Carbo › Pencil Notes & Drawing vs NoteBuddy
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
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.
- 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
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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
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.
- Rich text editing
- Add images and drawings
- Folder and subfolder support
- iCloud synchronization
- Backup feature
- Apple Pencil support
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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
Verdict
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
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.
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.
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.
| Parameter | Carbo › Pencil Notes & Drawing | NoteBuddy |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.3 (51 ratings) — better | 3.3 (16 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | 54.8% of reviews — better | 22.2% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | 51 — better | 16 |
| Update frequency | Every 4 months | Every 3 months — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | Yes |
| Monetization | Free with in-app purchases | Free with in-app purchases |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, Mac | iPhone, iPad, iPod |
| Requires iOS | 18.0 | 12.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 36 MB | 14 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Creaceed SRL | Oleg Mueller |
Customer experience
Carbo › Pencil Notes & Drawing
NoteBuddy
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
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- 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
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- 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
Carbo › Pencil Notes & Drawing
- Pro Plan (Monthly)7 Days trial$3.991 Month
- Pro Plan (Yearly)7 Days trial$9.991 Year
- Pro Pack 2$23.99
NoteBuddy
- NoteBuddy Pro$2.99
Questions
Is Carbo › Pencil Notes & Drawing free?
Is NoteBuddy free?
Which has better reviews, Carbo › Pencil Notes & Drawing or NoteBuddy?
Do Carbo › Pencil Notes & Drawing or NoteBuddy have ads?
Which is updated more often, Carbo › Pencil Notes & Drawing or NoteBuddy?
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