The intelligent notebook that checks your maths as you write.
Derive understands everything on your canvas and catches mistakes before they cost you marks.
Used by students at
Melbourne, Monash, UNSW, Sydney, ANU, Queensland, Adelaide, and Western Australia.
Everything on the canvas, understood.
Understand
Pen, shapes, text. An infinite canvas that reads your handwriting as real maths, as you write it.
A notebook you can live in.
A hundred small reasons to open it.
How people actually use it.
From the beta, mid-semester.
“It flagged a dropped negative on line three. I’d have carried it all the way to the answer.”
“Finally no more typing LaTeX :) now i solve problem sets by hand, export as LaTeX and I’m done”
“My g’s look like 9’s and it still read the working.”
“Asked it where we did eigenvalues and it pulled up my actual working, not a search result.”
“I was sceptical about the practice exams. It built me a paper out of my own notes that was harder than the real one.”
“I haven’t recopied a page of notes since March.”
“I run the Python check on the same page as the working instead of switching apps.”
“I imported four years of Goodnotes and all of it is searchable now.”
“It knew my matrix was a matrix, not a picture of one.”
Join 1,000+ students already working this way.
Questions
Straight answers.
What Derive costs, what it runs on, and what happens to your notes. Anything else, the support page goes further, and you can email a person at matt@derivenotes.com.
Is Derive free?
- No. Derive is free for 7 days, then A$8.50/mo billed annually or A$9.99/mo monthly in Australia, and US$6.99/mo billed annually or US$9.99/mo monthly in the United States. Same features either way, and a full 30-day refund on top if it’s not for you.
What do I need to run it?
- An iPad with Apple Pencil is the intended experience. Derive also runs on the web and desktop. Write on your iPad, review and organise anywhere.
When am I charged?
- You add a card after onboarding, but nothing is charged for 7 days, and we email you before your trial ends. Cancel anytime, self-serve.
What happens to my notes if I cancel?
- They’re yours. Export everything to PDF or LaTeX anytime, including after you stop paying.
Is this just ChatGPT with a canvas?
- No. A symbolic engine reads every handwritten step and verifies it. It watches you work line by line, which a photo of your finished page can’t do.
What about my privacy?
- No ads and no selling your data. That’s part of why Derive is paid.
Is my working checked, or just recognised?
- Both. Recognition turns your strokes into real mathematics, then a symbolic engine verifies each line against the one above it and flags the step where the working breaks, not the final answer.
Can I turn the AI off?
- Yes. Recognition and the tutor run only with your consent. You’re asked in the app before either is used, and you can switch them on or off at any time in settings. With them off, your content is not sent to our AI providers.
Can I bring my old notes in?
- Yes. Import from Goodnotes, Notability, OneNote, and Samsung Notes. Everything you import becomes searchable next to the pages you write in Derive, and you can write straight onto an imported PDF.
Does it work offline?
- Yes. Derive is offline-first, so pages stay readable and writable with no connection, and they sync across iPad, Mac, Windows, and the web as soon as you’re back online.
How do I get a refund?
- Email us inside 30 days of paying and you get the full amount back, no questions asked. Cancelling is self-serve in the app, and your notes stay exportable either way.
Who makes Derive?
- Derive Notes Pty Ltd, a company registered in Queensland, Australia (ACN 696 859 597). Derive launched in Australia in August 2026 and is now available in the United States, with the rest of the world next on the roadmap.
More detail lives on the pages themselves: pricing for the plans and the trial, roadmap for what has shipped and what is being built, and about for the company behind it. Derive Notes Pty Ltd is registered in Queensland, Australia.