Opus One vs Penciled In.
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Opus One
This app helps you manage tasks and notes with a paperlike interface. Organize your day with daily task lists, schedules, and notes, and use a master task section to capture all your to-dos. Features include drag-and-drop reordering, event integration, and customizable notes.
- Master Task section
- Daily Task lists with status, priority, and notes
- Daily Schedule and Event integration
- Daily Notes with customizable text formatting
- Drag and drop task reordering
- Cloud synchronization
- Sketch drawing canvas
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Opus One is a real day planner, not another to-do app. Each day gets its own page — tasks with A/B/C priorities, your schedule, and notes — on a planner that looks and feels like paper. Plan on iPhone, iPad, and Mac, and it all stays in sync. YOUR DAY ON ONE PAGE • Daily Tasks with A/B/C priorities, status, notes, and alarms. • A schedule that shows your Calendar events alongside your tasks. • Drag a task onto the schedule — with task durations, the end time fills in automatically. • Daily Notes with photos, PDFs, checklists, and audio. • Today's weather and a daily quote, right on the page. PLAN BEYOND TODAY • Master Tasks: everything on your mind in one list, no due date required. • Goals with timelines, photos, and progress you can see. • Roles: review the areas of your life each week so nothing important gets crowded out. • Mission, Values, and Vision pages to keep the big picture one tap away. • Meeting Planner for agendas, decisions, and next steps. NOTES AND JOURNALS • Rich notes with fonts, colors, tags, and your own custom sections. • Sketch and handwrite with Apple Pencil. • Journals with 25 covers to choose from, plus a guided Gratitude Journal. IT GOES WHERE YOU GO • Home Screen widgets for today's tasks, your mission, your values, and daily quotes. • Live Activities keep today's tasks on your Lock Screen. • Add a task from Control Center, or ask Siri. • Apple Watch app to see your day and check off tasks from your wrist. • iCloud sync across iPhone, iPad, and Mac. MAKE IT YOURS • Planner themes, including seasonal ones. • Task-complete sounds and rewards for finishing what you planned. • Color-coded categories and repeating rules with advanced options. OPUS ONE PRO The core planner is free. Opus One Pro adds cloud sync across all your devices, weather, attachments (images, PDFs, audio), Apple Pencil sketching, categories, repeating rules, Goals, Siri, and themes. One subscription covers iPhone, iPad, and Mac on the same iCloud account. Available yearly or monthly. Subscription details: Payment is charged to your Apple Account at confirmation of purchase. The subscription renews automatically unless auto-renew is turned off at least 24 hours before the end of the current period, and your account is charged for renewal within 24 hours before the period ends. Manage or cancel in your Account Settings. Privacy Policy: https://piso13.com/privacy-policy-2/ Terms of Service: https://piso13.com/terms-of-service/
Penciled In.
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Penciled In is a planner you can write in. Type "dinner with Anna Friday 7pm" and it lands on Friday at 7. Type "mum's birthday on the 14th" and it lands on the 14th, all day. No date pickers, no five-field form, no waiting on a spinner — it reads the sentence as you type and shows you what it understood before anything is saved. And when it guesses wrong, every part of that guess is one tap from right. Quick Add works on every iPhone and iPad, instantly, and it's free. It doesn't need Apple Intelligence and never has. A PLANNER, NOT A TO-DO LIST Month, week, day and agenda views. Events, tasks, reminders, grocery lists and trips, colour-coded and filterable. Repeating entries show on every day they repeat, and you can tick things done right from the calendar. A Notes tab with checklists, #tags and search for the things that don't have a date yet. A Reflect tab for the end of the day. Everything syncs privately through your own iCloud account. No sign-up, no account to create, and no server of ours in the middle. MADE FOR IPAD A sidebar, notes side by side with their list, keyboard shortcuts, and drag an entry to another day to move it. ON YOUR HOME SCREEN An Up Next widget shows your next few entries without opening anything, and a Quick Add widget puts a sentence straight into your planner from the Home Screen. Ask Siri to add an event, a reminder or a note and it goes to the same place. APPLE INTELLIGENCE, WHERE IT ACTUALLY HELPS On supported iPhones, Penciled In can read your week back to you in plain language — which days are heavy, what's clustered too tightly. It runs entirely on your device. FREE, AND WHAT ISN'T Free covers the actual planner: unlimited events, tasks, notes, lists and reflections, Quick Add, the widgets, Siri, and five AI week summaries a month. We don't cap what you write. Premium adds the full meal planner (lunch, dinner and snacks, recipe photos and generated shopping lists), themes and appearance customisation, note locking, and unlimited AI summaries. Premium is $6.99/month or $34.99/year with the first week free, or $69.99 once for Lifetime. Subscriptions can be cancelled any time in Settings. Terms of Use (EULA): https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/ Privacy Policy: https://my7h4zntv5-alt.github.io/penciled-in-legal/
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is device support: Opus One at 4 against Penciled In.'s 2. Opus One also leads on iOS requirement (15.0 vs 17.0). On price, update cadence, ads and in-app purchases 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. Opus One sells 2 in-app purchases, starting at $4.99 per month and Penciled In. sells 3 in-app purchases, starting at $6.99 per month. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.
Opus One ships an update every 3 weeks, Penciled In. every 4 weeks. The most recent releases landed on November 1, 2026 and October 31, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Opus One | Penciled In. |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.7 (984 ratings) — better | — |
| Positive reviews | 65.7% of reviews | — |
| Number of ratings | 984 — better | — |
| Update frequency | Every 3 weeks — better | Every 4 weeks |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | Yes |
| Monetization | Subscription | — |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod, Apple Watch — better | iPhone, iPad |
| Requires iOS | 15.0 — better | 17.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 187 MB | 6 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | PISO 13, Inc. | Dylan Dalmeida |
Bugs and requests
Opus One
Reported bugs
4 issues- Sync issues between devices
- App crashes and data loss
- Keyboard not working on iPad
- Distorted font in calendar view
Requested features
6 requests- Add weekly and monthly views
- Improve Apple Pencil support
- Add project management features
- Integrate with more calendar/task apps
- Provide better training and tutorials
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- Allow customization of UI and themes
Penciled In.
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
In-app purchases
Opus One
- Opus One Pro7 Days trial$4.991 Month
- Opus One Professional7 Days trial$39.991 Year
Penciled In.
- Premium Monthly7 Days trial$6.991 Month
- Premium Annual7 Days trial$34.991 Year
- Premium Lifetime$69.99









