Comparison

xFractal vs Surface Explorer

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

Head to head
About

xFractal

Explore intricate fractal patterns with intuitive touch gestures. Discover unlimited structures, save your favorite creations, and share them with others. Offers advanced settings for deeper exploration.

Highlights
  • Multiple fractal types (Mandelbrot, Julia, etc.)
  • Over 50 predefined fractal images
  • Save and bookmark favorite fractals
  • Share images via Twitter or Email
  • Advanced settings for customization
  • Retina display support
Features
Read full description

Explore the beauty of fractals with a few gestures. Use your fingers to zoom in, zoom out and move around the fractal to discover the fascinating beauty of these unlimited structures. FEATURES: • Mandelbrot, Multibrot, Julia and Newton fractals • More than 50 predefined fractal images • Save image in bookmarks as favorite or in photo album • Share image to Twitter or by Email • Advanced settings for the more curious • Support for Retina devices LANGUAGES: English, French

About

Surface Explorer

Features
Read full description

Surface Explorer is a high-performance visualizer for intricate mathematical surfaces — 2D manifolds embedded in three- or four-dimensional space, and 3D slices of four-dimensional hypersurfaces — bringing abstract geometry to life with real-time GPU rendering. KEY FEATURES • Cross Section — slice four-dimensional hypersurfaces and watch their 3D sections change shape as you rotate them in 4D or slide the cutting plane along the fourth axis, even along a 4D camera path. • Ray Marching Engine — real-time rendering of implicit surfaces and signed-distance fields, with procedural displacement, transparency, adjustable shells, and a precise mode for high-degree equations. • Multi-Mesh Surfaces — build figures from several independent grids, each with its own color, transparency, texture and domain. • Geodesic Flow — explore intrinsic geometry on curved manifolds (S³, H²×R, SL(2,R) and more), integrating geodesics from initial conditions. • 4D Spatial Exploration — dedicated controls for hyperspatial rotation (Omega, Phi, Psi), projection, and 3D and 4D camera paths. • 4D Lighting Models — Directional, Observer, and Slice lighting designed for hyperspace. • Dynamic GLSL Scripting — write custom shaders for procedural textures and surface logic in the built-in editor. • Backgrounds — images and procedural effects, fixed on screen or wrapped around the scene as a sphere, cylinder or cube. • Audio-Visual Synthesis — synchronize geometric parameters with a mathematical sound synthesizer. • Video Recording — capture your explorations directly in the app and save them to your device. A library of ready-made presets ships with the app, from classic parametric surfaces to black-hole ergospheres, curved-space tori and slices of the 3-torus, together with a searchable built-in manual. Built with Qt and Metal for smooth, native performance on iPhone and iPad.

Screenshots

xFractal4 screens
Surface Explorer4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is update cadence: Surface Explorer at fortnightly against xFractal's every 3 months. xFractal's advantage is iOS requirement (5.1 vs 17.0). On price, ads, 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

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

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

UpkeepUpdate frequency

xFractal ships an update every 3 months, Surface Explorer fortnightly. The most recent releases landed on October 3, 2026 and October 4, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard2 real differences · 8 level
xFractal versus Surface Explorer: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterxFractalSurface Explorer
PriceFreeFree
Rating3.6 (8 ratings) — better—
Positive reviews75.0% of reviews—
Number of ratings8 — better—
Update frequencyEvery 3 monthsFortnightly — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNoNo
MonetizationFree—
DevicesiPhone, iPad, iPodiPhone, iPad, Mac
Requires iOS5.1 — better17.0
Further details — not scored
Size16 MB62 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperJean BovetGAETANO MOSCHETTI

In-app purchases

None

xFractal

No in-app purchases

None

Surface Explorer

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is xFractal free?
xFractal is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is Surface Explorer free?
Surface Explorer is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Do xFractal or Surface Explorer have ads?
Neither xFractal nor Surface Explorer shows ads.
Which is updated more often, xFractal or Surface Explorer?
xFractal ships an update every 3 months, and Surface Explorer fortnightly. Most recently, xFractal was updated on October 3, 2026 and Surface Explorer on October 4, 2026.

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