Comparison

MakePass vs Ian’s Awesome Counter

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

Head to head
About

MakePass

Create and personalize digital passes for your Apple Wallet with AI-powered design and advanced editing tools. Import barcodes from various formats, set location and time awareness for automatic display, and integrate with iOS Shortcuts for automation.

Highlights
  • AI-powered design from photos
  • Versatile pass creation from scratch or import
  • Extensive customization options
  • Support for multiple barcode formats
  • Location and time-based pass display
  • iOS Shortcuts integration
Features
Read full description

MakePass is a powerful Apple Wallet pass creator and editor. Create a pass from scratch, import an existing one, or use AI to turn a photo, PDF, or description into an event ticket, boarding pass, membership card, coupon, and more. Core Features: • AI-Powered Design: Turn photos, PDFs, or descriptions into Apple Wallet passes. MakePass AI extracts the relevant information and creates the pass content, structure, and design. • Flexible Pass Creation: Start from scratch, open an existing pass, import one directly from Apple Wallet using the Share button, or choose an included example. • Extensive Customization: Add, remove, and reorder header, front, and back fields. Customize colors, dates, time zones, locations, grouping, identifiers, associated apps, and more. • Complete Image Control: Customize icon, header, strip, thumbnail, background, artwork, and footer images. Use your own image or choose a template and adjust its color and blur. • More Pass Styles: Choose from Event Tickets, Boarding Passes, Generic Passes, Poster Passes, Store Cards, Coupons, Semantic Event Tickets, and Semantic Boarding Passes. • Semantic Fields: Add structured metadata for events, venues, seating, flights, airports, passengers, dates, time zones, and locations. Apple Wallet uses this machine-readable metadata to decide which fields to show. Advanced Capabilities: • Barcode Flexibility: Scan, import, or create QR, Aztec, PDF417, Code 128, Code 39, Codabar, EAN-13, and Interleaved 2 of 5 barcodes. Convert unsupported formats to a Wallet-compatible barcode or embed them as pass images when available. • Featured Actions: Add up to two actions below a pass for calls, orders, shopping, bookings, schedules, rewards, and more. • Location and Time Awareness: Set relevant dates and locations so passes can appear on the Lock Screen at the right time or place. • Apple Wallet Editor Compatibility: Create “User Created” passes that remain editable in Wallet and never appear grouped. Add linked photos and custom backgrounds, or use styles that Wallet’s editor does not offer, including Coupons and Store Cards. • Shortcuts Integration: Use Shortcuts to automate pass creation and customization. • Command-Line Automation on Mac: Create and customize passes from Terminal, scripts, or AI agents with the included "makepass-cli" tool. MakePass Subscriptions: • MakePass Pro: Unlock barcodes and images, plus passes that appear based on time or location. • MakePass Ultra: Includes every MakePass Pro feature, plus MakePass AI, Shortcuts support, command-line automation on Mac, and Family Sharing. MakePass supports macOS, iOS and iPadOS. Notes: • On iPadOS, where Apple Wallet is unavailable, MakePass lets you preview passes and share or save them as files. • Some features, including Poster, Semantic Event Ticket, and Semantic Boarding Pass styles, header icons, featured actions, linked photos, and the “User Created” group, are unavailable on older system versions. • Barcode and image availability varies by system, device, pass style, and group. Privacy by Design: MakePass works entirely on-device and does not store or send any information outside its protected app sandbox, except when you explicitly use MakePass AI. This requires sending text extracted from images or the pass description you provide for processing. Terms of Use: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/

About

Ian’s Awesome Counter

This utility app helps users improve focus and self-awareness with customizable prompts. Set intervals, start/end times, and track your progress over time to stay on task. Ideal for individuals or parents assisting with attention management.

Highlights
  • Customizable prompt intervals
  • Set daily start and end times
  • Track successful focus periods
  • View historical performance
  • Optional notification alerts
Features
Read full description

Ian's Awesome Counter is a utility designed to help you be more focused and aware of yourself. My son, Ian, can sometimes have difficulty with regulation and management of his attention. We’ve tried several different strategies for helping him with this. One of the strategies that we found most successful was giving him regular prompts throughout the day and ask whether he thought he was on task and staying focused. Initially this took the form of a repeating countdown timer and a hand clicker, but after a while this became rather onerous to keep up with, so instead he and I worked together to design an Apple Watch app that would make this easier to do. The result is this app. You configure how often you want to be prompted, when the prompts should begin and end each day, and what your goal for successful periods is. Then Ian’s Awesome Counter does the rest. If you turn on notifications you’ll get an alert at the end of every period asking how you did and the values are recorded in the app. You can see your last week’s performance in the History view. This app is provided completely free of charge. I’ve found it really helpful for my family and my hope is that by sharing it, other families will find similar help from it. It can be worn either by the person working on their focus or by a parent/carer who can then relay the prompts.

Screenshots

MakePass4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is review sentiment: Ian’s Awesome Counter at 90% against MakePass's 46%. Ian’s Awesome Counter also leads on in-app purchases (none vs 3) and rating (4.8 vs 4.4). MakePass's advantage is update cadence (monthly vs every 33 months) and ratings volume (288 vs 55). On price, ads 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

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Both are free to download. MakePass sells 3 in-app purchases, starting at $3.99 per month. Ian’s Awesome Counter asks for nothing beyond the download.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

Ian’s Awesome Counter holds the better App Store score, 4.8 against 4.4. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: MakePass has 288 ratings behind it against 55, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews point the same way: 46% of MakePass's written reviews are positive against 90% of Ian’s Awesome Counter's.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

MakePass ships an update monthly, Ian’s Awesome Counter every 33 months. The most recent releases landed on October 26, 2026 and October 24, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard7 real differences · 3 level
MakePass versus Ian’s Awesome Counter: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterMakePassIan’s Awesome Counter
PriceFreeFree
Rating4.4 (288 ratings)4.8 (55 ratings) — better
Positive reviews45.9% of reviews90.0% of reviews — better
Number of ratings288 — better55
Update frequencyMonthly — betterEvery 33 months
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesYesNo — better
MonetizationFreemiumFree — better
DevicesiPhone, iPad, MaciPhone, iPod, Apple Watch
Requires iOS17.015.0 — better
Further details — not scored
Size26 MB6 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperPedro Jose Pereira VieitoCross Forward Consulting, LLC

Customer experience

MakePass

All ratings288 ratings
Positive83.7%
Neutral3.8%
Negative12.5%
Written reviews170 reviews
Positive45.9%
Neutral10.0%
Negative44.1%

Ian’s Awesome Counter

All ratings55 ratings
Positive96.4%
Neutral1.8%
Negative1.8%
Written reviews20 reviews
Positive90.0%
Neutral5.0%
Negative5.0%

Bugs and requests

MakePass

Reported bugs

13 issues
  • Shortcuts integration loses text in header, front, and back fields
  • Pass creation fails silently without error messages
  • Barcode import doesn't work for many card types
  • QR codes render unreadably for large payloads
  • Passes don't display correctly on Apple Watch (blank except title)
Show 8 more
  • Front field text lines combine incorrectly
  • Design doesn't match preview once sent to wallet
  • Saving and loading passes causes intermittent errors
  • Adding passes to wallet sometimes doesn't work
  • Image import produces black lines on right side
  • Generated QR codes don't match imported QR codes
  • Inconsistent time format display across passes
  • Editing existing passes sometimes creates new duplicates instead of updating

Requested features

24 requests
  • Free trial or preview mode before subscription
  • Monthly subscription option (not just yearly)
  • Ability to add custom images/logos to passes
  • Support for more barcode formats (Code 11, 25, 39, 93, UPC-A)
  • Resizable QR codes
Show 19 more
  • Live preview while editing
  • Edit raw pass.json files
  • Multiple locations per pass
  • Expiry date functionality
  • More back field options
  • Font customization options
  • HSL color adjustments
  • Clickable phone numbers and locations in fields
  • Lock screen pass display based on location
  • History of recently added passes
  • Ability to overwrite existing passes instead of creating duplicates
  • NFC card cloning support
  • More pass group options (more than 9)
  • Custom RGB color picker
  • Recurring pass relevancy (e.g., weekday displays)
  • Comprehensive tutorials and documentation
  • In-app feedback/bug report button
  • Support for COVID-19 and vaccination passports
  • API access for developers

Ian’s Awesome Counter

Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.

In-app purchases

3 purchases

MakePass

Subscriptions3
  • MakePass Pro (Monthly)$3.991 Month
  • MakePass Pro (Yearly)$9.991 Year
  • MakePass Ultra (Yearly)$16.991 Year
None

Ian’s Awesome Counter

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is MakePass free?
MakePass is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is Ian’s Awesome Counter free?
Ian’s Awesome Counter is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Which has better reviews, MakePass or Ian’s Awesome Counter?
Ian’s Awesome Counter is rated higher. MakePass averages 4.4 out of 5 from 288 ratings, while Ian’s Awesome Counter averages 4.8 from 55 ratings.
Do MakePass or Ian’s Awesome Counter have ads?
Neither MakePass nor Ian’s Awesome Counter shows ads.
Which is updated more often, MakePass or Ian’s Awesome Counter?
MakePass ships an update monthly, and Ian’s Awesome Counter every 33 months. Most recently, MakePass was updated on October 26, 2026 and Ian’s Awesome Counter on October 24, 2026.

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