Sprite Pencil vs SpritePixels
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Sprite Pencil
Create pixel art sprites easily on your mobile device. This app offers a powerful drawing engine with a simple toolset, supporting iCloud Drive and Apple Pencil. Edit existing pixel art files and share your creations with various scaling options.
- Pixel art sprite creation
- iCloud Drive support
- Apple Pencil support
- Import and edit existing pixel art
- Symmetric drawing mode
- Automatic shading brushes
- Share with scaling options
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Sprite Pencil enables you to create beautiful pixel art sprites on the go. Sprite Pencil has a simple set of tools, and a powerful drawing engine. Sprite Pencil allows you to open and edit pixel art images you may already have in Files. Sprite Pencil supports in-place file editing so you can use your own file organization. FEATURES: • iCloud Drive support • Apple Pencil support • Drawing engine built exclusively for Apple platforms • Handpicked color palettes • Import color palettes • Move, rotate, flip, fill, and posterize sprites • Easy outlines • Symmetric drawing mode • Automatic shading brushes • Share your pixel art with scaling options • Create pixel art stickers in the iMessage app • Display your sprites in a widget
SpritePixels
Create pixel art with intuitive multi-touch controls for fluid painting and precise editing. Zoom in for detail, copy and paste sections, and customize extensive color palettes. Save and export your creations as high-resolution PNGs.
- Multi-touch painting
- Zoomable canvas
- Drag-and-drop copying
- Area fill tool
- Rectangular region copy
- Customizable 16-color palettes
- Large canvas size
- iCloud sync
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Designed for multi-touch! No more pecking one pixel at a time – fluidly paint pixel art using several touches at once. Tap a tile to zoom in and work with precision. The companion mini-view shows what it looks like at normal size. Drag any tile to instantly copy it to another tile. Great for making similar versions of a sprite. Press and hold with one touch to fill an area. Press and hold with two touches to lift and copy a rectangular region. Customize a palette of up to an incredible 16 colors! Expand your canvas to a staggering 512 by 512 pixels! Press and hold any color in the palette to adjust it to any of a mind-blowing 4,096 possible values! Experiment with color sets by pressing and holding the palette to replace an entire row of colors. Save your work in iCloud and resume it from another device. Export your art as a pixel-perfect PNG image.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is review sentiment: Sprite Pencil at 68% against SpritePixels's 0%. Sprite Pencil also leads on price (Free vs $0.99) and update cadence (monthly vs every 15 months). SpritePixels's advantage is rating (5.0 vs 4.6) and chart position (#194 vs unranked). On ads, in-app purchases, monetization model 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
Sprite Pencil is free to download; SpritePixels costs $0.99 up front. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
SpritePixels holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 4.6. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Sprite Pencil has 59 ratings behind it against 1, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews complicate that: 68% of Sprite Pencil's written reviews are positive against 0% of SpritePixels's, so the app with the better star average is not the one people write more warmly about.
Sprite Pencil ships an update monthly, SpritePixels every 15 months. The most recent releases landed on September 3, 2026 and August 23, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Sprite Pencil | SpritePixels |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free — better | $0.99 |
| Rating | 4.6 (59 ratings) | 5.0 (1 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 67.9% of reviews — better | 0.0% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | 59 — better | 1 |
| Update frequency | Monthly — better | Every 15 months |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Paid | Paid |
| Best chart rank | — | #194 — better |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, Mac — better | iPhone, iPad |
| Requires iOS | 26.0 | 18.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 4 MB | 4 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | 256 Arts | Steve Barnes |
Customer experience
Sprite Pencil
SpritePixels
In-app purchases
Sprite Pencil
No in-app purchases
SpritePixels
No in-app purchases
Questions
Is Sprite Pencil free?
Is SpritePixels free?
Which has better reviews, Sprite Pencil or SpritePixels?
Do Sprite Pencil or SpritePixels have ads?
Which is updated more often, Sprite Pencil or SpritePixels?
Other comparisons
