Air Manager vs AirEFB
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both games, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Air Manager
Design custom flight simulator instrument panels on your iPad. Connect to popular simulators like X-plane and FS2020 to use your iPad as a primary or secondary instrument display. Offers over 1000 free instruments and intuitive touch controls for a realistic simulation experience.
- Custom instrument panel design
- iPad as primary/secondary display
- Connects to X-plane, FS2020, P3D, FSX
- Over 1000 free instruments
- Intuitive drag-and-drop interface
- Control simulator functions via touch
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Air Manager lets you design custom flight simulator instrument panels on your iPad. Panels can connect to X-plane, FS2020, FS2024, Prepar3d and FSX. Use your iPad as a primary instrument panel and have your computer monitor for outside view only, or use your iPad as a secondary com stack to easily set frequencies through the iPad touch screen. Air Manager comes with more than 1000 free instruments. Add, drag, scale, build your instrument panel in only a matter of minutes. Save your created panels, and switch between them quickly. User friendly No difficult settings or downloading and configuring of third party applications. You can download the necessary plugins from our website for free. We offer a complete solution! Place instruments anywhere you like Tap an instrument to add it to the canvas, hold and drag to rearrange, and pinch to scale, it’s as easy as that. Loads of free instruments The application comes with more than 1000 free instruments, and this collection keeps growing. Buttons, Switches and Knobs Controls like Buttons, Switches, and Knobs let you control the simulator from your 2D panels, so your Flight Simulation is super realistic. Setting a radio frequency or the altimeter setting, moving electrical switches, and controlling the autopilot are just a few examples of what you can do without directly accessing the flight simulator. Multiplatform and multi simulator The Air Manager plugin runs on Microsoft Window, Mac OSX, and Linux, both 32 bits and 64 bits, and is compatible with Laminar Research X-Plane 9, 10 and 11, Microsoft FSX and Lockheed Martin Prepar3D.
AirEFB
This app centralizes flight charts, technical manuals, and checklists for pilots. It integrates with a flight simulator to provide real-time airport maps, traffic data, and weather information for easier navigation and ground operations.
- Centralized chart and manual storage
- Interactive flight checklists
- Airport data and ground taxi maps
- Real-time traffic and weather display
- X-Plane flight simulator integration
- Document manager for PDF files
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Whether you want to keep all your charts and technical manuals in one single place, have a concise way of performing flight checklists or want to know your way around the airport while on the ground and taxiing, AirEFB allows you to do just that in one single iPad app. Designed to integrate with the X-Plane flight simulator, AirEFB provides an interface layer to all the documents you need to carry onboard and an absolute must have to find your way to holding point X or runway Y while on the ground. Using our next generation communications protocol you can connect AirEFB to X-Plane seamlessly and effortlessly. Install a simple plugin and it all happens automatically, on the fly and over the Air; no need to configure anything. AirEFB is compatible with iPad devices running iOS 9 or later, in all its screen sizes, and connects to X-Plane versions 9, 10 and 11. CHARTS allows you to access your own synched PFD approach plates, your Air Account uploaded charts, and over 4GB of US airport charts as published by the FAA. A DOCUMENTS manager allows you to load and query your own aircraft specifications and technical documents in PDF format. With CHEKLISTS you can create your own aircraft checklists and go through them, as well as load any lists in XChecklist (clist.txt) format or beam them down from X-Plane automatically. Plus the PLANE INTERFACE feature allows items to be preemptively marked completed by looking at their corresponding datarefs before you set them as done. And last (for now) but certainly not least, the AIRPORT DATA & MAP section allows you lookup your favourite airport and display it, together with your plane and all surrounding traffic with beautiful graphics and animations. Know where you are in an airport, its ATC frequencies in use, the current weather and real-time, wind and altimeter settings as well as seeing all surrounding traffic moving as they do. Taxing will never be the same again. AirEFB currently supports X-Plane native ATC traffic as well as JAR design's X-Life traffic.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is rating: AirEFB at 4.5 against Air Manager's 3.0. AirEFB also leads on price ($17.99 vs $22.99) and update cadence (every 4 months vs every 10 months). Air Manager's advantage is review sentiment (31% vs 0%) and ratings volume (29 vs 2). On ads, in-app purchases and iOS requirement 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
Air Manager costs $22.99 and AirEFB $17.99 up front. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
AirEFB holds the better App Store score, 4.5 against 3.0. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Air Manager has 29 ratings behind it against 2, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews complicate that: 31% of Air Manager's written reviews are positive against 0% of AirEFB's, so the app with the better star average is not the one people write more warmly about.
Air Manager ships an update every 10 months, AirEFB every 4 months. Both last shipped on October 24, 2026.
| Parameter | Air Manager | AirEFB |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $22.99 | $17.99 — better |
| Rating | 3.0 (29 ratings) | 4.5 (2 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 30.8% of reviews — better | 0.0% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | 29 — better | 2 |
| Update frequency | Every 10 months | Every 4 months — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free — better | Paid |
| Devices | iPad | iPhone, iPad, iPod, Mac — better |
| Requires iOS | 15.6 | 15.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 897 MB | 354 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Sim Innovations B.V. | Joao Cabral |
Customer experience
Air Manager
AirEFB
In-app purchases
Air Manager
No in-app purchases
AirEFB
No in-app purchases








