (17.0 vs 26.0). MDReader's advantage is device support (3 vs 1). On price and ads 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. MDReader sells 2 in-app purchases, starting at $9.99 per year. Vanta asks for nothing beyond the download.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Vanta ships an update every 3 days, MDReader every 2 weeks. The most recent releases landed on September 20, 2026 and September 28, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard4 real differences ยท 2 level
Vanta versus MDReader: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterVantaMDReader
PriceFreeFree
Update frequencyEvery 3 days โ€” betterEvery 2 weeks
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNo โ€” betterYes
DevicesiPhoneiPhone, iPad, Mac โ€” better
Requires iOS17.0 โ€” better26.0
Further details โ€” not scored
Size15 MB22 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperShane VitaranaDaniil Nuzhdin

In-app purchases

None

Vanta

No in-app purchases

2 purchases

MDReader

Subscriptions1
  • MDReader Pro Yearly7 Days trial$9.991 Year
One-time1
  • MDReader Pro$24.99

Questions

Is Vanta free?
Vanta is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is MDReader free?
MDReader is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Do Vanta or MDReader have ads?
Neither Vanta nor MDReader shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Vanta or MDReader?
Vanta ships an update every 3 days, and MDReader every 2 weeks. Most recently, Vanta was updated on September 20, 2026 and MDReader on September 28, 2026.

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