Halcyon Calc vs RCL
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.
RCL
This app faithfully recreates the TI-57 programmable calculator, offering its full scientific functions and programming capabilities. It includes a user manual, sample programs, and features like turbo speed and alphanumeric display.
- TI-57 recreation
- Scientific functions
- Programming capabilities
- User manual included
- Sample programs
- Turbo speed option
- Alphanumeric display option
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RCL-57 is a complete and faithful recreation of the TI-57, one of the first programmable calculators. RCL-57 implements all the scientific functions and programming capabilities of the TI-57. In addition, it includes: * A complete user manual * Sample programs including Lunar Lander * Optional turbo speed and alphanumeric display * Listings of steps, registers and log * Saving and loading of programs * Sharing and importing of programs
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is price: RCL at Free against Halcyon Calc's $4.99. Halcyon Calc's advantage is update cadence (every 4 months vs every 14 months). On review sentiment, 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
RCL is free to download; Halcyon Calc costs $4.99 up front. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
Halcyon Calc ships an update every 4 months, RCL every 14 months. The most recent releases landed on September 22, 2026 and September 19, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Halcyon Calc | RCL |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $4.99 | Free — better |
| Rating | 4.9 (18 ratings) — better | — |
| Positive reviews | 100.0% of reviews | 100.0% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | 18 — better | — |
| Update frequency | Every 4 months — better | Every 14 months |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Paid | Free — better |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad | iPhone, iPod |
| Requires iOS | 16.6 | 15.1 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 10 MB | 2 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Halcyon Touch Software | Paul Novaes |
Customer experience
Halcyon Calc
RCL
In-app purchases
Halcyon Calc
No in-app purchases
RCL
No in-app purchases









