Libreta vs ZenNotes
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Libreta
Organize your thoughts into virtual books with custom covers and page styles. Write, draw, add media, and scan documents within your personalized digital notebooks. Your notes are private and sync via iCloud.
- Virtual book shelf with up to 20 books
- Customizable book covers and page styles
- Rich text editing and drawing tools
- Insert photos, PDFs, and documents
- Voice memo recording with transcripts
- Checklist reminders
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NoteBook turns your notes into a shelf of beautiful books. Every notebook is a real book you can open, write in, and make your own — and it even looks as thick as the number of pages inside. A SHELF OF BOOKS • Keep up to 20 books on your shelf, each with its own title and look. • Books grow thicker as you add pages — a quick glance shows how full each one is. • Name every page and flip through them in order. MAKE IT YOURS • Design custom covers — pick colors, fonts, and spine styles, or use your own photo for the cover or the whole book. • Choose page styles: ruled notebook paper, picture pages, or a custom colored background. WRITE THE WAY YOU LIKE • Rich text with fonts, sizes, colors, bold, italics, highlights, and alignment. • Draw and handwrite with Apple Pencil or your finger. • Add photos, PDFs, and documents right onto the page — your text flows around them. • Scan documents with the camera and keep them with the book. • Record or import voice memos, with on-demand transcripts. • Turn any line into a checklist reminder, and tap to complete it. YOURS AND PRIVATE • Your notes live on your device and sync privately through your own iCloud. • No ads. No tracking. No accounts required — sign in only if you want syncing. Works on iPhone, iPad, and Mac.
ZenNotes
This app allows you to create and manage notes using plain Markdown files. It offers flexible storage options, rich text formatting with live previews, and powerful organization tools like task management and note linking. Designed for both phone and tablet, it prioritizes user privacy with no accounts or tracking.
- Plain Markdown file storage
- Live rich text previews
- Wikilinks and #tags
- Vault-wide task management
- Table databases as CSV
- Excalidraw drawing support
- Share extension for quick capture
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ZenNotes is a local-first markdown notes app for writing, organizing, and connecting ideas without giving up ownership of your files. YOUR NOTES, YOUR FILES Every note is a plain .md file in a vault you control. Start with storage on your iPhone or iPad, use iCloud Drive, or open a folder through the system document picker. Local and iCloud vaults work without an account. ZENNOTES CLOUD Connect an optional ZenNotes Cloud plan to: • Sync a vault across ZenNotes desktop and mobile • Sync notes and attachments • Create manual and automatic daily backups • Restore a full vault or a single note from a backup • Publish notes to the web and manage their public links Cloud never replaces the free local-first workflow. Use it only when you want hosted sync, backup, or publishing. WRITE IN MARKDOWN Use a focused editor with headings, lists, tasks, tables, code, links, wikilinks, tags, callouts, footnotes, and frontmatter. A mobile formatting bar keeps common actions close to the keyboard, and a pinch resizes the text to your eyes. RICH, OFFLINE PREVIEW Render KaTeX math, Mermaid diagrams, JSXGraph, function plots, tables, callouts, and more directly on your device. ORGANIZE YOUR WAY Pin your go-to notes and folders to the top, swipe rows to act on them, create and rename nested folders, browse tags, search the full vault, manage tasks, create periodic notes, and work with table databases stored as CSV. CAPTURE QUICKLY Create a quick note from the app or send text and links to ZenNotes from the iOS share sheet. HOME SCREEN WIDGETS Start a note, open a recent one, or check today's tasks without opening the app. New Note also lives on the Lock Screen, and the widgets wear your theme. PRIVACY BY DEFAULT ZenNotes has no advertising or tracking. Local and iCloud notes stay in the storage you choose. When you enable ZenNotes Cloud, the account identity, connected-device information, and vault content needed for the Cloud features you use are sent to the ZenNotes service. Payment details are handled by Stripe. ZenNotes is open source. Your vault remains useful outside the app because it is made of ordinary files.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is ratings volume: ZenNotes at 11 against Libreta's 1. On price, rating, review sentiment and ads 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
Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 5.0 for Libreta against 4.9 for ZenNotes. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: ZenNotes has 11 ratings behind it against 1, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews split almost evenly too, at 100% and 100% positive.
| Parameter | Libreta | ZenNotes |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 5.0 (1 ratings) — better | 4.9 (11 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | 100.0% of reviews | 100.0% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | 1 | 11 — better |
| Update frequency | — | Every 2 days |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free | Free |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better |
| Requires iOS | 16.0 | 15.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 6 MB | 81 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Darian Iraola | Lumary Labs LLC |
Customer experience
Libreta
ZenNotes
In-app purchases
Libreta
No in-app purchases
ZenNotes
No in-app purchases








