Comparison

iPastels vs Sketch Recorder

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

Head to head
About

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.

Highlights
  • Lifelike pastel simulation
  • Realistic paper/canvas textures
  • Precise color blending
  • Fingertip stroke size adjustment
  • Left-handed toolbar option
  • Live parameter changes
  • Multiple layers
Features
Read full description

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) •

About

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.

Highlights
  • Natural drawing experience
  • Full-screen mode
  • Screen recording
  • Tracing paper mode
  • Save to photo library
  • Hide/show palette
Features
Read full description

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

iPastels4 screens
Sketch Recorder4 screens

Verdict

The call

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

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Both are free to download. iPastels sells 6 one-off in-app purchases. Sketch Recorder asks for nothing beyond the download.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

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.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

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.

Scorecard7 real differences · 3 level
iPastels versus Sketch Recorder: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameteriPastelsSketch Recorder
PriceFreeFree
Rating4.7 (2.2K ratings) — better4.5 (11 ratings)
Positive reviews81.0% of reviews — better57.1% of reviews
Number of ratings2.2K — better11
Update frequencyEvery 6 weeks — betterEvery 17 months
AdsNo — betterYes
In-app purchasesYesNo — better
MonetizationFree with in-app purchasesAd-supported — better
DevicesiPhone, iPad, iPod, Mac — betteriPhone, iPad, iPod
Requires iOS12.0 — better14.0
Further details — not scored
Size24 MB4 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperNorbyteMehmet Bayram

Customer experience

iPastels

All ratings2,142 ratings
Positive91.6%
Neutral4.3%
Negative4.1%
Written reviews231 reviews
Positive81.0%
Neutral7.8%
Negative11.3%

Sketch Recorder

All ratings11 ratings
Positive81.8%
Neutral9.1%
Negative9.1%
Written reviews7 reviews
Positive57.1%
Neutral28.6%
Negative14.3%

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
Show 1 more
  • Add undo/redo functionality for individual strokes

Sketch Recorder

Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.

In-app purchases

6 purchases

iPastels

One-time6
  • Tip Jar: Smallest Tip$1.00
  • Tip Jar: Small Tip$2.00
  • Tip Jar: Medium Tip$5.00
Show 3 more
  • Pro Upgrade$7.00
  • Tip Jar: Big Tip$10.00
  • Tip Jar: Biggest Tip$25.00
None

Sketch Recorder

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is iPastels free?
iPastels is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is Sketch Recorder free?
Sketch Recorder is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Which has better reviews, iPastels or Sketch Recorder?
iPastels is rated higher. iPastels averages 4.7 out of 5 from 2.2K ratings, while Sketch Recorder averages 4.5 from 11 ratings.
Do iPastels or Sketch Recorder have ads?
Sketch Recorder shows ads; iPastels does not.
Which is updated more often, iPastels or Sketch Recorder?
iPastels ships an update every 6 weeks, and Sketch Recorder every 17 months. Most recently, iPastels was updated on October 29, 2026 and Sketch Recorder on October 24, 2026.

Other comparisons