Diarium pulls a lot into your journal automatically: social posts, photos, steps, location, weather. For some people, that's exactly right. I wanted close to the opposite. A journal that only contains what I actually sat down and wrote. That's Cozy.
The short version
- What it's for. Diarium is a life log that fills itself in from other apps. Cozy is a quiet journal where you decide what goes in.
- Where your entries live. Diarium uses its own database with optional cloud sync. Cozy keeps every entry as a file in a folder you choose.
- Platforms. Both run on Mac, Windows and iPhone. Diarium also has Android and iPad; Cozy doesn't yet.
- How you pay. Diarium is a small one-time buy per platform with an optional Premium subscription. Cozy is $35 once for desktop, with Cozy for iPhone included, no subscription.
Different ideas of a journal
Diarium treats your day as a feed of inputs and stitches them together for you. If you want a journal that fills itself in while you sleep, that's a real strength.
Cozy treats your day as something you wrote. The entry is what you typed, plus a mood, a place, and any photos you chose to add. Nothing shows up in your journal unless you put it there.
Where your writing lives
Diarium keeps entries in its own database and syncs them through OneDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox, or its own Diarium Cloud. You can export, but the primary copy is inside the app.
Cozy doesn't have a database. Each entry is a plain text file in a folder you can open in any text editor. If Cozy goes away, you open the folder.
Plain text matters here because it's the one format every other writing app already understands. The day you want to move your journal somewhere else, whether to another app, another machine, or a backup you actually want to read, the files just work. With Diarium's database, that day means an export and hoping nothing gets dropped along the way.
No AI in Cozy
Cozy doesn't have any AI features, on purpose. I wrote a longer post about why Cozy doesn't have AI if you want the reasoning. Short version: a journal isn't the place I want a chat window or autocomplete.
Pricing
Diarium is roughly $9.99 once per platform you install it on (Microsoft Store, App Store, Google Play). Premium adds a subscription if you want extra features and Diarium Cloud sync.
Cozy is $35 once for the desktop app: one license covers every Mac and Windows you own, and Cozy for iPhone comes with it. No subscription.
Sync
Diarium syncs through several cloud providers as well as its own service. Cozy doesn't run a sync service at all. Because your journal is just a folder of files, you put it inside iCloud or Dropbox and it syncs the same way your other files do. To reach Cozy for iPhone it has to be iCloud Drive — the only folder iOS lets an app read. Diarium is more flexible here.
So which one is for you?
If you want a journal that automatically captures everything you do across apps and devices, Diarium is built for that.
If you want a quieter journal where every entry is something you chose to write, kept as a file you own, paid for once, that's Cozy.
Comparing other apps? Read Cozy vs Day One or Cozy vs Apple Journal.