CharMap vs Character Pad
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
CharMap
Explore and manage Unicode characters with this utility. Organize favorites, view details, and copy characters to your clipboard. Use the custom keyboard to insert them anywhere and sync collections across devices.
- Browse curated character categories
- Organize favorite characters
- View character details and copy to clipboard
- Insert characters with custom keyboard
- Discover characters and blocks
- Sync collections across devices
- Preview system fonts
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CharMap allows to you discover, organize, and use unicode characters. FEATURES • Browse a collection of curated character categories, and organize your favourite characters into custom collections. • View character details and copy characters to the clipboard in a variety of formats. • Enable the CharMap keyboard to insert characters wherever custom keyboards are supported. • Discover unicode characters and blocks using a dedicated unicode browser. • Automatically sync your collections between devices. • Quickly access your custom collections using the collection widget. • Browse system fonts and view font metadata. • No ads, trackers, or analytics. Your data is stored on-device, and optionally synced across your private iCloud account.
Character Pad
Easily access and use hundreds of special characters and symbols to enhance your text. Copy characters like Greek letters, math symbols, and more to paste into any application, personalizing your messages, emails, and documents.
- Access hundreds of special characters
- Copy characters to clipboard
- Paste into any application
- Customize messages and documents
- Includes Greek alphabet, math symbols, and more
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Character Pad gives you quick access to hundreds of beautiful and useful special characters, which you can use in any application. Simply tap on a character to copy it to your device's clipboard, open any other app, and paste it anywhere you like. Done. Easy! Customise your IMs, emails, documents and other texts with this great selection of special characters & symbols. Characters include: - Greek alphabet - Numbers - Math symbols - Bullets - Letterlike symbols - Many more! What two App Store reviewers had to say about Character Pad: "Dead easy to use and works a treat! Update with more characters some time........" - Soxcat "Fast, simple, does one thing and does it seemlessly. No more having to write ½ as 1/2. Thank you, well worth the dollar!" - Auntmarge64 Please Note: Characters will be readable from any iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, Mac and most PCs. Some special characters may appear as question marks (?) or squares for some recipients of text messages whom use non-iPhone mobiles.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is rating: Character Pad at 4.5 against CharMap's 4.0. Character Pad also leads on ratings volume (606 vs 57) and iOS requirement (18.0 vs 26.0). CharMap's advantage is in-app purchases (none vs 3). On price, review sentiment, update cadence and ads 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. Character Pad sells 3 one-off in-app purchases. CharMap asks for nothing beyond the download.
Character Pad holds the better App Store score, 4.5 against 4.0. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Character Pad has 606 ratings behind it against 57, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews complicate that: 54% of CharMap's written reviews are positive against 47% of Character Pad's, so the app with the better star average is not the one people write more warmly about.
CharMap ships an update every 4 months, Character Pad every 6 months. The most recent releases landed on October 23, 2026 and November 1, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | CharMap | Character Pad |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.0 (57 ratings) | 4.5 (606 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 53.7% of reviews — better | 46.8% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | 57 | 606 — better |
| Update frequency | Every 4 months — better | Every 6 months |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No — better | Yes |
| Monetization | Free — better | Free with in-app purchases |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad | iPhone, iPad |
| Requires iOS | 26.0 | 18.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 28 MB | 15 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Conor Mulligan | Armchair Engineering |
Customer experience
CharMap
Character Pad
User reviews
CharMap
From 57 App Store ratingsWhat we love
- 🌟 Genuinely amazing for needs
- 💡 Custom keyboards brilliant
- 💯 Has every Unicode
- ✨ Very impressive
- 👍 Great for computer science
Room to improve
- ❌ No return/enter key
- ❓ Feature not obvious
- ⚠️ Characters omitted in other apps
- ⚪ Keyboard looks like white rectangle
- 😵 UI is ugly and old
Character Pad
From 606 App Store ratingsWhat we love
- ⭐ Great
- 🙌 Useful
- 👍 Easy to use
- 🔍 Essential
- 🤩 Fun
Room to improve
- 💰 Paid features
- 🔒 Limited access
- 🐛 Crashes
- 📍 Outdated
- 🚫 Removed features
Bugs and requests
CharMap
Reported bugs
12 issues- Characters omitted in other apps
- Keyboard looks like white rectangle in some apps
- Private Use Area characters not shown
- Collections feature quit working
- App crashes every time it's opened
Show 7 moreShow fewer
- App crashes on iPad Pro
- App crashes on iPad
- Everything gone after update
- App doesn't open after update
- Some symbols are not shown
- Keyboard not showing up immediately
- Preferences -> font closes app
Requested features
20 requests- Add return/enter key
- Batch add characters to collections
- Multi-font support
- Unicode 18.0 support
- Add Unicode 17.0
Show 15 moreShow fewer
- Ability to select characters with single click
- Add 'raised to the power of x' symbol
- Add superscripts in letter, equation, and inequality form
- Option to format characters (LTR/RTL)
- Make fonts usable in 'Unicode'
- Implement custom font API
- Search for character option
- Search by character name
- Add Sutton SignWriting block
- Add symbol search
- Update UI with SF symbols
- Add dark mode support
- Rename collections
- Backup and Restore collections
- Put collections on top of list when using as keyboard
Character Pad
Reported bugs
2 issues- Restore purchases not working
- Compatibility issues with new iOS versions
Requested features
4 requests- More characters and symbols
- Search functionality
- Improved clipboard management
- Compatibility updates
In-app purchases
CharMap
No in-app purchases
Character Pad
- Full Upgrade - Reduced Price$1.99
- More Characters$2.99
- Full Upgrade - Hero Price$4.99
Questions
Is CharMap free?
Is Character Pad free?
Which has better reviews, CharMap or Character Pad?
Do CharMap or Character Pad have ads?
Which is updated more often, CharMap or Character Pad?
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