Calc Engine vs BRISTOL
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Calc Engine
A highly customizable calculator with advanced features like graphing, equation solving, and unit conversion. Design your own keyboards and functions to streamline your workflow across Apple devices.
- Customizable keyboard layouts
- User-defined functions and constants
- Live equation graphing
- Equation solving
- Extensive unit conversions
- Programmer mode (hex, binary, octal)
- Cross-device syncing
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Calc Engine™ — The Calculator That Fits How You Work Whether you're splitting a dinner bill, plotting an equation, or working through bitwise logic, Calc Engine meets you where you are. It's a beautiful, fully customizable calculator that grows with you — and syncs seamlessly across iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Watch. Make it look and feel like yours • Choose from rich color themes to match your style • Pick the fonts and key shapes that feel right in your hands • A calculator you actually enjoy opening Design keyboards your way • Build your own keyboard pages — drag any key from a curated library onto a 4×5, 5×5, or 6×5 grid • Mix digits, operators, scientific functions, your own constants — anything you reach for often, all in one place • Set a long-press alternate on any key so a single tile handles a primary and secondary action • Name each keyboard, pick its icon, and reorder it alongside the standard pages — your custom keyboards show up right where you'd expect them • Enable or disable any page (built-in or custom) per device Build your personal math library • Define your own functions with up to three parameters — name them whatever makes sense to you • Save the constants you use all the time and insert them with a single tap • Full calculation history, automatically saved — scroll back anytime Powerful math, always within reach • Trig (radians or degrees), logarithms, exponentials, roots, and more — there when you need them, out of the way when you don't • Live results as you type, so you always know where you're headed • Per-function rounding built in — perfect for money, measurements, or anything that needs a clean output Convert between hundreds of units in seconds • Tap a value, then any two units to see the conversion live — miles to km, lb to kg, °F to °C, gal to L, anything you need • 250+ built-in units across 40+ categories: length, mass, volume, temperature, time, speed, angle, energy, power, pressure, electrical, magnetic, optical, radioactivity, data, and more • Favorite the categories you actually use so they sit at the top — synced across your devices automatically • Build your own functions with conversions baked in — define a formula once and reuse it forever See your equations come to life in graphs • Plot equations like x = y² or sin(x) live as you type, right beside the keyboard • Tap any graph to expand into a full-screen view for closer inspection • A dedicated graphing keyboard with x, y, and = keeps everything in one place — no separate app, no separate mode Solve equations as you type • Type x² = 121 or sin(x) = 0.5 and Calc Engine finds every real answer • Tap the solved answers to reuse it in your next calculation, no separate "solve" mode Programmer mode without leaving the calculator • Type hex (0x), binary (0b), and octal (0o) literals — read and write the way you read code • A full bitwise toolkit: AND, OR, XOR, NOT, shifts, and rotates • Every result shown in HEX, DEC, OCT, and BIN simultaneously, with configurable word size (8/16/32/64) and signed/unsigned interpretation • Tap the binary row to expand into a byte-by-byte view with bit-position labels Private by design • Everything syncs through your personal iCloud — nothing stored on our servers • Fully localized and native on every Apple platform Unlock Calc Engine+ for the full experience — custom themes, fonts, key shapes, custom keyboards, user-defined functions, saved constants, unit conversions, live graphing, equation solving, programmer-mode hex/binary/bitwise, and more. Everything that makes Calc Engine truly yours. Teach it your formulas once. Customize it to feel like home. Use it forever.
BRISTOL
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The Bristol Calculator provides a platform for both simple and more technical calculations involving vectors, matrices and complex numbers. Separate input and output screens with touch cursor control facilitates editing and checking. Option settings provide control over the output and input screen presentation. Keys can be personalised for often used functions and variable names. Data entry is also possible from the hardware keyboard as well as the calculator's screen keypad. Help pages provide built in contextual help. Work can be saved and templates created for future calculations. Vectors, matrices and complex numbers are handled by the same basic function operators used for numbers; the context determining operation. As well as standard mathematical functions, bespoke routines for sums, products, matrix inversion, numerical integration and solving transcendental equations are included. User functions can also be created. Table and graph plot functions display results. The free version of the Bristol calculator allows two files to be stored. A modest one-off In-App purchase unlocks this restriction. Otherwise, the free version is fully functional. This is a standalone application and there are no links to advertisers or third party software.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is update cadence: Calc Engine at daily against BRISTOL's monthly. BRISTOL's advantage is iOS requirement (14.7 vs 18). On price, ads, in-app purchases and device support 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
Both are free to download. Calc Engine sells 1 one-off in-app purchase and BRISTOL sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.
Calc Engine ships an update daily, BRISTOL monthly. The most recent releases landed on October 16, 2026 and October 6, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Calc Engine | BRISTOL |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 5.0 (4 ratings) — better | — |
| Number of ratings | 4 — better | — |
| Update frequency | Daily — better | Monthly |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | Yes |
| Monetization | Free | — |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch — better | iPhone, iPad, iPod |
| Requires iOS | 18 | 14.7 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 17 MB | 3 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | VersaEdge Software, LLC | Christopher Britton |
In-app purchases
Calc Engine
- Calc Engine+$9.99
BRISTOL
- bristol calculator storage$3.99









