iPastels vs Sketch Recorder
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
iPastels
This app offers a realistic digital painting experience with lifelike pastel simulation and interactive textures. It allows for precise color blending and adjustable stroke sizes, catering to both beginners and experienced artists. Explore your creativity without the cost of traditional art supplies.
- Lifelike pastel simulation
- Realistic paper/canvas textures
- Precise color blending
- Fingertip stroke size adjustment
- Left-handed toolbar option
- Live parameter changes
- Multiple layers
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A painting app for all artists, whether you’re experienced or just starting out. Perfect for creating beautiful works of art or a quick sketch whenever and wherever you have a burst of inspiration. You can also try out ideas and compositions before starting on a new painting in real life, or practise and refine your skills, all without the added cost of art supplies. • LIFELIKE PASTEL SIMULATION • The app features live-calculated brushes and strokes, making a realistic pastel simulation possible. Painting tools include soft pastels, oil pastels, pastel pencils, smudge tool, and more. • REALISTIC PAPER/CANVAS TEXTURES • When creating a new picture, a unique, non-repeating paper texture is generated that will interact in real-time with the live-calculated strokes you paint. You can change the default-generated texture to, for example, canvas, which goes great with oil pastels! • PRECISE COLOR BLENDING • When painting, especially with soft pastels, use Smudge or the Cotton Swab to blend and smoothen the colors right on the paper, as you would in real life. With oil pastels, in addition to smudging, the blending is often done by the pastel sticks themselves (for best results, reduce the force or use a similar or lighter color). If you use an Apple Pencil, it will feel incredibly realistic if you use the stylus to draw and use your finger to Smudge (assigned as a 2nd tool)! • FINGERTIP = STROKE SIZE • When you paint, the app measures how much of your finger is touching the screen and changes the stroke size accordingly. Apply just the corner of your fingertip for a thin line, or the whole fingerprint area for a broad stroke. A 2nd tool assigned to your finger will still use this feature, so don’t ignore it just because you have an Apple Pencil! • LEFT-HANDED? • Just swipe the toolbar over to the other side! • PARAMETERS CAN BE CHANGED LIVE • Use any buttons or controls to change/adjust color, size, force, simultaneously while painting. • UNIVERSAL PURCHASE • If you choose to buy the Pro upgrade, this one-time in-app purchase will unlock all Pro features in the app on all available platforms (iPad-iPhone-Mac)! • METAL • The engine is based on Metal, with 128-bit color and floating-point arithmetic. • SWIFT • The app was developed entirely using Swift (earlier versions used C++). • APPLE PENCIL SUPPORT • FULL SCREEN PAINTING • SEAMLESS PATTERN EDITING MODE • • DARK MODE • LANDSCAPE • PORTRAIT • WIDE COLOR • • MULTIPLE LAYERS • PHOTO TRACING MODE (Pro feature) •
Sketch Recorder
This app offers a distraction-free drawing and painting experience with a natural feel. It includes screen recording capabilities and a tracing paper mode to help you copy images. Save your creations directly to your photo library.
- Natural drawing experience
- Full-screen mode
- Screen recording
- Tracing paper mode
- Save to photo library
- Hide/show palette
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Sketching, painting and drawing app for anyone who loves to draw. Elegant interface and natural drawing experience. Free of distractions so you can focus. REAL full screen experience. Shake your device to enter fullscreen. In order to make the menu visible, you should shake your device one more time. Screen recording. Change background color. Drawing modes: Pencil only; Pencil and Finger. Hide/show palette. Tracing paper mode. You can select or capture a back image and draw the copy of it on the upper layer. Save your drawing to photo library. It’s FREE!!! This app is built solely and exclusively for iPhones and iPads using Apple's native development language and tools which guarantees top performance and future maintainability.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is in-app purchases: Sketch Recorder at none against iPastels's 6. iPastels's advantage is ads (none vs shown) and update cadence (every 6 weeks vs every 17 months). On price, rating 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
Both are free to download. iPastels sells 6 one-off in-app purchases. Sketch Recorder asks for nothing beyond the download.
iPastels holds the better App Store score, 4.7 against 4.5. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: iPastels has 2.2K ratings behind it against 11, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews point the same way: 81% of iPastels's written reviews are positive against 57% of Sketch Recorder's.
iPastels ships an update every 6 weeks, Sketch Recorder every 17 months. The most recent releases landed on October 29, 2026 and October 24, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | iPastels | Sketch Recorder |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.7 (2.2K ratings) — better | 4.5 (11 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | 81.0% of reviews — better | 57.1% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | 2.2K — better | 11 |
| Update frequency | Every 6 weeks — better | Every 17 months |
| Ads | No — better | Yes |
| In-app purchases | Yes | No — better |
| Monetization | Free with in-app purchases | Ad-supported — better |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod, Mac — better | iPhone, iPad, iPod |
| Requires iOS | 12.0 — better | 14.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 24 MB | 4 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Norbyte | Mehmet Bayram |
Customer experience
iPastels
Sketch Recorder
Bugs and requests
iPastels
Reported bugs
3 issues- Crashes when importing images
- Layers sometimes disappear or get lost
- Undo button deletes entire drawing sections
Requested features
6 requests- Add color picker tool
- Improve layer management and visibility
- Implement pressure-sensitive brush support
- Provide more paper/canvas texture options
- Allow saving and recalling custom palettes
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- Add undo/redo functionality for individual strokes
Sketch Recorder
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
In-app purchases
iPastels
- Tip Jar: Smallest Tip$1.00
- Tip Jar: Small Tip$2.00
- Tip Jar: Medium Tip$5.00
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- Pro Upgrade$7.00
- Tip Jar: Big Tip$10.00
- Tip Jar: Biggest Tip$25.00
Sketch Recorder
No in-app purchases
Questions
Is iPastels free?
Is Sketch Recorder free?
Which has better reviews, iPastels or Sketch Recorder?
Do iPastels or Sketch Recorder have ads?
Which is updated more often, iPastels or Sketch Recorder?
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