StellarMate vs SynScan Photo
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
StellarMate
Control your astrophotography equipment remotely. Capture images, stream video, and perform precise alignment. Automatically back up your photos to the cloud with rich metadata for easy searching.
- Remote equipment control
- Image capture and video streaming
- Polar alignment assistant
- Cloud image backup
- Metadata search and sorting
- Software updates
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Use StellarMate App to discover and connect to your StellarMate controller. Control StellarMate functions and access the Web Manager and Web based VNC Viewer. Join StellarMate to your home WiFi network. Use Ekos to capture images, stream video, guide, focus, and align. With Polar Alignment Assistant tool, get very accurate polar alignment using internal astrometry engine. Never lose your images again with EkosLive Pro. All captured images are automatically uploaded to the cloud with a rich set of metadata that enables powerful search and sorting. Use custom tags to uniquely tag important frames for later use. Check the health of your device, and use the software updater to keep it up to date.
SynScan Photo
Control Skywatcher AZ-Mounts for astrophotography tasks like panoramas and time-lapses. Requires a mount with a Wi-Fi module and specific firmware version.
- Control Skywatcher AZ-Mounts
- Perform panoramic photography
- Create time-lapse sequences
- Execute multiple-point scans
- Wi-Fi module required
- Firmware version 3.20+ needed
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SynScan Photo can control a Skywatcher AZ-Mount(i.e. AZ-GTi、Star Discovery、SynScan AZ80...)to perform multiple photographic tasks, including panorama, time-lapse or multiple-points scan. Note: A mount with a built-in Wi-Fi module must be used, and the motor firmware of the mount is version 3.20 or higher.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is rating: StellarMate at 3.3 against SynScan Photo's 2.0. StellarMate also leads on update cadence (every 8 days vs every 3 months) and ratings volume (20 vs 2). SynScan Photo's advantage is review sentiment (50% vs 35%) and iOS requirement (12.0 vs 15.1). On price, 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
Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
StellarMate holds the better App Store score, 3.3 against 2.0. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: StellarMate has 20 ratings behind it against 2, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews complicate that: 35% of StellarMate's written reviews are positive against 50% of SynScan Photo's, so the app with the better star average is not the one people write more warmly about.
StellarMate ships an update every 8 days, SynScan Photo every 3 months. The most recent releases landed on September 21, 2026 and September 16, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | StellarMate | SynScan Photo |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 3.3 (20 ratings) — better | 2.0 (2 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | 34.6% of reviews | 50.0% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 20 — better | 2 |
| Update frequency | Every 8 days — better | Every 3 months |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free | Free |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod | iPhone, iPad, iPod |
| Requires iOS | 15.1 | 12.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 119 MB | 11 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Ikarus Astronomy Company For Scientific Instruments & Tools | SynUe Tech. Co., Ltd |
Customer experience
StellarMate
SynScan Photo
In-app purchases
StellarMate
No in-app purchases
SynScan Photo
No in-app purchases
