How Yarn Diary compares

Last updated 15 August 2026 — prices and features checked on that date and summarised in good faith; they change, so treat the details as a snapshot

Every app below does something well, and none of them is this one. Yarn Diary is a free tracker that reads written patterns in your browser — no account, no subscription, sync through your own Google Drive. Here is how that compares, app by app, including the things the others do better. Each section ends with what you'd give up by choosing Yarn Diary instead.

My Row Counter

The most established counter app, and the broadest: iPhone, iPad, Android, web, Mac, even Apple Watch and WearOS, with voice control (and, in the paid tier, PDF annotation). The catch sits exactly where crocheters feel it: keeping projects in sync across devices is a premium subscription — the store lists yearly tiers from $9.99 up to $14.99 — and sync requires an account. Yarn Diary's position is that a row counter's sync shouldn't have a recurring price: it syncs through your own Google Drive for nothing, because there is no company cloud to fund. What you'd give up: the watch apps and voice control — Yarn Diary has neither.

StitchMark — and an alternative that runs on Android

StitchMark is the closest thing to Yarn Diary in spirit: point it at a pattern and it parses rows, repeats and ranges into trackable steps. It is polished, and its free tier is genuinely usable, with premium at $2.99/month, $19.99/year or a $49.99 lifetime unlock. Two structural differences matter. It is Apple-only — iPhone, iPad, Mac — so Android crocheters are out entirely; and its pattern-photo reading works by sending the image to OpenAI's servers for processing, which its own site is upfront about. Yarn Diary runs in any browser on any platform — if you're looking for a StitchMark alternative for Android, this is the niche it fills — and its text recognition runs inside the browser tab, so a pattern photo never leaves your device. What you'd give up: StitchMark's native-app polish and iCloud integration, and a cloud AI will read a messy photo better than on-device recognition in some cases.

Ribblr

Ribblr is a platform, not a counter: a pattern marketplace and community around its own interactive "ePattern" format, with line-by-line progress tracking and video tutorials built into patterns bought there. It is account-based end to end, the free tier shows ads and caps free pattern claims at five per day, and the subscription comes in three tiers listed up to $13.99/month. If you want a shop-and-community ecosystem, Ribblr is that. Yarn Diary is the opposite trade: it works with patterns you already have — PDF, paper, pasted text — with no account and nothing sold. What you'd give up: the marketplace, the community, and the designer-made interactivity of ePatterns.

FiberTools

The most philosophically similar neighbour: a free, no-login, works-offline web toolbox with thirty-plus calculators across fiber crafts, including a pattern checker that audits round math line by line. It deserves its following. The difference is scope: FiberTools checks a pattern you type at it; Yarn Diary reads the pattern from a photo, PDF or paste, keeps it as a project, and tracks your progress through it round by round with photos and per-copy counters. Toolbox versus tracker. What you'd give up: the thirty other calculators — yarn estimators, size charts and the rest — which Yarn Diary doesn't attempt.

Ravelry

Ravelry is the community: the pattern database, the forums, the project notebook a large share of the craft world lives in. It's free with an account, and it is not a round-by-round tracker — the two aren't really competitors, and many people will sensibly use both. Worth knowing: its 2020 redesign drew wide coverage after users reported seizures and migraines, which pushed accessibility into the foreground of that community. What you'd give up by using only Yarn Diary: pattern discovery and the social side — deliberately out of scope here.

Yarnzy

One of the newer AI pattern readers: it imports patterns from PDFs, photos or text, breaks them into guided steps with explanations, previews garments in 3D, and syncs across iPhone, Android and Mac. It is free to start; its site doesn't publish what the paid tier costs, so we won't guess. The architectural difference is the same as with StitchMark: Yarnzy is an app-store product with cloud processing and cross-device accounts, Yarn Diary is a local-first web page. What you'd give up: the guided step-by-step explanations and the 3D preview.

The honest summary

Choose by what you refuse to compromise on. If it's a watch on your wrist, My Row Counter. A native iOS experience, StitchMark. Community and shopping, Ribblr or Ravelry. A drawer full of calculators, FiberTools. If what you refuse to compromise on is free, no account, works everywhere, and patterns that never leave your device — that combination is Yarn Diary's whole reason to exist, and you can try it in the next thirty seconds, because there is nothing to install or sign up for. The why-it's-free page explains the architecture that makes the combination possible.