Comparison

Carbo › Pencil Notes & Drawing vs NoteBuddy

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

Head to head
About

Carbo › Pencil Notes & Drawing

Capture and organize handwritten notes and sketches digitally. This app preserves the expressiveness of your original drawings with innovative visualization technology. Tag, annotate, and store your creations in the cloud for easy retrieval and sharing.

Highlights
  • Hybrid visualization technology
  • Image-based input options
  • Natural sketching with Apple Pencil support
  • Editable notes and drawings
  • Tagging and annotation for search
  • Cloud storage integration
  • Customizable export styles
Features
Read full description

Carbo lets you capture and organize handwritten notes and sketches, bringing handwriting in the digital age, right on your iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Carbo's innovative visualization technology sets you free from pixel artefacts, while preserving all expressiveness of your original drawings. Collect notes, design sketches, or whiteboard drawings. Tag and annotate your notes for easy retrieval. Store them either on the device itself or in the cloud, with native support for iCloud, Evernote, and Dropbox. Finally, turn your notes and drawings into beautiful creations using a variety of handcrafted export styles and share them with the world. KEY FEATURES • Hybrid visualization technology: note picture is cleaned up and turned into a highly accurate monochrome representation. Carbo’s innovative rendering technology offers both the advantages of vector (sharpness) and bitmap (easy editing) techniques. • Image-based input options: take a new picture, import from camera roll, or import an image from iCloud Drive. • Drawing support: highly accurate and natural sketching capabilities. Full support for Apple Pencil & 3D Touch pressure sensitivity. • Note editing: edit any part of your note, i.e. select, resize, relocate, or remove any element. Make strokes thinner or thicker. • Annotations: add descriptive text to your note. These annotations are archived along with the image, and are globally searchable. • Tag your notes. Tags are colored for easier detection, and will help you classify notes. • Notes can be stored either on your device, or in the cloud using Evernote, Dropbox, and iCloud. • Efficient file-based storage: typical note is 400KB instead of the usual 3MB JPEG of a photo. • Export styles (iOS): choose among 7 beautifully handcrafted styles and their variants to customize your notes (Blackboard/chalks combos, Blueprint, Paper with several pen styles…). • Up to 1200-dpi black-and-white high-fidelity exports for print. • Many sharing options: Twitter, Facebook, AirDrop, Mail, Messages, iCloud Drive, Open in (another app)... • Latest iOS Support: App Search, iPad multitasking, Siri 'Remind Me', 3D Touch shortcuts, modern iOS 14 photo access (browsing & searching). • macOS 11 Big Sur / Mac Catalyst (Optimized for Mac). • Universal app for iPhone, iPad, and Mac. • Pro Pack 2 or Pro Plan: one-off purchase to remove the 10-note limit. PRICING You can unlock all features either through Pro Pack 2, a one-time purchase, or through Pro Plan, an affordable subscription. Pro Pack upgrade pricing is also available if you own a previous version. HELP & FEEDBACK Visit creaceed.com/carbo for more information. Send your questions and feedback to carbo@creaceed.com Terms of Use: https://creaceed.com/terms Privacy Policy: https://creaceed.com/privacy

About

NoteBuddy

This note-taking application offers a comprehensive suite of tools for organizing thoughts and ideas. It supports rich text formatting, image insertion, and freehand drawing. Features like folder organization and iCloud synchronization ensure your notes are accessible and secure.

Highlights
  • Rich text editing
  • Add images and drawings
  • Folder and subfolder support
  • iCloud synchronization
  • Backup feature
  • Apple Pencil support
Features
Read full description

Note taking app with all important features you need: - rich text editing (bold, italic, underline, text alignments, text color, etc.) - add images - add drawings and hand written notes - support for folders and subfolders - iCloud synchronization - backup feature Including Support for: - Dynamic Type - Split Screen - Apple Pencil

Screenshots

Carbo › Pencil Notes & Drawing4 screens
NoteBuddy3 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is rating: Carbo › Pencil Notes & Drawing at 4.3 against NoteBuddy's 3.3. Carbo › Pencil Notes & Drawing also leads on review sentiment (55% vs 22%) and ratings volume (51 vs 16). NoteBuddy's advantage is iOS requirement (12.0 vs 18.0). 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

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Both are free to download. Carbo › Pencil Notes & Drawing sells 3 in-app purchases, starting at $3.99 per month and NoteBuddy sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

Carbo › Pencil Notes & Drawing holds the better App Store score, 4.3 against 3.3. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 51 and 16 respectively. Written reviews point the same way: 55% of Carbo › Pencil Notes & Drawing's written reviews are positive against 22% of NoteBuddy's.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Carbo › Pencil Notes & Drawing ships an update every 4 months, NoteBuddy every 3 months. The most recent releases landed on October 20, 2026 and October 24, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard4 real differences · 6 level
Carbo › Pencil Notes & Drawing versus NoteBuddy: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterCarbo › Pencil Notes & DrawingNoteBuddy
PriceFreeFree
Rating4.3 (51 ratings) — better3.3 (16 ratings)
Positive reviews54.8% of reviews — better22.2% of reviews
Number of ratings51 — better16
Update frequencyEvery 4 monthsEvery 3 months — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesYesYes
MonetizationFree with in-app purchasesFree with in-app purchases
DevicesiPhone, iPad, MaciPhone, iPad, iPod
Requires iOS18.012.0 — better
Further details — not scored
Size36 MB14 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperCreaceed SRLOleg Mueller

Customer experience

Carbo › Pencil Notes & Drawing

All ratings51 ratings
Positive82.4%
Neutral3.9%
Negative13.7%
Written reviews146 reviews
Positive54.8%
Neutral13.7%
Negative31.5%

NoteBuddy

All ratings16 ratings
Positive56.3%
Neutral0.0%
Negative43.8%
Written reviews9 reviews
Positive22.2%
Neutral0.0%
Negative77.8%

Bugs and requests

Carbo › Pencil Notes & Drawing

Reported bugs

13 issues
  • Keeps crashing on iPad
  • Update bricks app (crashes on launch)
  • Carbo keeps crashing
  • Sync problem with Evernote
  • Exporting pages (archiving) doesn't work
Show 8 more
  • Buggy on iOS 9.01 and iPhone 6S
  • iPhone keeps switching off sync with Evernote
  • App crashes frequently
  • File import from iCloud shows files but can't be opened
  • Beta Evernote sync does not work
  • Randomly selects other bits on the page
  • Clunky or doesn't quite work
  • Sync with Evernote was easy, but iPhone keeps switching off attempt to sync

Requested features

58 requests
  • Adding colors
  • More pencil sizes
  • Ability to handle multi-page docs
  • Viable export options (PDF, etc.)
  • Ability to bundle pages into PDF
Show 53 more
  • Put a title on scans
  • Copy and paste selected objects
  • Export an entire notebook as PDF
  • Desktop client for reassociating tags/annotations
  • Save notes as pictures to Photos
  • Select multiple vectors and change color/thickness
  • iCloud Drive support
  • Invert image
  • Copy/cut/paste selections
  • Export svg file
  • OneDrive cloud option
  • Scan a whole page of doodles and separate them
  • Improve paper edge detection
  • Multi-page option
  • Text box or drawing function
  • Improve captured image quality
  • Edge-detection feature
  • Better handling of lined paper
  • Sync with Evernote
  • Choice of line sizes for annotations
  • Color picker and highlighter pen
  • Support for different writing utensils on one surface
  • Multiple page support
  • Different sized pens
  • More customization for page size
  • PDF vector export
  • Filter multiple tags
  • Re-editing scanned documents
  • Cloud sync for notes
  • Copy feature for local and cloud storage
  • Save to Photos app
  • Ability to use notes as pictures
  • Select multiple vectors and change color or thickness
  • Scan entire page of doodles and separate them
  • More cloud options (OneDrive)
  • Text box or drawing function
  • Better paper edge detection
  • Multi-page option
  • Improve captured image quality
  • Edge-detection
  • Better handling of lined paper
  • Sync with Evernote
  • Choice of line sizes for annotations
  • Color picker and highlighter pen
  • Support for different writing utensils on one surface
  • Multiple page support
  • Different sized pens
  • More customization for page size
  • PDF vector export
  • Filter multiple tags
  • Re-editing scanned documents
  • Cloud sync for notes
  • Copy feature for local and cloud storage

NoteBuddy

Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.

In-app purchases

3 purchases

Carbo › Pencil Notes & Drawing

Subscriptions2
  • Pro Plan (Monthly)7 Days trial$3.991 Month
  • Pro Plan (Yearly)7 Days trial$9.991 Year
One-time1
  • Pro Pack 2$23.99
1 purchases

NoteBuddy

One-time1
  • NoteBuddy Pro$2.99

Questions

Is Carbo › Pencil Notes & Drawing free?
Carbo › Pencil Notes & Drawing is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is NoteBuddy free?
NoteBuddy is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Which has better reviews, Carbo › Pencil Notes & Drawing or NoteBuddy?
Carbo › Pencil Notes & Drawing is rated higher. Carbo › Pencil Notes & Drawing averages 4.3 out of 5 from 51 ratings, while NoteBuddy averages 3.3 from 16 ratings.
Do Carbo › Pencil Notes & Drawing or NoteBuddy have ads?
Neither Carbo › Pencil Notes & Drawing nor NoteBuddy shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Carbo › Pencil Notes & Drawing or NoteBuddy?
Carbo › Pencil Notes & Drawing ships an update every 4 months, and NoteBuddy every 3 months. Most recently, Carbo › Pencil Notes & Drawing was updated on October 20, 2026 and NoteBuddy on October 24, 2026.

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