Calligraphy Art vs Thirty
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Calligraphy Art
Learn and practice the art of calligraphy on your iPad. This app replicates real pen strokes with adjustable angle, thickness, and color. Create beautiful letters and designs with guided exercises for Western and Chinese alphabets.
- Realistic pen stroke simulation
- Western and Chinese alphabet exercises
- Adjustable pen angle, thickness, and color
- Zoom and undo/redo functionality
- Save and share creations
- Import photos as textures
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Calligraphy is an ancient art that just anyone can do. Now comes on the iPad. CALLIGRAPHY ART replicates the strokes of the pen in real life: angle, thickness and colors. You can really enjoy calligraphy with this app for its learning ability, then draw beautiful letters on papers with the same easiness. ********** REVIEWS ********** 1/ PRODUCT-REVIEWS: "Every writing page has help and guidelines that coincide with the font. Calligraphy Art uses the same functions that you would find using a pen including different colors, width and the angles. Practice to get beautiful letters in this easy to use application and adapt your own authentic style." "With Calligraphy Art, you will find a beautiful ancient technique to drawing letters that are currently used for all types of great looking documents." --------------------------- 2/ APPADVICE: "Calligraphy Art is a beautiful and functional app that will teach you how to create graceful lettering in traditional calligraphy style or help you perfect your letter art. This app stands out from others because of the way that the virtual pens perfectly mimic their real counterparts." --------------------------- This application is not for language learning. It is divided is 3 parts: - A main page for freehand calligraphy and creation. This is the most complete featured page with ALL TOOLS available. - Western alphabets exercises - Chinese words exercises All writing surfaces are pre-filled with guidelines according to the hand (font) presented. Today calligraphy is used in many documents and papers, giving to them an elegant and unique touch: graphic design, logo design, type design, paintings, scholarship, maps, menus, greeting cards, invitations, legal documents, diplomas, cut stone inscriptions, memorial documents, props and moving images for film and television, business cards, lettering envelopes, place cards, poems and much more. MAIN FEATURES: - Specific long paper size: 1536X458 - 21 Western hands - 3 Chinese writing styles - 16 inkpens, 4 brushes - 24 preselected pen angles - 9 pen sizes - Zoom rate 2000%, undo redo, clear, eraser. - Save to photos gallery with or without background. - Share by email - 12 old style backgrounds - Color palette - Stylish letter textures. Import photo as texture. - 1 flourish tutorial
Thirty
Create and share simple black and white pixel art drawings within a 32x32 grid. Features include zoom, undo/redo, symmetry tools, and pixel selection for easy editing. Share your creations across various platforms and even view them on Apple Watch.
- 32x32 pixel grid drawing
- Black and white or grayscale colors
- Pinch to zoom with preview
- Undo/redo toolbar
- Symmetrical drawing modes
- Pixel selection and movement
- Sharing extensions and AirDrop
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Thirty-Two: Black and white and square all over. Thirty-Two is a simple way to create and share drawings. Other than food and shelter there is no other need more powerful than the need to make small grayscale drawings. Old age is a myth, billions of people throughout history have simply died from lack of drawing in grids.* Thirty-Two is the solution!§ Features • Draw anything, as long as it fits in a thirty-two by thirty-two square! • Kick it 1-bit old school and draw with only black and white, or get ultra modern and use a plethora of grays!‡. • Duplicate a drawing, now duplicate a drawing! • Pinch to zoom while drawing, we know your chubby little fingers can't hit the squares you want, we're taking of that. See a little preview of the whole drawing while zoomed in, how cute. • Toolbar for the undo/redo to make them easier to get to. Didn't want to take three taps to undo something, we're considered two taps, but we decided one tap is best! • Super symmetrical mode, tap on the dotted line and pick vertical or horizontal so you can start drawing your favorite psychological inkblot tests. • Select and move pixels, tap and hold the pixels you want to move, tap other pixels to add to the selection, drag around, double tap to put the pixels in their final resting place. •Linear mode to draw straight lines. • Share from the app with your friends using sharing extensions. Any app that can share images will work, Mail, Messages, Facebook, Twitter, and any other third party apps that support sharing extensions. • Share with someone that's close to you, using AirDrop. • Watch your drawings on Apple Watch! • Search for your beauteous drawings in Spotlight. • Dance the hand jive while using Handoff between devices. Ideas for drawings • Unflattering portraits of your friends that you post online without their permission. • Replace the icons on your thirty year old computer. • Make reproductions of your favorite artist's square, black and white masterpieces. • Your hipster bike. • Your hipster glasses. • Your hipster bird you put on stuff. • Your hipster watch. • Your steampunk tophat. • Your hipster shark. • Drawings of pets you wished were yours, so that your sad meaningless life had a ray of hope.° • Illustrate the fourteen stations of the cross. • Illustrate the twelve signs of the zodiak. • A taxi-cab. • An old boot. • A urinal on it's side, with some letters scribbled on it. • And literally a couple more things... *Does not cure old age, athelete's foot or the plague. §There is no solution, because there is no problem. ‡A plethora in this context means six. °Users of Thirty-Two are prone to bouts of existential angst.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is review sentiment: Calligraphy Art at 90% against Thirty's 42%. Calligraphy Art also leads on rating (4.7 vs 3.2) and ratings volume (160 vs 10). Thirty's advantage is price (Free vs $3.99) and in-app purchases (none vs 2). On 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
Thirty is free to download; Calligraphy Art costs $3.99 up front. Calligraphy Art sells 2 one-off in-app purchases. Thirty asks for nothing beyond the download.
Calligraphy Art holds the better App Store score, 4.7 against 3.2. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Calligraphy Art has 160 ratings behind it against 10, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews point the same way: 90% of Calligraphy Art's written reviews are positive against 42% of Thirty's.
Both ship on a similar rhythm, roughly every 3 months. The most recent releases landed on September 21, 2026 and September 23, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Calligraphy Art | Thirty |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $3.99 | Free — better |
| Rating | 4.7 (160 ratings) — better | 3.2 (10 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | 90.0% of reviews — better | 41.7% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | 160 — better | 10 |
| Update frequency | Every 3 months | Every 3 months |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | No — better |
| Monetization | Free with in-app purchases | Free — better |
| Devices | iPad | iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch — better |
| Requires iOS | 9.0 — better | 18.6 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 271 MB | 20 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Etienne Nguyen Tan Hon | Chad Sager |
Customer experience
Calligraphy Art
Thirty
Bugs and requests
Calligraphy Art
Reported bugs
3 issues- Crashes when using undo function
- Difficulty exporting work without artifacts
- Inconsistent behavior when rotating device
Requested features
5 requests- Ability to print or export calligraphy creations
- More calligraphy font styles and scripts
- Option to import images and write on them
- Improved palm rejection and stroke precision
- Larger practice canvas and ability to save work in-app
Thirty
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
In-app purchases
Calligraphy Art
- Tracing letters pack 1$0.99
- Tracing letters pack 2$0.99
Thirty
No in-app purchases









