Comparison

Carbo › Pencil Notes & Drawing vs portal.3

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

portal.3

Features
Read full description

【機能の一部】 ・即座にアクセスできるクイックメモ  テキストメモも、サイレント撮影画像も、配布資料もすべてアプリで、講義ごとに保存管理、いつでも簡単に見返せる。  講義メモをpdfにまとめて共有可能。 ・未提出・提出済みの可視化 ・毎回のログインの手間を解決。LMSと同期し、快適なアクセスを維持。 ・1か所にまとめられた課題、アナウンス  提出忘れや、休講情報・試験告知を見逃すことはもうありません。 ・PDFダイレクトビュー  配布資料のPDFを、ダウンロードなしで直接展開。 ・高い安全性  公式apiを使用した安全同期。  独自外部サーバー非保有の完全スタンドアロン。ユーザー情報をどこにも保持、送信しないゼロ保持。  すべてのプライベートなデータ処理は、あなたのスマートフォン内部の暗号化領域だけで完結。 本アプリは、大学公式のアプリケーションではありません。学生の利便性向上のために開発された、非公式の学習補助ツールです。 公式のLMSサイトと併せてご利用ください。

Screenshots

Carbo › Pencil Notes & Drawing4 screens
portal.34 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is in-app purchases: portal.3 at none against Carbo › Pencil Notes & Drawing's 3. portal.3 also leads on iOS requirement (15.0 vs 18.0). On price, update cadence, ads and device support 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. portal.3 asks for nothing beyond the download.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Carbo › Pencil Notes & Drawing ships an update every 4 months, portal.3 every 2 months. The most recent releases landed on November 1, 2026 and October 31, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard2 real differences · 8 level
Carbo › Pencil Notes & Drawing versus portal.3: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterCarbo › Pencil Notes & Drawingportal.3
PriceFreeFree
Rating4.3 (51 ratings) — better—
Positive reviews54.8% of reviews—
Number of ratings51 — better—
Update frequencyEvery 4 monthsEvery 2 months — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesYesNo — better
MonetizationFree with in-app purchases—
DevicesiPhone, iPad, MaciPhone, iPad, iPod
Requires iOS18.015.0 — better
Further details — not scored
Size36 MB77 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperCreaceed SRLKatsutoshi Hamana

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

portal.3

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
None

portal.3

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is Carbo › Pencil Notes & Drawing free?
Carbo › Pencil Notes & Drawing is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is portal.3 free?
portal.3 is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Do Carbo › Pencil Notes & Drawing or portal.3 have ads?
Neither Carbo › Pencil Notes & Drawing nor portal.3 shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Carbo › Pencil Notes & Drawing or portal.3?
Carbo › Pencil Notes & Drawing ships an update every 4 months, and portal.3 every 2 months. Most recently, Carbo › Pencil Notes & Drawing was updated on November 1, 2026 and portal.3 on October 31, 2026.

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