Bear is the better app overall, scoring 9.1 to 8.4. Bear wins on 5 of the 5 scores, Craft on 0.
Writers and Apple users who want fast, good-looking Markdown notes
Writers and Apple users who want beautiful notes and docs with little effort
Score by score
The details
| Feature | Bear | Craft |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Productivity & Notes | Productivity & Notes |
| Category rank | #3 of 13 | #9 of 13 |
| Developer | Shiny Frog | Craft Docs Limited |
| Pricing | Free + paid plans | Free + paid plans |
| Usable for free | Yes | Yes |
| iPhone & iPad | ✓ | ✓ |
| Android | — | ✓ |
| Mac | ✓ | ✓ |
| Windows | — | ✓ |
| Web | ✓ | ✓ |
Common questions
Is Bear better than Craft?
Bear is the better app overall, scoring 9.1 to 8.4. Bear wins on 5 of the 5 scores, Craft on 0.
Which is cheaper, Bear or Craft?
Bear: Free without sync; Bear Pro is $2.99 a month or $29.99 a year. Craft: Free Starter plan; Plus $8/month billed yearly, or $10 monthly. On value for money, Bear scores higher.
Do Bear and Craft work on the same devices?
Only Craft runs on Android, Windows.
Which is more private, Bear or Craft?
Bear scores higher on privacy (9.4/10). App Store label: no tracking and no data linked to you, only crash data. Notes sync through your own iCloud, Shiny Frog says it can't access them, and Pro adds per-note encryption.
Strengths and weaknesses
Bear
- Polished, distraction-free writing
- Notes stay in your iCloud, not on Bear's servers
- Pro costs just $29.99 a year
- No Android or Windows app
- Sync and encryption require Pro
- Tags only, no traditional folders
Bear is a Markdown notes app with a calm, polished editor that makes jotting things down a pleasure. Organize with nested tags instead of folders, add tables, callouts, math and Mermaid diagrams, and search text inside images and PDFs with Pro. Notes sync privately through your iCloud, and the price is gentle. It's Apple-only apart from a web version, and sync needs Pro.
Full Bear review
Craft
- Beautiful documents with almost no formatting work
- Fast, native apps on Mac, iPhone and iPad
- Easy sharing of polished pages on the web
- Database and team features trail Notion
- Free plan caps you at 1,500 blocks
- Offline use needs setup on Windows, Android and web
Craft makes writing and organizing notes feel good. Pages nest inside each other as cards, documents look polished with no effort, and you can share any doc as a clean web page. Daily notes, tasks, whiteboards, kanban collections and an AI assistant round it out. It now runs on Android too, though the Apple apps are still the best. The catch: databases trail Notion, and the free plan's block limit fills up fast.
Full Craft review
