Comparison

Pastel vs RegEx Tester

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

Head to head
About

Pastel

Easily capture, organize, and use color palettes for your creative projects. Analyze photos to extract dominant colors, or manually select them. Seamlessly sync your library across devices and export colors in various code formats or as pixel bitmaps.

Highlights
  • Capture color palettes from photos
  • Manual color selection
  • Drag and drop colors to other apps
  • iCloud sync across devices
  • Export colors in code formats (RGB, hex, Swift)
  • Create custom wallpapers
Features
Read full description

Capture and collect color palettes with Pastel! Pastel is an app for amateur developers & artists (like us!) that lets you build up a library of color palettes to use in your projects. With drag & drop on iPad, drag colors out into other apps that support dropped colors, like Pages and Keynote, or many third-party apps from your favorite developers, so you can use your Pastel library as your master color collection across apps. Seamlessly sync your library across devices with iCloud. Analyze photos from the photo library or from Files to determine their dominant colors — choosing specific colors manually if you wish — and save their color palettes to Pastel. Includes a variety of color pickers, like wheel, RGB sliders, and crayons, or pick named colors from your color library that you curate yourself. On iPad, drag and drop from the sidebar to any palette. Copy a variety of developer-focused code representations, like RGB, hex, Objective-C, Swift and SwiftUI. Paste hex codes into the sliders color picker. Copy a pixel bitmap representation of a palette to paste into your favorite pixel editor, share a screen-sized version to set as your wallpaper or Apple Watch face, or export a palette to Procreate®. Create beautiful, colorful wallpapers in various different 2D & 3D styles using Pastel's wallpaper creator. In the free version, try out the built-in library, and add your own palettes up to a limit of 8 items total. Upgrade to the unlimited version using in-app purchase. --- Terms of Use: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/ Privacy policy: https://www.highcaffeinecontent.com/privacy

About

RegEx Tester

Features
Read full description

RegEx Tester is a focused, lightweight tool for designing and validating regular expressions on iPhone and iPad. Built natively with the latest version of SwiftUI, it delivers a smooth, modern interface that feels right at home on every device. Create a new pattern from scratch or start with the built-in examples, then see results update as you type. Instant match counts, highlighted previews and clear validity indicators help you refine your regex without switching apps. what you can do • store an unlimited collection of custom patterns • search, sort and edit patterns at any time • duplicate the demo library or delete it to stay clutter-free • test against multiline input with live highlighting • copy any pattern or match to the clipboard in a tap • export or import patterns as JSON for backup and sharing • work entirely offline; nothing leaves your device why it’s different • clean interface, no ads or tracking • built in the latest SwiftUI for performance and future-proofing • fast, on-device processing powered by Apple’s NSRegularExpression • debounced testing keeps the UI responsive, even with large text • full accessibility support and dynamic type • english and italian localisations included RegEx Tester is free to use with no hidden fees. Download it today and build better regular expressions, faster.

Screenshots

Pastel4 screens
RegEx Tester2 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is price: Pastel at Free against RegEx Tester's $0.99. Pastel also leads on update cadence (monthly vs every 5 months) and chart position (#102 vs unranked). RegEx Tester's advantage is in-app purchases (none vs 3) and iOS requirement (15.0 vs 18.0). On 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

Pastel is free to download; RegEx Tester costs $0.99 up front. Pastel sells 3 in-app purchases, starting at $1.99 per month. RegEx Tester asks for nothing beyond the download.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Pastel ships an update monthly, RegEx Tester every 5 months. The most recent releases landed on November 10, 2026 and November 8, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard5 real differences · 6 level
Pastel versus RegEx Tester: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterPastelRegEx Tester
PriceFree — better$0.99
Rating4.7 (1.4K ratings) — better—
Positive reviews76.2% of reviews—
Number of ratings1.4K — better—
Update frequencyMonthly — betterEvery 5 months
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesYesNo — better
MonetizationFree with in-app purchases—
Best chart rank#102 — better—
DevicesiPhone, iPad, Mac, Vision Pro — betteriPhone, iPad, iPod
Requires iOS18.015.0 — better
Further details — not scored
Size12 MB0 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperSteven Troughton-SmithMarco Tini

Bugs and requests

Pastel

Reported bugs

3 issues
  • Palettes disappearing after OS updates
  • Delays and freezes when using color wheel
  • Inconsistent behavior on different devices/OSes

Requested features

5 requests
  • Color contrast analysis tools
  • CMYK color support
  • Easier way to copy/paste color codes
  • Improved palette organization and management
  • Integration with more design apps

RegEx Tester

Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.

In-app purchases

3 purchases

Pastel

Subscriptions2
  • Pastel (One Month)14 Days trial$1.991 Month
  • Pastel (One Year)14 Days trial$9.991 Year
One-time1
  • Pastel (Legacy Purchase)$19.99
None

RegEx Tester

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is Pastel free?
Pastel is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is RegEx Tester free?
RegEx Tester costs $0.99, with no in-app purchases.
Do Pastel or RegEx Tester have ads?
Neither Pastel nor RegEx Tester shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Pastel or RegEx Tester?
Pastel ships an update monthly, and RegEx Tester every 5 months. Most recently, Pastel was updated on November 10, 2026 and RegEx Tester on November 8, 2026.

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