# Lua IDE vs Carnets

The clearest difference is rating: Carnets at 4.5 against Lua IDE's 3.4. Carnets also leads on update cadence (every 6 weeks vs every 7 months) and review sentiment (82% vs 59%). On price, ads, in-app purchases and monetization model there is nothing between them.

Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.

Carnets holds the better App Store score, 4.5 against 3.4. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 22 and 91 respectively. Written reviews point the same way: 59% of Lua IDE's written reviews are positive against 82% of Carnets's.

Lua IDE ships an update every 7 months, Carnets every 6 weeks. The most recent releases landed on October 29, 2026 and October 30, 2026 respectively.

## The numbers

| Metric | Lua IDE | Carnets |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | [3.4 (22 ratings)](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/lua-ide/id1549382090/reviews) | **[4.5 (91 ratings)](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/carnets-jupyter-with-scipy/id1559497253/reviews)** |
| Number of ratings | 22 | **91** |
| Positive reviews | 59.3% of reviews | **81.5% of reviews** |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Ads | No | No |
| Update frequency | Every 7 months | **Every 6 weeks** |
| Monetization | Free | Free |
| Size | 2 MB | 2.1 GB |
| Requires iOS | 16.0 | **14.0** |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad | **iPhone, iPad, iPod** |
| Age rating | 4+ | 17+ |
| Developer | [Wenhuan Li](https://appshunter.io/developer/1243152342) | [Nicolas Holzschuch](https://appshunter.io/developer/1450994948) |

## What reviewers say

### Lua IDE

[App page](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/lua-ide/id1549382090)

A mobile integrated development environment for writing and running Lua code. It offers syntax highlighting, module support, and an offline reference manual. Cloud storage integration is also available.

**Highlights:** Syntax highlighting, Module support, Offline reference manual, Works offline, Cloud storage support

**Features:** Vision Pro support

**In-app purchases:** none


### Carnets

[App page](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/carnets-jupyter-with-scipy/id1559497253)

This app offers a full Jupyter notebook experience on your device, ideal for education and research. It includes scientific computation packages like SciPy and scikit-learn, allowing you to write and run Python code offline. Notebooks can be shared and opened from other applications.

**Highlights:** Offline Jupyter notebook execution, Includes SciPy, scikit-learn, and Seaborn, Embedded Python interpreter, Markdown support for text, Package management with %pip, Notebook sharing and import

**Features:** macOS Compatibility, Vision Pro support

**In-app purchases:** none

**What reviewers like**

- 🚀 Best python coding app
- 👍 Good app, well organized
- 👍 Comprehensive Python environment
- 👍 Excellent tool for data science on iPad
- 👍 Fantastic, powerful functionality

**What reviewers complain about**

- 🐛 Crashes, blank screen, freezes
- 🔋 High battery consumption, heating issues
- 🔍 Some methods/libraries don't work
- 📁 Issues with file access, saving

**Reported bugs**

- Unable to create new notebooks
- Incompatible with older iOS versions
- Line breaking issues with external keyboard

**Requested features**

- Add support for Tensorflow, XGBoost, LightGBM
- Enable running code in .py files
- Improve stability and performance
- Add support for R kernel
- Provide better file management options


## Frequently asked questions

### Is Lua IDE free?

Lua IDE is free to download, with no in-app purchases.

### Is Carnets free?

Carnets is free to download, with no in-app purchases.

### Which has better reviews, Lua IDE or Carnets?

Carnets is rated higher. Lua IDE averages 3.4 out of 5 from 22 ratings, while Carnets averages 4.5 from 91 ratings.

### Do Lua IDE or Carnets have ads?

Neither Lua IDE nor Carnets shows ads.

### Which is updated more often, Lua IDE or Carnets?

Lua IDE ships an update every 7 months, and Carnets every 6 weeks. Most recently, Lua IDE was updated on October 29, 2026 and Carnets on October 30, 2026.

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*Compared by [AppsHunter](https://appshunter.io/) from daily US App Store data. Review summaries are generated from verbatim App Store reviews.*