Compare
Madison and Goodnotes digital planners
A digital planner in Goodnotes is paper you write on with a stylus: beautiful, slow on purpose, and yours. Madison reads your syllabi and fills the term in for you. They suit different people.
What Goodnotes planners are
Goodnotes is a note-taking app for tablets and other devices. Digital planners for it are PDFs, often sold by independent designers, with tabs and links between months, weeks and days, which you write on by hand with a stylus and decorate with digital stickers.
The appeal is the ritual: writing things down, and a page that looks the way you made it.
The same jobs, two approaches.
How a Goodnotes digital planner and Madison each handle the parts of a term that matter. Theirs, described; not scored.
- Getting the dates in
- Goodnotes planners:Written by hand into the pages.
- Madison:Drop in the syllabus (PDF, Word, PowerPoint, text or a pasted schedule). Madison reads every dated thing and shows it to you to check before anything is saved.
- When a date changes
- Goodnotes planners:Rewritten by hand.
- Madison:Edited once; the week, the calendar, the timeline and your calendar feed all follow.
- Reminders
- Goodnotes planners:See Goodnotes' own options.
- Madison:A week-ahead and a day-before email or notification, at the hour you choose.
- Devices
- Goodnotes planners:Wherever Goodnotes runs; designed for a tablet and stylus.
- Madison:Any browser, phone or laptop, installable, synced with a free account.
- Making it pretty
- Goodnotes planners:The planner's design, your handwriting, stickers.
- Madison:Your own paper, colour and type; with Studio, photos, stickers, washi tape, a dashboard and a desk pet.
Who each one suits.
Neither is right for everyone. If the first list sounds like you, that one is the better choice, and that is fine.
Goodnotes planners, if
- Writing by hand is how you remember.
- You have a tablet and stylus and enjoy the ritual.
- You want every page to look exactly as you drew it.
Madison, if
- You would rather not copy six syllabi out by hand.
- You want reminders, grades and a calendar that update themselves.
- You still want it to look like yours: that is what Studio is for.
Madison for Students is $4 a month or $29 a year after a free trial, with Studio from $3 a month on top. Descriptions of Goodnotes planners are our summary of its public materials as of October 2026; its own site has the current details.
Questions
Can I keep my Goodnotes planner too?
Of course. Some people keep a handwritten weekly page for the ritual and let Madison hold the dates, so nothing is missed.
Can Madison look like a paper planner?
Closer than you might think: ruled, grid or dotted paper, a serif of your choice, stickers and tape with Studio. It will never be your handwriting, though.
Also compared: Notion student templates, MyStudyLife, Shovel.