Is Bear or Rows better?

Neither clearly leads. Bear starts at Free and Rows at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.

Which is cheaper, Bear or Rows?

Bear starts at Free and Rows at Free.

Does Bear or Rows run on more platforms?

Both run on Web, so platform support will not decide this one for you.

Can I use Bear for free?

Both have a free tier, so you can try either at no cost before committing.

What is Bear best used for?

Bear is most often used for note-taking with document scanning, cross-device note synchronization. Of those, note-taking with document scanning and cross-device note synchronization are not what Rows is typically brought in for.

What can Bear do that Rows cannot?

Rows covers Integrations in formulas, Scheduled refresh, Publishable sheets, Cell enrichment.

Productivity · head to head

Bear vs Rows

Bear

Productivity

Markdown notes for Apple devices

From: Free
Rated: -

Full review Website

Rows

Productivity

Browser spreadsheet whose formulas call live data from analytics, CRM and payment services

From: Free
Rated: -

Full review Website

The short version

Each has a real cost: Bear built for Apple hardware only, with no Windows, Android or web client; Rows refresh frequency is the metered resource, so the free plan refreshes manually only and daily automation begins on the paid tier, which means the automatic reporting that justifies the tool is exactly what the free plan withholds.
Prices and features above were last checked on 30 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Bear and Rows actually diverge.

Attributes where Bear and Rows differ
Attribute	Bear	Rows

Identical on both: starting price (Free), pricing model (freemium), free tier (Yes), platforms (Web), user rating (Not yet rated), category (Productivity).

What each one covers

Drawn from each product's published feature list. An absence here means we hold no record of it - not that the product lacks it.

Only in Bear

Nothing recorded that Rows does not also cover.

Only in Rows

Integrations in formulas
Scheduled refresh
Publishable sheets
Cell enrichment
AI tasks
Guests
API access
Version history

What people use each for

The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.

Bear

Note-taking with document scanningnot Rows
Cross-device note synchronizationnot Rows

Rows

A weekly marketing report that pulls analytics, advertising and CRM figures into one refreshing sheet instead of three manual exports.not Bear
Agency client dashboards shared as a page, without handing over access to the underlying accounts.not Bear
Enriching a list of companies or contacts from inside the sheet rather than through a separate tool and a re-import.not Bear
A small team that needs live numbers in a familiar grid and has nobody available to build a proper reporting stack.not Bear

Where each one falls short

Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.

Bear

Built for Apple hardware only, with no Windows, Android or web client
Free tier is limited to 3 themes, 1 app icon and restricted export formats; iCloud sync requires Bear Pro
Bear Pro is $2.99 per month or $29.99 per year after a 7 day free trial

Rows

Refresh frequency is the metered resource, so the free plan refreshes manually only and daily automation begins on the paid tier, which means the automatic reporting that justifies the tool is exactly what the free plan withholds.
Exports carry values rather than connections, so a downloaded file from Rows is a dead snapshot and anything you built has to be reconstructed from scratch elsewhere, which makes recurring reports quietly expensive to move.
Guests are capped by tier at three on free and ten on the entry plan, so sharing a report with a client's team or a group of stakeholders pushes you up a tier for people who only ever look at a page.
It is not Excel or Google Sheets, so the function library, add-ins, pivot behaviour, scripting and offline files people rely on are not all present, and it works as a reporting surface rather than as an organisation's general spreadsheet.
The Pro tier adds a fixed monthly platform charge on top of the per-user price, so moving from daily to intra-day refresh, or from ten guests to a real audience, is a step change in cost rather than an increment.

Pricing, plan by plan

Bear

Free

FreeFree
- Local note access
- Document scanning
- PDF, image, text, markdown, HTML, DOCX, ePub export
Pro$2.99/month
- All free features plus 28+ themes
- 15 app icons
- PDF and image search across notes
Pro$29.99/year
- All free features plus 28+ themes
- 15 app icons
- PDF and image search across notes

Rows

Free

FreeFree
- 5 AI Tasks per month
- Manual data imports
- 10 integration accounts
Plus$8/month
- 200 AI Tasks per month
- Daily data table automation
- 10 integration accounts
Pro$79/month
- 1,000 AI Tasks per month
- Per-minute data automation
- 100 integration accounts
Enterprise$null/mo
- Unlimited AI Tasks
- Custom integrations and API endpoints
- Unlimited guest members

Which should you pick?

Choose Bear if

You want to start without paying.

Bear review

Choose Rows if

You need integrations in formulas.
You want to start without paying.
You also want scheduled refresh.

Rows review

Questions people ask

Is Bear or Rows better?: Neither clearly leads. Bear starts at Free and Rows at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Bear or Rows?: Bear starts at Free and Rows at Free.
Does Bear or Rows run on more platforms?: Both run on Web, so platform support will not decide this one for you.
Can I use Bear for free?: Both have a free tier, so you can try either at no cost before committing.
What is Bear best used for?: Bear is most often used for note-taking with document scanning, cross-device note synchronization. Of those, note-taking with document scanning and cross-device note synchronization are not what Rows is typically brought in for.
What can Bear do that Rows cannot?: Rows covers Integrations in formulas, Scheduled refresh, Publishable sheets, Cell enrichment.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Bear: Does Bear offer a free plan?

Yes, Bear has a free plan with local note access, document scanning, and export to multiple formats, but without iCloud sync or PDF/image search.

Source

Rows: Can it replace Excel or Google Sheets?

Not for general spreadsheet work. It is for reports and sheets that pull live data, and most teams end up running it alongside a conventional spreadsheet rather than instead of one.

Bear: How much does Bear Pro cost?

Bear Pro is $2.99 per month or $29.99 per year. The yearly plan offers approximately 15% savings compared to monthly billing.

Source

Rows: What can I actually do on the free plan?

Real building: unlimited members, ten integration accounts, five AI tasks a month, 1 MB imports, three guests and seven days of version history. What you cannot do is schedule a refresh.

Bear: Is there a free trial for Bear Pro?

Yes, Bear Pro includes a 7-day free trial before charging begins.

Source

Rows: Does the data stay live after I export?

No. Exports contain values only, so the connections and the scheduling do not travel and the file stops updating the moment it leaves.

Rows: Is pricing per user?

Yes on the paid tiers, with a fixed platform fee added at Pro. Guests are counted and capped separately from members.

Bear vs Rows

Bear

Rows

The short version

Where they differ

What each one covers

Only in Bear

Only in Rows

What people use each for

Bear

Rows

Where each one falls short

Bear

Rows

Pricing, plan by plan

Bear

Rows

Which should you pick?

Choose Bear if

Choose Rows if

Questions people ask

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Related pages

More on Bear

More on Rows

Keep looking

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