Stilopad vs Squid: pen-first notes or a mixed-media planner?

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Sometimes the best notebook is the one that lets a pen be a pen. Other days you need a calendar, a photo and a conversation on the same page. Decide which of those describes most of your work before adding more tools.

Consider Squid when a pen-first workflow is the main job. Consider Stilopad when you want planners, graphics and shared sessions around that writing. Keep data safety in the comparison whichever app you choose.

Disclosure: this article is published by Stilopad’s creator. It is not an independent hands-on benchmark or a claim that either app is free of bugs.

Squid is a useful benchmark for direct handwriting and flexible paper. Its own documentation already describes moving, resizing and changing stroke color; those should be treated as normal editing expectations, not exclusive advantages for Stilopad.

Product reference: Squid official features (checked September 7, 2026).

The reviewed store sample included old reports about PDF redraw and backup loss. The age of those reports matters. We cannot infer how often either happens today. What we can take from them is that a backup deserves a restore test, and a PDF should be judged beyond its first page.

Research reference: store listing and selected reviews. Our September 5, 2026 review sample was small and non-random; some reports date back several years. Store pages change which reviews they display.

Stilopad supports mixed-media pages, a thumbnail overview, editable archives and optional Drive sync. Its import and backup paths now wait for native attachment copying to finish before checking the result. That addresses a confirmed Stilopad race, not an issue in Squid. Progress indicators can make long operations clearer, but do not by themselves make them infallible.

Stilopad’s strengths

• Try the Lite web editor before committing to a migration.
• Combine personal pages with optional live shared sessions.

Stilopad’s tradeoffs

• Large imports, device behavior and cross-platform fidelity need testing with your own files.
• Competitor-native files and every advanced study feature are not interchangeable.

Import a long PDF, visit a page near the end, annotate it and restore an exported copy. Compare pen feel separately from backup behavior.

Work with a duplicate. Keep both the original source and an independent export until the restored copy has passed your checks. Review reports help you choose what to test; they cannot establish which app is safest for everyone.

Competitor trademarks belong to their owners. No affiliation or endorsement is implied. Send corrections to contact@stilopad.com.