petal vs Branchnote
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
petal
This app provides a private space to capture and organize your thoughts without immediate categorization. It offers smart sorting, rich text editing, document scanning, and offline functionality, ensuring your ideas are saved and easily retrievable.
- Capture first, file later
- Smart sorting learns your preferences
- Document scanning to searchable PDFs
- Rich text editing with formatting options
- Dictation for voice-to-text notes
- Offline functionality
- Recently deleted notes recovery
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Petal is a forget-me-not for your mind - a quiet, private place to put every thought you don't want to lose. Most note apps ask you to decide where something belongs before you've finished thinking it. Petal doesn't. You open it, you write, and it handles the filing. CAPTURE FIRST, FILE LATER Start typing the moment the app opens. Your words are saved as you go, so a half-finished thought survives a phone call, a locked screen or a closed app. Nothing is categorized until you say so. SMART SORT When you're ready to save, Smart Sort reads the note and puts it in the right category for you. It learns from your corrections, so it gets better the more you use it. Prefer to file it yourself? Choose a category and Petal won't second-guess you. PHOTOS, FILES AND DOCUMENT SCANNING • Attach photos straight from your library, or take a new one with the camera. • Scan paper with the camera and Petal turns it into a searchable PDF, right inside the note. • Add files you already have, rename them, and preview them without leaving the note. A PROPER EDITOR Bold, italic and underline. Bulleted lists, numbered lists and checklists — with the option to drop ticked items to the bottom. Adjustable text size. Paste that keeps your structure and leaves someone else's formatting behind. Links recognized automatically. DICTATION Speak a note instead of typing it, punctuation and all. FIND ANYTHING Search across every note, browse by category, and create, rename, color and reorder categories to match the way you think. NOTHING LOST BY ACCIDENT Deleted notes wait in Recently Deleted for 15 days. Restore one and it goes back where it came from. WORKS OFFLINE Write on a plane, in a lift or in a basement. Changes are kept on your device and sync as soon as you're back online. LIGHT AND DARK Petal follows your system appearance automatically, or you can pin it to light or dark in Settings. YOURS ALONE Your notes belong to you. Sign in with an email and password, read the privacy policy any time from Settings, and permanently delete your account - and everything in it - whenever you choose. Plant your thoughts. Petal will remember them for you.
Branchnote
Organize your thoughts and tasks with a hierarchical note-taking system. Create branches for topics, add sub-branches, and write notes using Markdown formatting. Secure your notes with a passcode and biometrics.
- Branch-based organization
- Nested sub-branches
- Markdown writing
- Checkbox lists
- Full-text search
- Passcode and biometric lock
- Local backup and restore
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Branchnote is a notes app organized around branches — named containers, one per topic, with every note living in exactly one of them. Branches can hold sub-branches, as many levels deep as you like. Every branch is its own feed. Type at the top to add a note, and pin one to keep it at the top of the branch. No account needed. Open the app and start writing. ORGANIZE BY TOPIC Make a branch for work, recipes, reading, half-formed ideas — whatever you actually keep notes about. Add sub-branches to any branch, like Recipes/Desserts/Cookies. Move a note, or a whole branch with everything in it, whenever something ends up in the wrong place. WRITE IN MARKDOWN Headings, bold, italics, and links that render as cards. Bullet, numbered, and checkbox lists, nested up to four levels, with checkboxes you can tick right in the note. Formatting renders as you type, and a toolbar above the keyboard applies any of it without having to remember the syntax. FIND ANYTHING Full-text search across every note, ranked by relevance, with matching excerpts pulled out and your search terms highlighted in the results. LOCK IT Set a passcode and Branchnote locks every time you return to it. Unlock with your passcode, or with biometrics if your device supports it. Your notes stay covered in the app switcher. BACK IT UP Copy your notes into a single file and save it wherever you like, then restore it whenever you need to.
Screenshots
Verdict
petal and Branchnote are too close to call on the numbers: across 9 compared parameters — price, rating, ratings volume and update cadence among them — neither pulls far enough ahead to decide it. What separates them is feature set and interface, not measurable difference.
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 petal against 5.0 for Branchnote. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 3 and 4 respectively.
petal ships an update every 9 days, Branchnote weekly. Both last shipped on October 31, 2026.
| Parameter | petal | Branchnote |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 5.0 (3 ratings) | 5.0 (4 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | 100.0% of reviews | — |
| Number of ratings | 3 | 4 — better |
| Update frequency | Every 9 days | Weekly — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free | Free |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad — better | iPhone |
| Requires iOS | 17.0 | 16.4 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 7 MB | 39 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Aaditya Sharma | Branchnote LLC |
Customer experience
petal
Branchnote
In-app purchases
petal
No in-app purchases
Branchnote
No in-app purchases









