Comparison

Narratives vs Inkstone Notes

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

Head to head
About

Narratives

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Thoughts do not arrive in order. Narratives helps you bring them together. Write a few messages or dictate a voice note: an idea, a plan, details you do not want to forget, or a question you are still working through. Talk it over at your own pace. After the conversation, Narratives organizes the material into a card with the main idea, useful details, decisions, and questions that remain open. FROM SCATTERED THOUGHTS TO A USEFUL NOTE โ€ข Capture thoughts by text, voice, or photo. โ€ข Return to the original messages whenever you need context. โ€ข Edit the card to make it your own. โ€ข Preview and share just the card as text or images. Long image exports use multiple pages. โ€ข Export a full dialogue separately when you want to include the source conversation. SEE WHAT CONNECTS Daily summaries bring together the important topics from your conversations. Weekly summaries connect recurring themes, changes, and questions that are still open. Events and reminders, saved memories, web search, and weather are also available when useful. PRIVATE, ON YOUR IPHONE The conversational AI, voice transcription, and image analysis run on your device. Your conversations, cards, and saved memories are stored locally. No account, subscription, or in-app purchase is required. The model downloads separately on first launch; core AI features become available when setup completes. Optional online tools send the necessary request to an external service, for example for web search or weather. Sharing and backup export happen when you choose. You can review, correct, or delete saved memories in Settings. AI can make mistakes. Keep the original conversation, review important details, and edit a card before sharing it. Terms of Use: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/

About

Inkstone Notes

Features
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Inkstone keeps your notes as what they already are: plain Markdown files, in a folder you choose, on your own device. There is no database, no import step and no proprietary format. A vault another Markdown app created opens here, and a vault created here opens there. If Inkstone disappeared tomorrow, you would still have a folder of Markdown. WRITING Headings, bold, quotes, callouts, checkboxes, tables and code all render in place as you type, with the syntax revealed only on the line the cursor is on. Reading mode is a separate, read-only view for when you want the page without the scaffolding. Body font, code font and their sizes are set independently. LINKING [[Note]], [[Note#Heading]], [[Note^block]], ![[Embeds]] and aliases declared in frontmatter all resolve into one index. Every note shows what points at it, what it points at, and which of its links have no target yet. Rename a note and every link that pointed at it is rewritten across the whole vault, in the same action. SEEING THE SHAPE The graph view draws your notes as nodes joined by their links, and the simulation is deterministic โ€” the same vault draws the same picture every time, so you can learn its layout instead of re-reading it on every open. SPATIAL NOTES The canvas puts cards, files and connections on an infinite sheet, saved as JSON Canvas 1.0 โ€” the same open format other implementations read and write. FINDING THINGS A fuzzy switcher opens over every note with one gesture. Full-text search understands tag: and path:, and tags work inline or in frontmatter, nested, in any script. TYPOGRAPHY THAT HANDLES CJK Chinese sets solid โ€” no word spaces โ€” so a Latin word dropped into a Han sentence collides with it. Inkstone sets the gap between scripts properly, and lets you choose fonts and sizes that suit both. TWO DEVICES Sync a vault through iCloud, or push it to a GitHub repository with conflicts settled once rather than left as two copies. Per-file-type filters decide whether attachments and media travel with it. PRIVATE BY CONSTRUCTION No account. No telemetry. No network call you did not ask for. Your files are on your device and go only where you send them. Interface in English, Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese.

Screenshots

Narratives4 screens
Inkstone Notes4 screens

Verdict

The call

Narratives and Inkstone Notes are too close to call on the numbers: across 5 compared parameters โ€” price, ads, in-app purchases and device support among them โ€” neither pulls far enough ahead to decide it. What separates them is feature set and interface, not measurable difference.

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. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.

ScorecardNo meaningful differences
Narratives versus Inkstone Notes: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterNarrativesInkstone Notes
PriceFreeFree
Update frequencyDailyโ€”
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNoNo
DevicesiPhoneiPhone, iPad โ€” better
Requires iOS26.026.0
Further details โ€” not scored
Size86 MB15 MB
Age rating12+4+
DeveloperMikhail KolokolnikovOrris

In-app purchases

None

Narratives

No in-app purchases

None

Inkstone Notes

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is Narratives free?
Narratives is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is Inkstone Notes free?
Inkstone Notes is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Do Narratives or Inkstone Notes have ads?
Neither Narratives nor Inkstone Notes shows ads.

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