Rosebud is a capable AI journal, but it costs $12.99/month and its AI runs in the cloud. MirrorNotes gives you AI journaling for free, with the model running on your iPhone so your entries never reach a server. Here's an honest comparison.
| Feature | MirrorNotes | Rosebud |
|---|---|---|
| AI price | Free | $12.99/mo |
| Where the AI runs | On your iPhone (Gemma 3 via CoreML) | Cloud servers |
| Journal text leaves your device | Never, no network path exists | Yes, for AI processing |
| Works offline | Fully, including all AI features | Requires internet for AI |
| Free tier | Everything is free: unlimited writing, full AI, full history, search, iCloud backup | Limited free entries/features |
| Daily AI prompts | Daily Nudge, personalized from your entries | Yes, conversational |
| Ask questions over your entries | "Ask your journal", answered on-device | Yes, via cloud AI |
| Mood tracking | Mood tags + Mood Timeline + alerts | Yes |
| Guided coaching dialogs | No, journal-first, not chat-first | Yes, interactive sessions |
| Platforms | iPhone only | iOS, Android, web |
| Account required | No account, no sign-in | Account required |
Rosebud's interactive coaching works by sending your words to large cloud models. That's how most AI journals work, and it's why they cost what they cost: every reflection you generate costs the company real server money, and that bill becomes your subscription price.
MirrorNotes makes the opposite bet: a small language model (Gemma 3 1B) runs directly on your iPhone's chip. The model reads your entries in your phone's memory, generates the insight, and nothing is transmitted. Two consequences follow:
Everything is free: unlimited entries, full history, full-text search, iCloud backup, and the full AI layer. No trial, no cap.
Yes. MirrorNotes is free versus Rosebud's $12.99/month, roughly $155/year. The gap is structural: we don't run AI servers, so there's no inference bill to pass on to you.
For journaling, yes. Spotting patterns in your own writing doesn't need a frontier model, it needs your entries and a competent small model. Where you'd notice the difference is open-ended coaching chat, which MirrorNotes deliberately doesn't do.
Not yet, import tools are on the roadmap. Your MirrorNotes entries are stored in SwiftData on your device and synced to your own iCloud, so they remain yours either way.
Every feature, completely free. No trial, no card, no catch.
Download on the App Store