Halcyon Calc vs Plus42
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Halcyon Calc
A powerful calculator app for students, engineers, and scientists. It handles complex numbers, symbolic expressions, unit conversions, and matrix operations, with advanced plotting and programming capabilities.
- Complex number calculations
- Symbolic expression manipulation
- Unit conversion with custom units
- Matrix and vector operations
- Symbolic plotting
- Programming of custom operations
- Statistical data analysis
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For students, engineers, scientists or people who fondly remember classic calculators, Halcyon Calc is a great application for manipulating numbers and even symbolic expressions. Features: - Use this calculator on an iPhone, iPod Touch or an iPad - Use your finger to quickly scroll through the stack to review intermediate results - Copy and paste support - Over 225 built-in operations, including trig, logarithms, real functions, complex operations and more - Allows you to work with real, complex and integer numbers. - Real and complex numbers can be displayed in standard, fixed, scientific and engineering format - Use over 120 built-in units to perform unit conversion or create your own units if the one you want is not already there - Integer numbers can be displayed in decimal, hexadecimal, octal and binary bases - Work with real and complex matrices and vectors. - Enter symbolic expressions and solve them for different values. Even better, solve quadratic formulas, collect and expand factors and terms, find minima, maxima and roots of any expression. - Plot symbolic expressions in X/Y coordinates. Pan the coordinate space by dragging the plot in any direction. Zoom in and out using a pinch gesture. - Determine symbolic derivative, taylor series or numeric integral of an expression. - Store numbers, lists, strings and expressions in symbols. Create hierarchies of symbols to allow you to organize your calculations. - Create sequences of calculator commands into programs, creating your own operations which you can then include in expressions. - Store statistical data and calculate totals, averages, standard deviations, linear regressions, etc over that data. - Calculate the probabilities associated with standard distributions like the normal, F and T distributions.
Plus42
This advanced scientific calculator simulates the classic HP-42S RPN calculator with enhanced features. It offers algebraic expressions, unit conversions, directories for storage, a larger resizable display, financial functions, and 2D plotting with integral and root finding.
- HP-42S RPN calculator simulation
- Algebraic expressions
- Attached units and conversions
- Program and variable directories
- Resizable 8-row, 22-column display
- Time value of money and amortization
- 2D function plotting with zoom and pan
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Plus42 is an advanced scientific programmable calculator, based on Free42. Free42, in turn, is a complete re-implementation of the HP-42S scientific programmable RPN calculator, which was made from 1988 until 1995 by Hewlett-Packard. Free42 is a complete rewrite and contains no HP code whatsoever. Plus42 builds on Free42 and adds: Algebraic expressions modeled after those used on the HP-27S and HP-17B/19B; attached units and unit conversions modeled after those used on the HP-48/49/50 series; directories for more organized storage of programs and variables; a larger display, with 8 rows and 22 columns (131x64 pixels) by default, which the user may resize at will; time value of money and amortization schedules; and two-dimensional plotting of functions, with ability to zoom and pan, and find integrals and roots from points in the plot.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is update cadence: Plus42 at weekly against Halcyon Calc's every 4 months. Plus42 also leads on chart position (#96 vs unranked) and ratings volume (79 vs 18). Halcyon Calc's advantage is price ($4.99 vs $9.99). On rating, review sentiment, ads and in-app purchases 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
Halcyon Calc costs $4.99 and Plus42 $9.99 up front. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 4.9 for Halcyon Calc against 4.9 for Plus42. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 18 and 79 respectively. Written reviews are what separate them: 100% of Halcyon Calc's written reviews are positive against 92% of Plus42's.
Halcyon Calc ships an update every 4 months, Plus42 weekly. Both last shipped on September 22, 2026.
| Parameter | Halcyon Calc | Plus42 |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $4.99 — better | $9.99 |
| Rating | 4.9 (18 ratings) | 4.9 (79 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | 100.0% of reviews — better | 92.3% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | 18 | 79 — better |
| Update frequency | Every 4 months | Weekly — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Paid | Free — better |
| Best chart rank | — | #96 — better |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better |
| Requires iOS | 16.6 | 12.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 10 MB | 11 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Halcyon Touch Software | Thomas Okken |
Customer experience
Halcyon Calc
Plus42
In-app purchases
Halcyon Calc
No in-app purchases
Plus42
No in-app purchases









