Agenda vs DEVONthink 4
Both are bought outright, both sit in writing, and both are bought by people leaving Evernote, Notion. Here is what actually differs — including what each price does not buy.
The short answer
- Agenda costs $34.99 against $99 — 65% less.
- DEVONthink 4 has the cleaner licence: own it, pay for major upgrades, against lifetime plan available for Agenda.
Side by side
 Agenda$34.99Lifetime tier |  DEVONthink 4$99Paid upgrades | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | date-based notes where unlocked features stay unlocked | research database for documents, mail and scans that stays yours |
| Price | $34.99 | $99 |
| Licence | Lifetime plan available | Own it, pay for major upgrades |
| What you get | Normally sold as a subscription, but a genuine one-time lifetime option exists. | One payment, and the developer charges for major versions on a stated cadence. |
| The catch | The one-time unlock covers today's features plus one year of new ones, not everything after that | Updates stop after a year unless you pay to extend; the version you have keeps working forever |
| Macs per licence | not established | 2 |
| Account required | no | no |
| Works offline | yes | yes |
| Apple Silicon | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | Yes |
| On Setapp | No | No |
| Minimum macOS | not established | not established |
| App Store rating | not established | not established |
| Last updated | not established | not established |
| Price checked | 2026-09-22 | 2026-09-22 |
Apple’s public API reports a rating for only a small minority of Mac apps, and returns zero for most of the rest even when the store page plainly shows reviews. A blank here means we could not read a number, never that an app is unrated or disliked.
In their own right
Agenda
Notes organised along a timeline and tied to calendar events, with a premium unlock you keep permanently even if you never pay again.
DEVONthink 4
A full-text-searchable database for PDFs, scans, web archives, email and notes, with OCR and related-document suggestions. One payment, two Macs, and a licence that is never deactivated.