Comparison

The Great Courses vs Intro Airplane Design

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.

Head to head
About

The Great Courses

Access thousands of educational videos taught by world-renowned professors. Explore diverse subjects like history, science, and philosophy with online and offline learning options. Enjoy a flexible learning experience at your own pace.

Highlights
  • Thousands of educational videos
  • Expert professors and specialists
  • Diverse subject matter
  • Online and offline access
  • Flexible learning pace
  • Free trial available
Features
Read full description

Unlock your potential with The Great Courses, the premier platform for online courses that offers a wealth of educational videos to help you explore, learn, and grow in a wide variety of subjects. The Great Courses specializes in courses taught by the world’s greatest professors and experts covering diverse topics such as history, science, math, philosophy, religion, literature, health, travel, personal & professional development, and more. It’s the place to experience the pure joy of learning—anytime, anywhere. The Great Courses ensures an engaging and enriching learning experience for all. Catering to learners of all skill levels and interests, our platform provides the flexibility to deep-dive into specific topics or explore a variety of subjects at your leisure. The Great Courses grants seamless online and offline access to our extensive library of online courses, empowering you to learn and grow at your own pace. Existing users can sign in to access their purchases and subscription content, while new users can register and subscribe directly within the app to access thousands of educational videos online and offline for one low price. Optimized for iOS 15 and higher, The Great Courses offers a variety of subscription plans, along with a Free Trial to start your educational journey. Payment Details: - Payment will be charged to your Apple account at confirmation of purchase - Subscription automatically renews unless you cancel at least 24 hours before the end of the current period - Your account will be charged for renewal within 24 hours prior to the end of the current period - Subscriptions may be managed or canceled by accessing your Apple account - If you cancel during a Free Trial period, you will have access until the end of the trial period Privacy Policy: https://www.TheGreatCourses.com/Privacy Terms of Service: https://www.TheGreatCourses.com/TOS

About

Intro Airplane Design

Explore aeronautics through interactive simulations and design tools. Learn STEM principles by designing, building, and flying your own gliders and powered aircraft. This app offers comprehensive curriculum content for classroom use or self-study.

Highlights
  • Interactive STEM learning
  • Airplane design tools
  • Aeronautics simulations
  • Offline lab plans
  • Classroom curriculum
  • Wind tunnel simulation
Features
Read full description

Introduction to Airplane Design makes it easy to engage in authentic science, technology, engineering, mathematics (STEM) by learning the fundamentals of aeronautics. Making use of interactive simulations and powerful design tools you will be pleased how rapidly one can pickup scientific concepts. Best of all, by actively doing the analysis and design of your own performance gliders on the computer, and then by building and flying your designs off-line to assimilate your studies, you will be impressed with how well your designs perform in actual use, while being amply rewarded with a firm grasp on why your airplane flies so well. As your studies progress one can advance to powered flight by including a rubber band or electric motor and propeller in your designs. With this app, one can experience their knowledge taking flight and soaring to great heights while just having fun! This software app is much more than just game fun though, it can be utilized to teach science with challenge, inquiry, and accountability, yet it is easy to implement and use, and has been well tested in many classroom. The in-depth content of this package can provide 1 to 8 weeks of classroom curriculum that nicely fits learning standards, or which can be used as a comprehensive resource. For grades: 7-12. It is a favorite unit of study at many schools. The app includes lessons, numerous activities, and plans for off-line labs packaged as embedded PDF’s which can be used in classroom settings to keep students actively involved with the software, give students the opportunity to test aerodynamic principles using a wind tunnel simulation and flying test aircraft, and help them to understand how to design their own aircraft that fly well. These lessons can free up more time for you to teach! SCIENCE/PHYSICS PRINCIPLES INCLUDE: * Balance of Forces * Bernoulli’s Principle * Centrifugal Action * Density * Energy * Fluid * Force * Friction * Geometric Change * Line of Action * Newton’s Laws * Moment/Torque * Power Pressure * Supersonic * Velocity IMPORTANT AERODYNAMIC CONCEPTS: * Gravity * Lift * Thrust * Drag * Stability * Control IMPORTANT DESIGN PRINCIPLES: * Airfoil Shape * Wing Shape * Wing Configuration * Tail Requirements * Control Surfaces * Balance and Trim * Dihedral * Propulsion AIRCRAFT DESIGN COMPUTER: Easy input of dimensions 3-D visual of the aircraft design In-depth analysis of performance Detection and explanations of design problems Simulation of airplane glide performance SOFTWARE CONTENT: 28 computer simulations 58 detailed explanations of principles 22 colorful and illustrative diagrams 10 graphs of aerodynamic trends OPTIONAL ACTIVITIES & LABS: 16 classroom activity lessons with objectives 10 hands-on lab plans with material lists Detailed design and build guides Answers, teacher’s notes, and 5 quizzes THE HANDS-ON ADVANTAGE Do you know why and how to design a tail to balance (trim) and stabilize an airplane or glider? Use the software and hands-on activities provided to clearly explain and develop an understanding of such aerodynamic concepts through application and synthesis of many physics principles. The included lab write-ups provide students with the opportunity to actually test out many principles and exercise careful use of scientific methods in testing, measuring, and examining results. These labs can be used to help one understand aerodynamic concepts and experiment with how configuration effects flight performance. They provide additional learning styles and help students assimilate and apply what they are studying. HARNESS THE COMPUTER’S IMPRESSIVE POWER Challenge students to make use of their understanding of principles and concepts to come up with their own aircraft and drone designs. Give them the experience and insight on how the computational power of computers is used to find solutions in the real world, learning is sure to soar!

Screenshots

The Great Courses4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is review sentiment: Intro Airplane Design at 100% against The Great Courses's 40%. Intro Airplane Design also leads on in-app purchases (none vs 3) and rating (5.0 vs 4.8). The Great Courses's advantage is price (Free vs $14.99) and update cadence (fortnightly vs every 9 months). On ads there is nothing between them.

Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

The Great Courses is free to download; Intro Airplane Design costs $14.99 up front. The Great Courses sells 3 in-app purchases, starting at $19.99 per month. Intro Airplane Design asks for nothing beyond the download.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

Intro Airplane Design holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 4.8. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: The Great Courses has 17K ratings behind it against 1, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews point the same way: 40% of The Great Courses's written reviews are positive against 100% of Intro Airplane Design's.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

The Great Courses ships an update fortnightly, Intro Airplane Design every 9 months. The most recent releases landed on November 13, 2026 and November 3, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard10 real differences · 1 level
The Great Courses versus Intro Airplane Design: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterThe Great CoursesIntro Airplane Design
PriceFree — better$14.99
Rating4.8 (17K ratings)5.0 (1 ratings) — better
Positive reviews39.8% of reviews100.0% of reviews — better
Number of ratings17K — better1
Update frequencyFortnightly — betterEvery 9 months
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesYesNo — better
MonetizationFree with in-app purchases — betterPaid
Best chart rank#88 — better—
DevicesiPhone, iPad, iPod, Apple TV — betteriPad
Requires iOS15.012.0.0 — better
Further details — not scored
Size120 MB35 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperThe Great CoursesSeeds Software

Customer experience

The Great Courses

All ratings17,175 ratings
Positive95.8%
Neutral1.5%
Negative2.6%
Written reviews314 reviews
Positive39.8%
Neutral13.7%
Negative46.5%

Intro Airplane Design

All ratings1 ratings
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%
Written reviews1 reviews
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%

Bugs and requests

The Great Courses

Reported bugs

8 issues
  • Login screen freezes
  • Incompatible with older devices
  • Audio goes out of sync with video
  • App constantly logs users out
  • Downloading content doesn't work offline
Show 3 more
  • Playback issues when switching between audio and video
  • Inconsistent behavior when pausing/resuming playback
  • Poor navigation and course tracking

Requested features

8 requests
  • Can we get a ton of courses on AI please, it's a mite urgent
  • Dark mode option
  • Advanced analytics dashboard
  • Allow audio-only downloads
  • Ability to download an entire course in one go
Show 3 more
  • Ability to browse other content while playing a lecture
  • Note-taking during content and live closed captioning
  • Ratings and reviews for content

Intro Airplane Design

Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.

In-app purchases

3 purchases

The Great Courses

Subscriptions3
  • TGCPlus Monthly Subscription7 Days trial$19.991 Month
  • Quarterly Subscription7 Days trial$44.993 Months
  • TGCPlus Annual Subscription7 Days trial$149.991 Year
None

Intro Airplane Design

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is The Great Courses free?
The Great Courses is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is Intro Airplane Design free?
Intro Airplane Design costs $14.99, with no in-app purchases.
Which has better reviews, The Great Courses or Intro Airplane Design?
Intro Airplane Design is rated higher. The Great Courses averages 4.8 out of 5 from 17K ratings, while Intro Airplane Design averages 5.0 from 1 ratings.
Do The Great Courses or Intro Airplane Design have ads?
Neither The Great Courses nor Intro Airplane Design shows ads.
Which is updated more often, The Great Courses or Intro Airplane Design?
The Great Courses ships an update fortnightly, and Intro Airplane Design every 9 months. Most recently, The Great Courses was updated on November 13, 2026 and Intro Airplane Design on November 3, 2026.

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