Hololab AR vs Sandbox AR
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Hololab AR
Explore science through immersive 3D labs and augmented reality experiences. Learn about animals, space, electricity, and more with interactive models and guided lessons from a robot tutor. Educational games reinforce knowledge and skills.
- Augmented Reality 3D models
- Interactive exploration of structures
- Voice-guided lessons from robot tutor
- Educational games
- Topics: Animals, Space, Electricity, Climate Change
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Hololab is a science adventure in the palm of your hand. Our collection of dozens of fully immersive 3D labs and educational games will inspire you to learn about the world like never before! With Hololab, you can learn the way you were meant to – in the real world. * View 3D structures with Augmented Reality. Move around and take them apart just as if they're real models. * Get step-by-step voice-guided teaching from our friendly robot tutor, Scout. * Solidify your knowledge and skills with our educational games. * Visualize concepts on with our cutting-edge Augmented Reality. You can learn about a variety of topics like: * Animals & Ecology * Aerodynamics * Space Exploration * Electricity & Magnetism * Alternative Energy * Climate Change
Sandbox AR
Create, build, and explore immersive virtual worlds using augmented reality. This app allows users to scale creations to life-size and share them with others. It's designed to bring interactive technology into educational settings.
- Create, build, and explore in AR
- Life-size scale exploration
- Share creations via QR code
- Capture snapshots and videos
- Teacher audio descriptions (DE:X subscribers)
- Link to curated resources (DE:X subscribers)
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--- Multi award-winning augmented reality maker app --- - BETT Awards 2023 Best AR/VR ! - GESS Awards 2023 Best Digital XR / VR / AI Product - spaces4learning New Product Award 2022 ! -- What is Sandbox? -- Experience, build, and explore in AR with Discovery Education Sandbox. Designed as a companion to the award-winning Discovery Education Experience learning platform, bring immersive technology and content into the classroom. Choose from hundreds of models and create a virtual world to experience and share with fellow students and teachers. Use life size mode to scale up and walk inside your own creation! -- Features -- • Create, build and explore in augmented reality. • Explore creations in life-size scale! • Share your sandboxes with other users with a simple QR code. • Capture snapshots and videos of your sandbox. -- Enhanced features for DE:X subscribers -- As a Discovery Education Experience or Espresso subscriber, access additional features to add teacher audio descriptions to sandboxes and add links to your own curated resources on Experience or Espresso. Integrate with studio boards and access future additional model packs.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is review sentiment: Sandbox AR at 100% against Hololab AR's 33%. Sandbox AR also leads on rating (4.8 vs 4.1). Hololab AR's advantage is update cadence (every 2 weeks vs every 2 months) and device support (3 vs 1). On price, ratings volume, ads and in-app purchases 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.
Sandbox AR holds the better App Store score, 4.8 against 4.1. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 46 and 16 respectively. Written reviews point the same way: 33% of Hololab AR's written reviews are positive against 100% of Sandbox AR's.
Hololab AR ships an update every 2 weeks, Sandbox AR every 2 months. The most recent releases landed on October 29, 2026 and October 24, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Hololab AR | Sandbox AR |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.1 (46 ratings) | 4.8 (16 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 33.3% of reviews | 100.0% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 46 — better | 16 |
| Update frequency | Every 2 weeks — better | Every 2 months |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free | Free |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better | iPad |
| Requires iOS | 11.0 — better | 14.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 224 MB | 1.6 GB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | LightUp | Discovery Education Inc. |
Customer experience
Hololab AR
Sandbox AR
In-app purchases
Hololab AR
No in-app purchases
Sandbox AR
No in-app purchases









