Orbit vs Drift
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side โ with what reviewers say about each.
Orbit
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Write messy. Find the patterns later. Orbit is a calm place to dump every thought โ work, life, half-formed ideas โ and make sense of them later. Not a diary. Not a wellness app. A mind you can search. Most notes go somewhere to be forgotten. Orbit is built for the opposite: the more you write, the more it gives back. CAPTURE WITHOUT FRICTION Open Orbit and write. No folders to pick, no tags to invent, no blank-page ceremony. Get the thought down โ from the app, the Share Sheet, or a Home Screen widget โ and move on. ASK YOUR OWN MIND ANYTHING Later, ask Orbit a real question โ "what have I been worried about lately?", "what did I decide about the launch?" โ and get an answer drawn from everything you've written, alongside the entries it came from. FIND THE PATTERNS YOU'D MISS Orbit quietly surfaces the themes running through your thinking โ the ideas you keep circling back to, the worries that recur โ so you can see what's hard to notice one entry at a time. A WEEKLY LOOK BACK Each week, Orbit reflects your thinking back to you: what you focused on, what shifted, what's worth returning to. BUILT TO BE CALM One clear thing to do on every screen. A warm, editorial design that feels more like paper than a dashboard. No streaks, no badges, no guilt. PRIVATE BY DEFAULT Only you can see what you write. Orbit is a place for your real, unfiltered thinking. Write messy. Orbit finds the patterns later. Terms of Use (EULA): https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/ Privacy Policy: https://www.useorbit.ink/privacy
Drift
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Drift does two things beautifully. It catches your ideas the moment they arrive, and it gives you a calm, focused place to write the ones worth keeping. CATCH EVERY IDEA Some of the best ideas show up at the worst possible time. In the shower. On a walk. Halfway through something else. Speak a thought or type a line, and Drift catches it, cleans it up, and files it in the right place before you have finished talking. No folders to pick. No form to fill in. You keep moving. CATCH IT HANDS FREE Say "Hey Siri, catch my drift" and start talking. Your idea lands in Drift with the phone in your pocket, the screen locked, and no signal at all. There is a home screen widget and a one tap capture too. AND ON YOUR WRIST Drift is on Apple Watch. Raise your wrist, tap once, and talk for as long as you need. Your arm can drop, the recording keeps going, and the idea is waiting when you pick your phone back up. The phone can stay at home. IT SORTS ITSELF Every capture is read, tidied into clean sentences, and pointed at the area it belongs to. Drift pulls out the to-dos, spots the deadline you mentioned, and writes a clear headline. You keep it with one tap or move it. Nothing is ever filed behind your back. SORT A WEEK IN A MINUTE Ideas arrive faster than anyone files them. Drift deals them back one at a time. Swipe right to keep it, left to come back to it later. What is left is a list you actually chose. A REAL PLACE TO WRITE Drift is not only for catching ideas. It is a serious writing tool. A calm, full screen writer with nothing in your way. Press / to mark a shot, a voiceover, a hook, whatever your trade calls them, and the marks stay part of the script. When you are done, pull every shot out as one list. Focus mode dims all but the line you are on. Find and replace. Export as Markdown. READ IT BACK TO CAMERA A teleprompter scrolls your own words at your own speed. Turn on voice follow and it moves with your voice, waits when you stop to think, and picks up where you left off. YOUR WEEK, WHERE YOU ALREADY LOOK Give a task a time and Drift blocks the hour. Day, three day and month views, and dragging to reschedule. Sync with Apple Calendar one way, so nothing else is ever read, or both ways, so what you already promised sits beside what you planned. TABLES THAT ADD UP Shot lists, call sheets, budgets. Put numbers in a column and Drift totals them, counts them or averages them at the foot, in euros or whatever you work in. Group rows into scenes or days. Send the whole thing out as a PDF or a CSV when somebody else needs it. IDEAS BECOME PROJECTS When a spark is worth more, open it up. A board with tasks, dates, notes and sub projects. Mark an idea Potential, Good or Really good, give work one to three exclamation marks, and filter any list by it. BUILT FOR MAKERS Keep an area for every side of what you do. Your channel, your brand, your podcast, your newsletter. Share an area or a single idea with someone, view only or full edit, one person at a time. YOUR VOICE STAYS ON YOUR PHONE Speech becomes text on the device itself. The recording is never uploaded. A Watch recording waits on your phone only until it has become words. Only the words go on, to be sorted and titled. FREE TO START 10 captures a week and up to 6 areas, forever, with the whole manual toolkit and no card. Pro is 4.99 a month, or 47.90 a year, for unlimited captures sorted for you, areas without a limit, the writing tools and voice follow. The monthly plan starts with a 14 day free trial. Catch every idea. Write the ones that matter. Terms of Use (EULA): https://letsdrift.app/terms Privacy Policy: https://letsdrift.app/privacy
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is update cadence: Orbit at every 9 days against Drift's monthly. Drift's advantage is device support (4 vs 1). On price, ads, in-app purchases and iOS requirement 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
Both are free to download. Orbit sells 2 in-app purchases, starting at $4.99 per month and Drift sells 4 in-app purchases, starting at $4.99 per month. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.
Orbit ships an update every 9 days, Drift monthly. The most recent releases landed on October 8, 2026 and October 9, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Orbit | Drift |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Update frequency | Every 9 days โ better | Monthly |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | Yes |
| Devices | iPhone | iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch โ better |
| Requires iOS | 17.0 | 17.0 |
| Further details โ not scored | ||
| Size | 16 MB | 15 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Runtime Labs LLC | Sjoerd Wesselink |
In-app purchases
Orbit
- Orbit Pro (Monthly)$4.991 Month
- Orbit Pro (Yearly)$49.991 Year
Drift
- Drift Pro14 Days trial$4.991 Month
- Drift Studio14 Days trial$8.991 Month
- Drift Pro Annual$47.901 Year
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- Drift Studio Annual$83.901 Year









