---
title: "The Sealed Journal vs Apple Journal"
description: "Apple's Journal is free and lives in your iPhone. The Sealed Journal is one file that lives anywhere a browser does. A comparison."
canonical: "https://sealedjournal.com/j/vs-apple-journal"
updatedAt: "2026-08-11"
category: "Comparisons"
---

# The Sealed Journal vs Apple Journal.

_One comes free with the phone. The other comes free of the phone._

Apple Journal is genuinely good. It is free, it is polished, and it is already on your iPhone. It will suggest moments to write about, drawn from your photos, your workouts, your locations, the music you played. For many people that is exactly the encouragement they wanted.

It is also inseparable from the phone. Your journal lives inside an Apple ID, inside iCloud, inside an ecosystem — and the suggestions that make it easy are made possible by how much of your life the device already sees. The journal comes to you pre-filled with yourself.

The Sealed Journal is one HTML file. It runs in any browser on any machine, asks for no account, and suggests nothing. Nothing is drawn from anywhere except you, sitting down, deciding to write. That is a smaller offer, and for some people the right one.

## The facts, side by side

| | Apple Journal | The Sealed Journal |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Pricing model | Free, bundled with iOS | One-time purchase |
| Current price | Included with iOS: Free | One purchase: $24 (rising to $29) once |
| Free tier | — | No — a live demo, then one price |
| Platforms | iPhone (iOS) first | Any modern browser, any operating system |
| Account required | Yes — Apple ID required for iCloud sync | No — no account, ever |
| Cloud sync | Optional — iCloud sync tied to your Apple ID | No sync, no server — a single offline HTML file |
| Encryption | Apple-managed encryption; strength depends on Advanced Data Protection settings | AES-256-GCM client-side, PBKDF2 at 600,000 iterations |

Bundled with iOS; not sold separately.

Apple Journal prices verified 11 August 2026. Source: https://www.apple.com

## Questions

### Isn't Apple Journal private too?

Apple's protections are real and, properly configured, strong. But the journal still lives inside an account and an ecosystem, and its privacy depends on settings, sync state, and Apple's architecture. Ours depends on one thing: a passphrase only you know, encrypting a file only you hold.

### What if I don't use an iPhone?

Then Apple Journal isn't available to you at all — it is iPhone-first by design. The Sealed Journal runs wherever a browser runs: a ThinkPad, a Chromebook, a ten-year-old iMac.

### Why pay $24 when Apple's journal is free?

You aren't paying for features — Apple has more. You're paying for the absence of everything else, and for a file that belongs to you rather than to a platform. Software bundled free with a platform ultimately serves the platform.

## Price

The Sealed Journal is a one-time purchase of $24 (introductory price, rising to $29). No subscription, no account, lifetime updates, 30-day refund. Buy at https://sealedjournal.com/#pricing

## Elsewhere

- Hub: Comparisons — https://sealedjournal.com/journals/comparisons
- All journals — https://sealedjournal.com/journals
- HTML version of this page — https://sealedjournal.com/j/vs-apple-journal