Parchment vs Singularity Codex
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Parchment
This app combines your writing, plans, calendar events, and reminders into a single, private space. It offers a quiet environment for daily journaling, note-taking, and planning, with added support for handwriting and drawing on iPad.
- Daily journal entries by date
- Calendar events alongside writing
- Reminders in daily view
- Apple Pencil handwriting and drawing
- iCloud sync across devices
- Widgets for quick agenda view
- Export tools for writing backup
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Parchment is a private daily journal that brings your writing, plans, calendar, and reminders together in one quiet place. It uses Apple's Reminders and the system calendar to bring your task and events together. Open today and start writing immediately. Your calendar events and due or overdue reminders can appear above your journal entry, giving you the context of the day without switching apps. Capture notes, reflect on what happened, plan what comes next, or use Parchment as a simple daybook for work and life. On iPad, Parchment also supports handwriting and drawing with Apple Pencil, so typed notes and handwritten thoughts can live together on the same day. Parchment is built for iPhone, iPad, and Mac, with iCloud sync available through your private iCloud account. There is no Parchment account to create, no advertising, and no third-party analytics SDKs. Features include: - Daily journal entries organized by date - Calendar events shown alongside your writing - Due and overdue reminders in your daily view - Reminder completion from inside the app - Apple Pencil handwriting and drawing on iPad - iCloud sync across iPhone, iPad, and Mac - Widgets for a quick look at your agenda - Shortcuts, Siri, and App Intents support - Spotlight indexing for finding past entries - Export tools for keeping a copy of your writing - Custom appearance, fonts, and themes Parchment is for people who want a journal that understands the shape of their day. It gives you one place to write what happened, see what is coming up, and keep a private record over time.
Singularity Codex
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The only person worth messaging is you. Singularity Codex is a private chat with yourself — a note-to-self app, a journal and a personal archive in one conversation. Text yourself a thought. Send yourself a photo, a voice note, a link, a PDF. It lands where you left it, in the order you had it, and it stays there. No folders to choose. No titles to write. No account to create. You already message yourself. Everyone does: the chat with just you in it, the email to your own address, the notes app you never open twice. Codex is what that habit deserves — a codex of your own life, written a line at a time and kept for good. SEND YOURSELF ANYTHING • Notes, thoughts, ideas, lists — type and send • Photos and videos from your library, or straight from the camera • Voice messages, transcribed on your iPhone so you can search what you said • Links, with a preview card instead of a bare address • PDFs and documents from Files • Anything from any app, through the share sheet • Hands-free with Siri and Shortcuts: "Send to Codex" • Reply to an old message to carry a thought forward • Star, pin, copy, or select many at once REMINDERS WRITTEN IN YOUR OWN WORDS Write "Call the dentist tomorrow at 10" and Codex offers the reminder. One tap and it is set — no form, no date picker, no second app. It understands English, Turkish, German, French and Spanish. The Now tab gathers what matters today: overdue, due today, tasks, pinned messages, what you just saved, and what you wrote on this day. YOUR PERSONAL HISTORY, DRAWN The Codex tab turns your archive into a history you can read. Every year you have kept becomes twelve calendars, shaded by how much you wrote. Tap any day and read yourself back. Collections build themselves — starred, pinned, reminders, tasks, links, photos, videos, voice, files — and on-device labels such as Idea, Task, Work, Personal, Memory and Event sort your messages without you ever filing a thing. Now and then, Codex shows you what you wrote a week, a month or a year ago. TODAY: WHAT YOU CHOSE TO READ Follow a site's feed, a podcast, a YouTube channel, a Mastodon or Bluesky account, a subreddit. Posts arrive newest first, grouped by day — no algorithm, no ranking, nothing promoted. Mute a word, hide someone, or keep a post in your archive with one tap. FIND ANYTHING IN A SECOND Search every message, link title, file name and voice transcript at once, then narrow it to photos, links, voice, files or ideas. PRIVATE BY ARCHITECTURE, NOT BY PROMISE • No account. No sign-up. No login. • No analytics, no tracking, no ads, no third-party SDKs • No server of ours — there is nowhere for your archive to be sent • Labels are worked out on your iPhone and never leave it • Voice is transcribed on the device, or not at all • App Store privacy label: Data Not Collected ICLOUD, ONLY IF YOU WANT IT Turn on sync and your archive — messages, photos, recordings and documents — lives in your own private iCloud database and appears on your other iPhones. We have no access to it. With Advanced Data Protection on, it is end-to-end encrypted. AN ARCHIVE YOU CAN LEAVE WITH Export everything, any time: your messages as JSON and as plain text, with every photo, recording and document, in one zip that opens without this app. Save any photo or video back to your library in a tap. MAKE IT YOURS Five color themes, light and dark appearance, and the whole app in five languages. ONE PRICE. NO SUBSCRIPTION. Try everything free for 14 days. When the trial ends, your archive stays readable, searchable and exportable — forever, at no cost. Adding new messages takes one purchase, once. No subscription, no renewals, no ads. Your thoughts are not content. Your archive is not a product. Start your codex.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is price: Singularity Codex at Free against Parchment's $4.99. Parchment's advantage is in-app purchases (none vs 2) and chart position (#42 vs unranked). On ads and iOS requirement 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
Singularity Codex is free to download; Parchment costs $4.99 up front. Singularity Codex sells 2 one-off in-app purchases. Parchment asks for nothing beyond the download.
| Parameter | Parchment | Singularity Codex |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $4.99 | Free — better |
| Rating | 4.8 (250 ratings) — better | — |
| Positive reviews | 79.5% of reviews | — |
| Number of ratings | 250 — better | — |
| Update frequency | Every 6 days | — |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No — better | Yes |
| Monetization | Paid | — |
| Best chart rank | #42 — better | — |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, Mac — better | iPhone |
| Requires iOS | 26.0 | 26.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 138 MB | 5 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 17+ |
| Developer | Chris Lawley | BURAK KADAN |
In-app purchases
Parchment
No in-app purchases
Singularity Codex
- 14-day TrialFree
- Codex, for good$12.99









