Comparison

Animator Plus vs Simple Trace Pro

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

Head to head
About

Animator Plus

Create professional-quality animations with a powerful yet intuitive drawing and animation tool. Offers extensive features for drawing, frame management, and exporting your creations in various formats.

Highlights
  • Keyframe animation
  • Timeline editing
  • Drawing tools
  • Unlimited layers and frames
  • Export to MP4 and PNG
  • Onion skinning
  • Customizable brushes
Features
Read full description

Animator Plus is a powerful drawing and frame-by-frame animation studio built natively for iPad and iPhone. Sketch, paint, and bring stories to life on a buttery-smooth Metal-powered canvas — with pro brushes, a full animation timeline, layers, sound sync, and one-tap export to MP4, image sequences, PNG, or JPG. Whether you are a hobbyist doodler, a storyboard artist, a cartoonist, or an animator chasing that classic hand-drawn look, Animator Plus puts everything you need into one focused, beautifully refined workspace. PRO BRUSHES TUNED FOR APPLE PENCIL • Studio Pen — crisp ink lines with subtle pressure response • Pencil — true graphite feel with tilt-based shading • Pressure Pen — thickness scales with how hard you press • Marker — flat, opaque coverage for blocking color • Fountain — calligraphic chisel for elegant strokes • Airbrush — soft sprays that build up gradually • Tapered Line — four variants for classic animation strokes • Eraser, Smart Fill Bucket, Lasso Select Full Apple Pencil pressure, tilt, and azimuth support. Adjust per-brush size, opacity, hardness, flow, and smoothing. • CLASSIC FRAME-BY-FRAME ANIMATION Flip on Animation Mode to unlock a full timeline. Insert, duplicate, copy, paste, and reorder frames in a tap. Set Frame Hold to pause specific frames for any number of ticks. Tune playback from 1 to 60 fps. Onion-skin previous and next frames as ghosts to align inbetweens with confidence. • STROKE-BY-STROKE PLAYBACK Watch your artwork redraw itself, one stroke at a time, at 1x, 2x, or 4x speed. Perfect for time-lapse reels, tutorials, and process videos. Undone strokes are skipped automatically. • POWERFUL LAYERS Stack, rename, hide, lock, blend, and clip layers independently. Every animation frame keeps its own layer stack so foreground action and static backgrounds stay perfectly organized. • SHAPES, TEXT, AND TRANSFORMS Drop perfect lines, rectangles, ellipses, triangles, stars, and hexagons. Add editable text overlays. Use Lasso Select to grab strokes and move, rotate, scale, or recolor entire sections in one gesture. • REFERENCE TOOLS AND ROTOSCOPING Turn on square, dot, or isometric grids for precise layouts. Import a reference image from Photos and dim its opacity to trace or sample. Import a video clip and Animator Plus extracts the frames automatically, letting you rotoscope on top. • SOUND ON THE TIMELINE Import an audio clip, trim the in and out points, and adjust volume. Sound plays back in lockstep with your animation so timing and lip-sync land first try. • EXPORT EVERYWHERE Save your art as transparent PNG, JPG, image sequence, or MP4 video. Push files to the Files app or straight to your camera roll. Projects sync across devices via iCloud Drive. • REFINED FOR EVERY DEVICE Layouts adapt automatically between iPad and iPhone. Customize the accent color, brush smoothing, background color, and grid style from one tidy Settings panel. Whether you are sketching a storyboard, illustrating a children's book, prototyping a cartoon, or producing a finished animated short, Animator Plus gives you the tools to draw, paint, animate, and ship — frame by frame. Thanks for your support. Visit nitrio.com for more apps for your iOS devices.

About

Simple Trace Pro

Practice drawing and illustration by tracing photos and images. Load pictures from your camera roll and use Apple Pencil to refine your line work. Save your traced creations as JPGs or transparent PNGs.

Highlights
  • Trace photos and pictures
  • Practice illustration and painting
  • Load images from camera roll
  • Apple Pencil support
  • Adjustable transmittance
  • Zoom functionality
  • Save as JPG or transparent PNG
Features
Read full description

Simple Trace makes it easy to trace photos and pictures by hand. The concept is to be able to practice painting. Once you've loaded the image from your camera roll, it's easy to get started with Apple Pencil. By tracing the original picture, you can practice basic drawing such as how to draw lines in the illustration. Feature - Change of transmittance - Zoom in and out of the drawing area - Images can be saved as jpg, Pro version can be saved as transparent png - No ads in Pro version

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is price: Simple Trace Pro at $0.99 against Animator Plus's $8.99. Simple Trace Pro also leads on update cadence (every 2 weeks vs every 23 months) and iOS requirement (14.5 vs 17.6). On review sentiment, ads, in-app purchases and monetization model 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

Animator Plus costs $8.99 and Simple Trace Pro $0.99 up front. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Animator Plus ships an update every 23 months, Simple Trace Pro every 2 weeks. The most recent releases landed on September 19, 2026 and September 9, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard3 real differences · 7 level
Animator Plus versus Simple Trace Pro: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterAnimator PlusSimple Trace Pro
Price$8.99$0.99 — better
Rating—3.0 (2 ratings) — better
Positive reviews0.0% of reviews0.0% of reviews
Number of ratings—2 — better
Update frequencyEvery 23 monthsEvery 2 weeks — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNoNo
MonetizationPaidPaid
DevicesiPadiPad
Requires iOS17.614.5 — better
Further details — not scored
Size2 MB1 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperHeng Jia LiangKazuaki Matsuda

Customer experience

Animator Plus

Written reviews1 reviews
Positive0.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative100.0%

Simple Trace Pro

All ratings2 ratings
Positive50.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative50.0%
Written reviews1 reviews
Positive0.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative100.0%

In-app purchases

None

Animator Plus

No in-app purchases

None

Simple Trace Pro

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is Animator Plus free?
Animator Plus costs $8.99, with no in-app purchases.
Is Simple Trace Pro free?
Simple Trace Pro costs $0.99, with no in-app purchases.
Do Animator Plus or Simple Trace Pro have ads?
Neither Animator Plus nor Simple Trace Pro shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Animator Plus or Simple Trace Pro?
Animator Plus ships an update every 23 months, and Simple Trace Pro every 2 weeks. Most recently, Animator Plus was updated on September 19, 2026 and Simple Trace Pro on September 9, 2026.

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