PufferPages vs 1 Second Everyday: The Drawn Alternative
If you're looking for a 1 Second Everyday alternative, here's the honest version up front: most "alternatives" are the same app wearing a different logo. Film a short clip each day, get a montage at the end. PufferPages is the one that's actually different. Instead of filming a one-second video, you talk about your day and it draws the day as a comic page. Same daily-memory habit, completely different input and output.
I'm Bas. I built PufferPages, so I'm not a neutral party. But I've used 1 Second Everyday for years and I genuinely like it, and the fastest way to lose your trust would be to pretend it's bad. So this is a fair comparison, including the cases where I'd tell you to stay on 1SE.
The quick version
| 1 Second Everyday | PufferPages | |
|---|---|---|
| What you capture | A 1-second video clip, filmed in the moment | A voice note or a sentence, any time |
| What you get | A stitched montage video | An illustrated comic page per day |
| Needs footage? | Yes — you must have filmed it | No — it draws moments you never filmed |
| The year-end artifact | A reel you watch | A book you read (and can print) |
| Platforms | iOS + Android | iPhone only (for now) |
| Price | Free tier + paid | First 3 comics free, then subscription |
| Made by | Your own camera | An AI model, hand-drawn style |
If that table already tells you which one you want, great. If you want the reasoning, keep going.
The core difference: filmed vs drawn-from-voice
1 Second Everyday is a camera habit. The magic only works if you remembered to film. The day your kid said the funniest thing at breakfast, the evening that turned into a great night out — if your phone stayed in your pocket, that day is a blank in the reel. 1SE is brilliant at turning footage you captured into a montage. It can't do anything with a moment you didn't film.
PufferPages is a memory habit. You don't need footage, because you're not assembling footage. At the end of the day you hold the mic and say, "I walked the dog along the canal, had lunch with Sanne, and finally fixed the bike." Sixty seconds later there's a three-panel comic page of exactly that — the canal, the lunch, the bike — drawn in the style you picked. None of it was filmed. It didn't need to be.
That's the whole pitch in one line: 1SE captures the days you filmed; PufferPages captures the days you lived. For some people those are the same set of days. For most of us, they really aren't.
Where 1 Second Everyday is the better choice (honestly)
I'd actively recommend 1SE over PufferPages if:
- You want real footage. A drawn page of your daughter laughing is lovely. It is not her actual face and her actual laugh. For the memories where the real thing is the point — a first birthday, a wedding, a voice you want to hear again in ten years — film it. Don't draw it. 1SE is the right tool, and so is your camera roll.
- You're on Android. PufferPages is iPhone-only right now. 1SE is on both. That's not a small detail; it's a dealbreaker if you don't have an iPhone.
- You already have years of clips. If you've kept a 1SE montage since 2021, that reel is irreplaceable and compounding. Nothing here imports it, and you shouldn't throw it away to start over. Keep it.
- You reliably film in the moment. Some people genuinely do capture a clip every day without it feeling like a chore. If that's you, 1SE is already working — you don't have a problem to solve.
That last one is the real test. 1SE is fantastic if the filming habit sticks. The reason I built PufferPages is that for me, and for a lot of people I talked to, it didn't.
Where PufferPages is the better choice
Pick PufferPages if any of these sound like you:
- You forget to film. The single most common reason people drift away from 1SE is gaps in the reel. Capturing by voice after the fact means you can fill a Tuesday at 11pm that you never filmed and never would have.
- You want something you can read, not just watch. A montage plays for a minute and ends. A year of PufferPages is a graphic novel of your life — 365 pages you can flip through, hand to someone, and actually read. It exports at print quality, so you can order it as a hardcover.
- You like journaling by voice. Talking is faster and more forgiving than writing. If you've ever bounced off text journaling because the blank page felt like homework, speaking a sentence is a much lower bar.
- You're drawn to the keepsake, not the document. Photos and clips are a record. A drawn page is a small piece of art where you are the main character. It's a different feeling, and for the right person it's the thing that keeps the habit alive past week three.
What a year actually looks like
This is where the two apps end up in genuinely different places.
After 365 days of 1 Second Everyday you have a six-minute film: a fast, emotional flipbook of the moments you filmed. It's wonderful, and it's very clearly yours.
After 365 days of PufferPages you have a book. Fifty-two weekly issues, or twelve monthly ones, each page a small scene — a joke from a Sunday in October, a quiet Tuesday in April. Stacked together they read like a story, because they are one. You can put it on a shelf next to actual graphic novels and it doesn't look out of place.
Neither is better in the abstract. A reel is the right shape for some lives; a readable, printable book is the right shape for others. The honest question is which artifact you'd actually open again in five years.
Price and platform, plainly
1 Second Everyday has a free tier and a paid plan, and it's on iOS and Android. Hard to argue with free and everywhere.
PufferPages gives you your first 3 comics free, no card. After that it's a subscription — Standard at €5.99/month or €39.99/year, Pro at €8.99/month or €59.99/year (Pro adds every art style, a library for the recurring people in your life, a reference photo per moment, and priority generation). And it's iPhone-only for now. That's the trade: PufferPages costs money and runs on fewer devices, in exchange for capturing days you never filmed and drawing them into something you can print.
I'm not going to pretend the subscription is free or that iPhone-only is fine for everyone. It's the honest cost of the thing it does.
So which should you use?
- Stay on 1 Second Everyday if you reliably film, you want real video, you're on Android, or you've already got years of montage you love.
- Try PufferPages if you keep meaning to capture your days and don't, you'd rather speak than film, or you want a drawn book at the end instead of a reel.
- Or run both. Plenty of people film big events in 1SE and let PufferPages catch all the ordinary days in between. They're not really competing for the same minute of your evening.
Common questions
What is the best 1 Second Everyday alternative? It depends on how you capture. If you film reliably and want real footage, the usual alternatives (Daily Snap, WOLO, One Second Diary) are variations on 1SE and 1SE itself is hard to beat. If you don't film reliably and want your day captured anyway, PufferPages is the genuinely different one: speak a few moments, get a drawn page, no footage required.
Is PufferPages like 1 Second Everyday? Same daily-memory habit, inverted mechanics. 1SE stitches clips you filmed into a video. PufferPages turns a voice note into an illustrated page and bundles pages into issues and a printable yearly volume. One is filmed and watched; the other is spoken and read.
Are the pages hand-drawn or AI-generated? AI-generated, in a hand-drawn aesthetic. No human illustrator is drawing your day — a model trained for a specific style produces the page. The look is hand-drawn; the maker is a model, and I'd rather say that than pretend.
Does PufferPages work on Android? Not yet — it's iPhone-only at launch. 1SE is on both, so if you're on Android, that's a real reason to choose 1SE today.
Can I switch if I have years of 1SE clips? Run both. PufferPages doesn't import your old footage and your existing montage is genuinely valuable, so there's no reason to abandon it. Use 1SE for the clips you've got and PufferPages for the days you didn't film.
Try the drawn version
If the "days you never filmed" problem is the one you actually have, that's the one PufferPages was built for. Your first 3 comics are free, no card — download PufferPages on the App Store and turn today into a page.
Want to read more about the idea first? Browse the rest of our notes — short, honest write-ups on drawn journaling and why it works.
Built by Bas Fijneman. Questions? Find me on X, I read everything.
