Comparison

Inspire Pro vs 1BitPencil

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

Head to head
About

Inspire Pro

This powerful drawing and painting app offers a realistic and fast creative experience for iPad users. It features a proprietary engine for brilliant color rendering and stunning blending effects, with a vast array of customizable brushes and advanced tools.

Highlights
  • Proprietary Sorcery™ painting engine
  • 150 high-quality, customizable brushes
  • Full Apple Pencil and Smart Keyboard support
  • Canvas size up to 16K (64MP)
  • Automatic canvas playback video recording
  • Full-featured color picker with saved palettes
Features
Read full description

Available exclusively on the App Store, meticulously designed to be beautifully powerful, and painstakingly engineered for iPad — Inspire Pro delivers an incredibly fast and realistic painting, drawing, and sketching experience that you can take with you wherever you go and use whenever inspiration strikes. Our proprietary painting engine Sorcery™ takes full advantage of the GPU to render brush strokes with brilliant 64-bit color, laser-sharp sub-pixel precision, and insanely fast speed. While the strokes of a wet oil paint brush look beautiful on their own, the breathtaking blending effects of a dry brush will absolutely stun you. Graze the canvas with just a bit of pressure to add a subtle blur to your artwork or use stronger pressure to actually mix existing colors on the canvas together to create new ones. Whether you are a budding artist, seasoned professional, or somewhere in-between, you will enjoy the simplicity and power of the most intuitive and compelling illustration app for iPad, Inspire Pro. Amazing Brushes • 150 high quality brushes to choose from, divided into 15 sets: Oil Paint, Airbrushes, Spray Paint, Paint Splatter, Graphite Pencils, Wax Crayons, Markers, Chalk, Charcoal, Pastels & Conté, Basic Shapes, Complex Shapes, Shape Outlines, Patterns, and Textures • All brushes can be used as a Wet Brush, Dry Brush (Blending), or Eraser • Over 20 different settings are available to customize brush strokes with powerful versatility and variation The Best Painting App for iPad • Sorcery™, the fastest 64-bit painting engine on the App Store • Full-fledged Apple Pencil support for pressure, tilt angle, orientation, and double-tap • Smart Keyboard support with over 20 context-sensitive keyboard shortcuts • Create a canvas of any size up to 16K (64MP) on iPad Pro • Dual-texture brushes • 64-bit color • All device orientations are supported all the time — switch from portrait to landscape painting with ease • 1000 levels of undo and redo are available • Touch and slide hotspots can be used to quickly change brush size, opacity, and pressure without opening a menu • The eyedropper tool can be used with a touch and hold gesture to select paint colors from the canvas • The canvas can be moved around, rotated, and zoomed in and out up to 6400% Canvas Playback Video Recording • Brush strokes are automatically recorded as you paint without any delay • You can play the video of your artwork being created stroke-by-stroke directly in the gallery • Exported videos are high quality HD at up to 1080p resolution Full-Featured Color Picker • Choose any paint color you can dream of with the intuitive color picker • HSB and RGB sliders accompany a large color circle, color square, and opacity slider • Your latest colors are saved to a palette automatically while you paint • You can also save your favorite colors to a palette with drag and drop Visit snowCanoe.com to check out more screenshots, videos, and artwork.

About

1BitPencil

This high-resolution monochrome drawing app offers a realistic pencil tool for creating illustrations, manga, and notes. It supports large canvas sizes and exports in single-color PNG, with features for essential editing and animation video creation.

Highlights
  • High-resolution 1-bit canvas
  • Realistic pencil drawing tool
  • Supports A3 size at 2400 dpi
  • Exports single-color PNG files
  • Animation video creation
  • Essential editing functions
  • Timelapse recording
Features
Read full description

***This app requires an Apple Pencil or a compatible stylus.*** **About “1BitPencil”** 1BitPencil is all about a **high-resolution 1-bit (black & white) canvas**. Even the ultra-realistic pencil tool draws in pure black and white. It’s a high-resolution monochrome drawing app, perfect for **illustration, manga, animation, and school notes**. With a uniquely realistic pencil tool, 1BitPencil aims to recreate the feeling of drawing on paper in a fully digital environment. You can flip through pages and switch between files quickly, just like turning pages in a sketchbook. The app supports work up to **A3 size at 2400 dpi**, and exports your artwork as **single-color PNG files**. There are no layers, but you can use tracing, clean-up, and merge functions for essential editing. If you’re looking for a **simple yet high-quality drawing environment**, 1BitPencil offers a fresh and focused creative experience. **Brush tools** * Pen * Pencil * Mechanical pencil * Lasso pen * Lasso pencil * Smudge * Dot shading * Tone lasso * Tone pen **Eraser tools** * Eraser * Kneaded eraser * Lasso eraser * Lasso kneaded eraser * Dot kneaded eraser **Selection tools** * Rectangular selection * Lasso selection **Canvas navigation** * Move * Rotate * Zoom in / out **Sharing features** * Paste from Photos * Share * Copy to clipboard and paste **Trace box** * Change drawing color and background color * Load an underdrawing * Merge and save **Other features** * Create animation videos (.mp4, .gif, .apng) * Export to PDF * Timelapse recording * Snap to straight line * Stroke stabilization * Pen tilt sensitivity * Smudge or eraser with touch * Display gamma adjustment **File management** * Create new folders * Rename multiple files with sequential numbers * Duplicate multiple files

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is rating: 1BitPencil at 5.0 against Inspire Pro's 4.5. 1BitPencil also leads on update cadence (every 8 days vs every 3 weeks). Inspire Pro's advantage is ratings volume (331 vs 1) and review sentiment (81% vs 69%). On ads, in-app purchases, monetization model 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

Inspire Pro costs $4.99 and 1BitPencil $6.99 up front. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

1BitPencil holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 4.5. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Inspire Pro has 331 ratings behind it against 1, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews complicate that: 81% of Inspire Pro's written reviews are positive against 69% of 1BitPencil's, so the app with the better star average is not the one people write more warmly about.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Inspire Pro ships an update every 3 weeks, 1BitPencil every 8 days. The most recent releases landed on November 10, 2026 and October 30, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard6 real differences · 4 level
Inspire Pro versus 1BitPencil: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterInspire Pro1BitPencil
Price$4.99 — better$6.99
Rating4.5 (331 ratings)5.0 (1 ratings) — better
Positive reviews80.8% of reviews — better69.2% of reviews
Number of ratings331 — better1
Update frequencyEvery 3 weeksEvery 8 days — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNoNo
MonetizationPaidPaid
DevicesiPadiPad
Requires iOS13.6 — better16.6
Further details — not scored
Size284 MB30 MB
Age rating4+4+
DevelopersnowCanoeHALVAL Ltd.

Customer experience

Inspire Pro

All ratings330 ratings
Positive89.1%
Neutral3.0%
Negative7.9%
Written reviews255 reviews
Positive80.8%
Neutral3.5%
Negative15.7%

1BitPencil

All ratings1 ratings
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%
Written reviews13 reviews
Positive69.2%
Neutral7.7%
Negative23.1%

Bugs and requests

Inspire Pro

Reported bugs

4 issues
  • Crashes on iPad Pro
  • Brush selection reverts to default
  • Playback feature not working as expected
  • Compatibility issues with older iPad models

Requested features

7 requests
  • Add layers feature
  • Improve brush selection and stability
  • Increase canvas size options
  • Implement palm rejection for Apple Pencil
  • Add more brush types and customization
Show 2 more
  • Improve playback and recording features
  • Integrate with more cloud storage services

1BitPencil

Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.

In-app purchases

None

Inspire Pro

No in-app purchases

None

1BitPencil

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is Inspire Pro free?
Inspire Pro costs $4.99, with no in-app purchases.
Is 1BitPencil free?
1BitPencil costs $6.99, with no in-app purchases.
Which has better reviews, Inspire Pro or 1BitPencil?
1BitPencil is rated higher. Inspire Pro averages 4.5 out of 5 from 331 ratings, while 1BitPencil averages 5.0 from 1 ratings.
Do Inspire Pro or 1BitPencil have ads?
Neither Inspire Pro nor 1BitPencil shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Inspire Pro or 1BitPencil?
Inspire Pro ships an update every 3 weeks, and 1BitPencil every 8 days. Most recently, Inspire Pro was updated on November 10, 2026 and 1BitPencil on October 30, 2026.

Other comparisons