Search for a free diary app and the word "free" rarely survives contact with
the sign-up screen. More often it means a 7-day trial with a credit card on
file, a plan that nags you to subscribe partway through, or an app that works
until it quietly asks for payment to keep your own entries. If what you
actually want is a diary app without a subscription — one you can use
indefinitely without a card on file — the real question is whether the free
tier is a plan or a trial in disguise.
On Storyie, the free plan is a plan. There's no credit card at sign-up, no
countdown to a charge, and no subscription required to keep writing.
TL;DR
- Storyie's free plan needs no subscription and no credit card to start.
- It's a plan, not a trial — it doesn't expire or switch itself to paid.
- Free plan limits: up to 15 diary entries per month, up to 50 notes in total, 1 photo per entry, 3 diary templates, 1 owned shared journal.
- The same free plan runs on iPhone, Android, and the web, on one account.
- Pro is an optional paid upgrade for more room and Markdown export — see the pricing page for the current price, not a number in this post.
"Free" vs. a trial with a card on file
The thing worth checking before you trust a "free" diary app isn't whether
it says free — almost all of them do — but what happens after you commit
some writing to it:
- Is a credit card required up front? A free tier that asks for payment details before you've written anything is a trial, not a free plan.
- Does the free tier expire? Some apps count down a trial period and then lock your entries behind a subscription. A real free plan has no end date.
- Are the limits documented, or vague? "Free to start" with no stated caps usually means the caps are set wherever is most inconvenient for you later.
- Can you keep reading what you wrote without paying? The worst version holds your own past entries hostage once a trial ends.
On Storyie: no card at sign-up, no expiry on the free plan, published limits
you can read below, and nothing you've written is ever locked away for not
upgrading.
What Storyie's free plan actually includes
Included | Free plan |
|---|---|
Subscription required | No |
Credit card required | No |
Diary entries per month | Up to 15 |
Notes (total) | Up to 50 |
Photos per entry | 1 |
Diary templates | Up to 3 |
Shared journals you own | 1 (joining journals others own is unlimited) |
Rich-text editor & tags | Yes, the full editor |
Public/private per entry | Yes — publish an individual entry with its own link if you want to share it |
Platforms | Native iPhone, native Android, full web app — one account |
Data export (Markdown ZIP) | Not included — a Pro feature |
Those limits are the plan, not a preview of one. The editor, tags,
cross-platform sync, and per-entry publishing work the same whether you're
on free or Pro — what the free plan caps is capacity (entries, notes,
photos, templates, owned shared journals), and data export is the one
writing-side feature reserved for Pro.
Why there's a Pro plan at all
A free plan that genuinely needs no subscription still has to be paid for
somehow, so it's fair to ask where the catch is. The honest version: Pro is
an optional paid upgrade that removes the capacity caps above, raises photos
per entry, and adds Markdown-and-images export — useful once you're writing
a lot or want your data out, not required to keep a diary. Because prices can
change, this post doesn't quote a number; the pricing page shows
the current Pro price and what the upgrade includes. The point for this
article is narrower: you never pass a payment step to use the free plan, and
nothing moves you onto Pro without you choosing it.
What happens when you reach the free plan's limit
Reaching 15 entries in a month doesn't touch anything you've already
written. You can still open, read, edit, and publish every past entry and
every note — the limit only affects whether you can start a new diary entry
for the rest of that month, and it resets at the start of the next calendar
month. There's no "your trial has ended, subscribe to continue" wall, because
there was never a trial to end.
Takeaways
If "free" and "no subscription" both have to be true for you, the test isn't
the label on the landing page — it's whether the free tier is a plan or a
trial waiting to charge you. On Storyie it's a plan: no card at sign-up, no
expiry, documented limits, and your past entries always readable whether or
not you ever upgrade. For how the same free plan spans every device, see
a cross-platform journal app you can start using for free;
to write with no install at all, see
an online diary with no download; and to
start before even making an account, see
a diary app you can start writing in before you sign up.
For more on what to actually write, see
five ways to use Storyie. Otherwise,
sign up and start writing, or get the app for
iPhone or
Android.
