Waves vs Matrix
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Waves
Explore graphical solutions to partial differential equations with interactive activities. Visualize Fourier series and solutions to heat and wave equations, with options to customize conditions and save your work.
- Interactive PDE exploration
- Fourier series plotting
- Heat equation solutions
- Wave equation solutions
- Customizable boundary/initial conditions
- Save and analyze work
Read full descriptionHide full description
Waves is an interactive environment for exploring graphical solutions to partial differential equations. Waves currently consists of three activities that explore Fourier series as well as series solutions to the heat and wave equations. Fourier is a tool for plotting a Fourier series that best approximates a periodic function. Diffusion plots solutions to the one-dimensional heat equation in space and animates the time evolution. Waves plots solutions to the one-dimensional wave equation in space and allows. In each of these activities you can specify the appropriate boundary and/or initial conditions. The app contains built-in examples as well as the option to save your work for future analysis. You can use Waves for homework, in-class activities or a new research project.
Matrix
Read full descriptionHide full description
The MatrixAnalysis is carefully designed to be a simple and elegant app. This app has tools to help you analyze matrices like finding eigenvalues and eigenvectors, diagonalization, QR, SLU, LU factorization. This app can also be used to do matrix operations like, finding inverse, determinant, dot product, cross product, and much more. You can also do elementwise operations and scalar operations. Want to do fast fourier transform (FFT) or inverse fourier transform (IFFT), this app is capable of IFFT Want to find an pseudo inverse of a non-square matrix, this app has you covered Want to know a rotation matrix for a given angle or rotate a vector by the given angle? This app has you covered. The expressions and the solutions are displayed in beautiful mathematical way. Once the expressions are solved, a beautifully written solutions are created that you can share with other or save it locally. It automatically saves your hard work locally on your device so you can come back and pick up from where you left off as your great effort will not be lost. There is also a Study page to help you with learning some important matrix vector formulas and some useful technique. This is an app for all student groups. From high school to college to university students. Be creative. Enjoy the app!
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is ads: Waves at none against Matrix's shown. Waves also leads on iOS requirement (11.4 vs 15.1). On price, update cadence, 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. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
Waves ships an update every 2 months, Matrix every 5 weeks. The most recent releases landed on June 1, 2026 and December 3, 2025 respectively.
| Parameter | Waves | Matrix |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.8 (16 ratings) — better | — |
| Positive reviews | 50.0% of reviews | — |
| Number of ratings | 16 — better | — |
| Update frequency | Every 2 months | Every 5 weeks — better |
| Ads | No — better | Yes |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free | — |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod | iPhone, iPad, iPod |
| Requires iOS | 11.4 — better | 15.1 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 30 MB | 32 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Tim Lucas | Om Prakash Chapagain |
In-app purchases
Waves
No in-app purchases
Matrix
No in-app purchases
