Apple vs Standard Notes
Based on our analysis, Standard Notes is the more privacy-respecting choice overall.
BACK →| Category | Apple | Standard Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Overall | B+ · 78/100 | A · 87/100 |
| What they collect | Mixed (72) | Positive (90) |
| Who they share it with | Positive (82) | Positive (84) |
| What you can do | Positive (80) | Mixed (72) |
| What they promise | Positive (82) | Positive (82) |
Apple collects significantly less data than other big tech companies and explicitly commits — using both Nevada and California legal definitions — to never selling or sharing your data for advertising. Their own ad platform doesn't use data brokers or cross-app tracking. Private personal data isn't used to train Apple's AI models. The main caveats are health, fitness, and financial data collection, government ID in some cases, and personalised ads that exist but are easy to turn off.
View full analysis →Standard Notes is an end-to-end encrypted note-taking app that genuinely cannot read your notes; analytics are self-hosted via Plausible with no IP retention, apps collect zero usage data or location, and the subprocessor list is short and transparent — the main weaknesses are US jurisdiction and AWS hosting, the absence of published security audit reports, a thin policy that lacks GDPR rights language, and email marketing enabled by default.
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