xFractal vs Surface Explorer
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
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.
- 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
Read full descriptionHide 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
Surface Explorer
Read full descriptionHide 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
Verdict
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
Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
xFractal ships an update every 3 months, Surface Explorer fortnightly. The most recent releases landed on October 3, 2026 and October 4, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | xFractal | Surface Explorer |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 3.6 (8 ratings) — better | — |
| Positive reviews | 75.0% of reviews | — |
| Number of ratings | 8 — better | — |
| Update frequency | Every 3 months | Fortnightly — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free | — |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod | iPhone, iPad, Mac |
| Requires iOS | 5.1 — better | 17.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 16 MB | 62 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Jean Bovet | GAETANO MOSCHETTI |
In-app purchases
xFractal
No in-app purchases
Surface Explorer
No in-app purchases
Questions
Is xFractal free?
Is Surface Explorer free?
Do xFractal or Surface Explorer have ads?
Which is updated more often, xFractal or Surface Explorer?
Other comparisons















