SumizAI vs Notability

What Notability is

What Notability is

Notability is one of the most recognizable handwritten note-taking apps on iOS, combining handwriting, PDF annotation, and text in one tightly integrated editor. Developed by Ginger Labs, it has become over the years one of the default choices for students and anyone taking notes on an iPad with Apple Pencil.

Key features

Handwriting-to-text conversion lets you search and edit handwritten notes as if they'd been typed on a keyboard. Audio recording synced with notes lets you tap any part of a note and hear exactly what was being said at that moment in the recording — a feature especially valued during lectures. Auto Sync automatically backs up notes, and a library plus customizable themes let you personalize how content is organized. The paid Notability Plus subscription adds math conversion, study flashcards, and unlimited cloud storage for audio recordings.

Who it's for

Notability mainly appeals to students taking notes on an iPad during lectures, where syncing audio with handwriting lets you later replay the context behind any note. People annotating PDF documents — reading and commenting on academic papers or work materials — will also find a well-fitted tool here.

Use cases

In practice, Notability works well in a lecture, where a student writes key points by hand while a background audio recording lets them later return to a moment the note didn't fully capture. Someone reading a long PDF document can add handwritten comments directly onto it without printing.

Pricing and business model

Notability offers a Classic plan — a one-time purchase with no subscription, available to people who bought the app before November 2021 or purchased the Classic version after July 2026. Newer users choose between Notability Plus at $14.99/year (removes editing limits on older notes, adds math conversion and flashcards) and a Pro plan at $99.99/year with real-time audio transcription and AI-powered Smart Notes.

Limitations and what to watch for

The app is available exclusively within the Apple ecosystem — on Mac and iPad/iPhone — with no Android or Windows version, ruling it out for users on other platforms. The pricing model has changed several times over the years, so it's worth checking your account's current status before assuming you have access to a particular plan.

AI notes copied over from conversations

Notability has no built-in integration with external AI models beyond its own Smart Notes feature on the Pro plan, so bringing an ai notes entry from a conversation with a language assistant over requires typing or pasting the text by hand. Handwriting-to-text conversion later makes such an ai notes entry searchable, but importing from an external chat itself isn't automated.

What's worth checking before choosing

Before committing to a paid plan, check carefully which features require the Plus subscription versus which need Pro — the price gap is significant (nearly sevenfold), and not every user needs real-time audio transcription.

Bottom line

Notability is a polished, tightly integrated app for handwritten notes and PDF annotation within the Apple ecosystem, with a subscription-based pricing model for newer users. Anyone who wants ai notes from AI conversations to land in an archive without manual retyping should consider a tool built around that workflow.

History of pricing model changes

The shift from a one-time purchase to a subscription in 2021 sparked controversy among long-time users, which pushed Ginger Labs to introduce the Classic plan protecting existing customers — worth keeping in mind when judging the tool's long-term pricing stability.

Comparison with SumizAI

Notability and SumizAI serve completely different purposes. Notability is a tool for handwriting and annotating on an iPad, with optional audio transcription on its most expensive plan. SumizAI generates these notes directly from a conversation with an AI model — question, answer, Markdown note in a vault you own, with your own API key plugged into one of seven providers. Anyone handwriting notes and annotating PDFs on an iPad will pick Notability; anyone who wants these notes from AI conversations to build an automatic archive will find SumizAI the better-fitting tool.

What SumizAI is

A note-taking application built around a conversation with an AI model. You ask a question, the answer streams back, and the answers worth keeping become Markdown notes — filed into a vault that is a folder on your own disk.

A vault is a directory holding base.md, a generated table of contents up to six levels deep, and a notes/ folder with one .md file per note. Before a note is written it is checked against the ones already there, so the fourth note about the same idea gets merged instead of added. Links between notes are ordinary Markdown links to files that exist.

The model is never ours: you bring your own API key to one of seven providers — Anthropic, OpenAI, Gemini, Groq, OpenRouter, a local Ollama or your own server — and pay that provider directly. A question sends the table of contents plus at most five relevant notes within a 24,000-character budget, and the app shows you which five it used.

Every answer kept this way becomes one of these ai notes, ready to search again months later without hunting back through old chats.

Side by side

Where they differ

• AlternativeTo's description of Notability does not mention an AI model. That is the whole starting point in SumizAI: you have a conversation with a model on your own API key, and the answers worth keeping become notes without you filing them.
• Notability is freemium: there is a free tier and a paid one, and the line between them is the thing to read before committing. SumizAI has one plan at a dollar a month, so there is no feature held back for a higher tier — and an unpaid account still opens and exports every vault it already has.
• AlternativeTo's description of Notability does not mention Markdown, so check what format your notes end up in before you fill it up. SumizAI writes standard .md files to a folder you picked, and an unpaid account can still export all of them.
• Notability supports handwriting or drawing. SumizAI is typed text only.

Which one to pick