Comparison

Starfall ABCs vs Writing Wizard

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

Head to head
About

Starfall ABCs

This app offers a free introduction to foundational reading skills, featuring interactive activities that engage children through sight, sound, and play. It's designed to help young learners recognize letters and develop essential reading abilities, with special considerations for English language learners and children with disabilities.

Highlights
  • Interactive letter and sound activities
  • Positive reinforcement and play-based learning
  • Develops letter recognition
  • Builds foundational reading skills
  • Accessible for children with impairments
Features
Read full description

Starfall® ABCs is the first step of Starfall’s Learn to Read phonics sequence, which teaches the foundational skills for learning to read. Step 1: ABCs Step 2: Learn to Read Step 3: It’s Fun to Read Step 4: I’m Reading! Starfall ABCs helps children master letter recognition in a stress-free environment through exploration, positive reinforcement, and play. Children delight as they see, hear, and interact with colorful imagery carefully matched to letters and sounds. By mastering these letter-sound relationships, they develop the skills they need to become confident, independent readers. Travel-ready. No internet connection required. Find Starfall ABCs, along with 700+ additional activities and counting across reading, math, music, and more in the Starfall app. The Starfall website and applications are program services of Starfall Education Foundation, a 501(c)(3) publicly supported nonprofit organization. Starfall® and Starfall.com® are registered trademarks in the US, the European Union, and various other countries. Copyright © 2002–2026 by Starfall Education. All rights reserved. Starfall apps are inclusively designed to support all children, including English Language Learners (ELLs). Starfall also provides an Enhanced Accessible Index for children with visual, hearing, or mobility impairments. For more information, please contact Customer Service at (+1) 303-417-6414.

About

Writing Wizard

This app helps children learn to trace letters, numbers, and words with a fun, motivating system. It offers customizable tracing practice, interactive games, and progress reports for parents and educators.

Highlights
  • Trace letters, numbers, and words
  • Customizable tracing practice
  • Interactive games and animated stickers
  • Create custom word lists with audio
  • Progress reports for tracking
  • Printable PDF worksheets
Features
Read full description

"Fantastic, customizable tracing practice with fun rewards." 5 Stars - Common Sense Media 500,000+ units sold (including 300,000+ to schools) ! Writing Wizard is designed to help every child learn how to trace letters, numbers, and words through a fun system carefully designed to maintain motivation. • Show and enforce how to trace letters correctly • Letter names and phonics (customizable) • 16 Fonts available (including 3 most popular in the US) • Fun tracing using 50+ animated stickers, sound effects and interactive games that animate letters at the end of tracing • Uppercase & lowercase letters, numbers, and words • Ability to create your own word lists (and record audio for each word) • Fully customizable to suit every child’s needs (letter size, difficulty,...) • Check progress thanks to reports that display what the child has traced • Shapes tracing activity for toddlers • Create PDF Worksheets and print them to help your child to write on paper • Use Apple pencil to write at a very small size All the shapes, the first 7 letters, numbers, and words are free. The remaining letters and the ability to add your own words can be unlocked with a one-time purchase or a monthly subscription. _______ ACCOLADES • "Writing Wizard is the most complete and intelligent letter tracing app we’ve seen"" AppoLearning.com • "This brand-new app should be the go-to for every parent, teacher and therapist to work on handwriting" - TOP PICKS - 5 stars - SmartAppsForKids.com • "Writing Wizard by L’Escapadou is everything a parent wants in a handwriting app, and more." 5/5 - kids-app-reviews.com • "L’Escapadou has made handwriting fun." AppyMall.com 5/5 • Listed in "20 best educational iPhone and iPad apps for kids of 2013" - appsplayground.com • Editor's Choice Award for Excellence in Design - Children's Technology Review _______ PERFECT FOR KIDS Kids want to have fun, and Writing Wizard offers a lot of fun to keep them motivated in the learning process! • They can trace using 50+ animated stickers and sound effects • Once tracing is complete, they can interact with them on 4 games that animate letters • They can trace any word - like their name - and record their voice for each word • They can collect stars in 5-Stars play mode _______ PERFECT FOR PARENTS & TEACHERS • Ability to create your own word lists (and record audio for each word) • Detailed reports provide information on what kids have done, including the ability to replay and export the tracings to view kids' progress • Share word lists via iCloud Drive or other cloud providers, adhoc network, or email • Multiple parameters to customize the app according to the child’s current education level (e.g. letter size, difficulty, show/hide model, allow to stop between key points, etc.) • 3 most popular fonts in the US (ZB, DN & HWT) and 13 international fonts (UK, Scandinavia, Australia, Germany and France) • Upper and lower case letters, numbers (and word lists) • Letter names and letter sounds (which can be customized) • A customizable 5-Stars play mode prompting the child to trace a letter or a word 5 times using different parameters (each step is more challenging) • Create an unlimited number of users • Many settings to customize the app (sound, game time limit, black background,...) • In the A-Z section, special graphics available to match letters (e.g. ant graphic for A/a) _______ Privacy Policy KNOW WHAT'S INSIDE As a Moms with Apps member, we follow the "Know what's inside" best practices for kids’ apps L’Escapadou takes children’s privacy seriously. We believe you should not have to worry about your kids being tracked by apps or websites. This app: • Does not collect any user information (we do not use data collection tools) • External Links : Before accessing a parent section, an operation must be solved so that young kids cannot access it. Terms of use : https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/

Screenshots

Starfall ABCs4 screens
Writing Wizard4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is in-app purchases: Starfall ABCs at none against Writing Wizard's 4. Writing Wizard's advantage is rating (4.4 vs 4.2) and ratings volume (5.2K vs 477). On price, update cadence, ads 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

Both are free to download. Writing Wizard sells 4 in-app purchases, starting at $2.49 per month. Starfall ABCs asks for nothing beyond the download.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

Writing Wizard holds the better App Store score, 4.4 against 4.2. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Writing Wizard has 5.2K ratings behind it against 477, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews point the same way: 62% of Starfall ABCs's written reviews are positive against 74% of Writing Wizard's.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Starfall ABCs ships an update every 7 months, Writing Wizard every 4 months. The most recent releases landed on November 3, 2026 and November 4, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard5 real differences · 5 level
Starfall ABCs versus Writing Wizard: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterStarfall ABCsWriting Wizard
PriceFreeFree
Rating4.2 (477 ratings)4.4 (5.2K ratings) — better
Positive reviews62.1% of reviews73.7% of reviews — better
Number of ratings4775.2K — better
Update frequencyEvery 7 monthsEvery 4 months — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNo — betterYes
MonetizationFree — betterFree with in-app purchases
DevicesiPhone, iPad, iPodiPhone, iPad, iPod
Requires iOS15.0 — better15.6
Further details — not scored
Size62 MB68 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperStarfall Education FoundationPierre Abel

Customer experience

Starfall ABCs

All ratings476 ratings
Positive76.9%
Neutral7.8%
Negative15.3%
Written reviews203 reviews
Positive62.1%
Neutral6.4%
Negative31.5%

Writing Wizard

All ratings5,184 ratings
Positive84.3%
Neutral6.0%
Negative9.7%
Written reviews209 reviews
Positive73.7%
Neutral6.7%
Negative19.6%

User reviews

Starfall ABCs

From 477 App Store ratings

What we love

  • 👍 Easy for kids to navigate
  • 🚀 Engaging and educational
  • 🎓 Helps with letter recognition and sounds
  • 💖 Great for young learners
  • 🏆 Recommended by teachers and pediatricians

Room to improve

  • 💰 Expensive for limited content
  • 🤔 Misleading advertising for full website features
  • 🐛 Frequent crashes and glitches
  • 🔇 Sound issues and lack of voice assistance
  • 🤷‍♀️ Gender representation concerns

Writing Wizard

From 5.2K App Store ratings

What we love

  • 👍 User-friendly interface
  • 🚀 Engaging animations
  • 💡 Customizable word lists
  • 👍 Helpful for children with special needs
  • 👍 Effective for improving handwriting

Room to improve

  • 🔒 Locked features behind paywall
  • 🐛 Bugs and glitches
  • 🔒 Paid version not working as expected
  • 💰 Expensive for the limited features

Bugs and requests

Starfall ABCs

Reported bugs

4 issues
  • Black screen issues
  • Repeated crashes and freezing
  • Incompatibility with latest iOS updates
  • Inability to exit app on certain devices

Requested features

5 requests
  • Expand app to include more Starfall website features
  • Add more advanced learning content beyond just ABCs
  • Improve compatibility and stability across devices
  • Integrate voice assistant and accessibility features
  • Address gender representation issues in content

Writing Wizard

Reported bugs

3 issues
  • App crashes when trying to access locked features
  • Purchased content not unlocking properly
  • Inconsistent letter formation guidance

Requested features

4 requests
  • Add more letters, numbers, and shapes
  • Allow recording of custom voice instructions
  • Improve compatibility with stylus/digital pens
  • Provide more customization options

In-app purchases

None

Starfall ABCs

No in-app purchases

4 purchases

Writing Wizard

Subscriptions1
  • Full Access - Monthly$2.491 Month
One-time3
  • All Letters and Numbers$5.99
  • Add Your Words and Word Lists$5.99
  • Lifetime Full Access$9.99

Questions

Is Starfall ABCs free?
Starfall ABCs is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is Writing Wizard free?
Writing Wizard is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Which has better reviews, Starfall ABCs or Writing Wizard?
Writing Wizard is rated higher. Starfall ABCs averages 4.2 out of 5 from 477 ratings, while Writing Wizard averages 4.4 from 5.2K ratings.
Do Starfall ABCs or Writing Wizard have ads?
Neither Starfall ABCs nor Writing Wizard shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Starfall ABCs or Writing Wizard?
Starfall ABCs ships an update every 7 months, and Writing Wizard every 4 months. Most recently, Starfall ABCs was updated on November 3, 2026 and Writing Wizard on November 4, 2026.

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