---
title: "The Sealed Journal vs Daylio"
description: "Daylio turns your days into moods, icons, and charts. The Sealed Journal gives them sentences. Two different instruments compared."
canonical: "https://sealedjournal.com/j/vs-daylio"
updatedAt: "2026-08-11"
category: "Comparisons"
---

# The Sealed Journal vs Daylio.

_A chart of your moods, or a page for them._

Daylio made journaling nearly writing-free: tap a face for your mood, tap icons for your activities, and over months the app draws you charts — correlations, streaks, the statistical weather of your life. To its credit, it keeps that data largely on your device, which is more than most of its category can say.

But a mood chosen from five faces is an answer to a multiple-choice question, and some days are not multiple-choice. The thing you most need to record is usually the thing with no icon.

The Sealed Journal has no moods, no stats, no streaks — only sentences, which are slower and hold more. If the charts help you, Daylio is honest work. If the charts have started answering for you, the page is here.

## The facts, side by side

| | Daylio | The Sealed Journal |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Pricing model | Free tier plus Premium subscription | One-time purchase |
| Current price | Premium: $4.99 / month · Premium (annual): $35.99 / year | One purchase: $24 (rising to $29) once |
| Free tier | Free tier with limited entries and features | No — a live demo, then one price |
| Platforms | iOS, Android | Any modern browser, any operating system |
| Account required | No — No account required | No — no account, ever |
| Cloud sync | Optional — Data stored on-device, with optional cloud backup (Drive / iCloud) | No sync, no server — a single offline HTML file |
| Encryption | Not a client-side passphrase model | AES-256-GCM client-side, PBKDF2 at 600,000 iterations |

On-device storage is genuinely better than most; backups rely on the cloud provider's encryption.

Daylio prices verified 11 August 2026. Source: https://daylio.net

## Questions

### Aren't statistics useful for spotting patterns?

For behaviors — sleep, exercise, drinking — sometimes, yes. For meaning, the pattern tends to surface in your own written words long before it would show in a chart.

### Can I still make quick, short entries?

Nothing stops a two-line entry. Nothing scores it, either.

### Daylio stores data on-device. Isn't that as private as you?

It's genuinely better than most apps, and we'll say so. It's still an app-store app with optional cloud backups resting on the provider's encryption. Ours is a single file whose contents are ciphertext under a passphrase only you know.

## 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-daylio