Pinball Arcade vs Tower Pinball
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both games, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Pinball Arcade
Experience over 30 authentic digital pinball machines with stunningly accurate recreations of classic tables. Enjoy two free tables each month and explore meticulously emulated gameplay, sounds, and visuals for an immersive arcade experience.
- Over 30 authentic pinball machines
- Exact recreations of classic tables
- Meticulous emulation of gameplay
- High-detail sound effects and visuals
- Two free tables offered monthly
- New tables added regularly
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Play over 30 REAL PINBALL machines! Pinball Arcade is the most realistic and comprehensive pinball simulation ever created! Play TWO FREE TABLES this month! This month's free tables are: * Big Buck Hunter™ * Gladiators™ New table added in this update: * Big Buck Hunter™ * Whoa Nellie™ This expansive digital arcade features exact recreations of the all-time greatest pinball tables from Stern Pinball® and Gottlieb® together in one app. Every flipper, bumper, sound effect, and display pixel has been painstakingly emulated in astonishing detail. Rated 9.0 on IGN! G4TV Mobile game of the year.
Tower Pinball
Experience pinball with a unique vertical design where the ball ascends through multiple floors. Each table offers distinct mechanics and challenges, from orbital physics to intricate clockwork. Designed for intuitive two-thumb play, it features realistic machine elements and online leaderboards.
- Multi-floor tower pinball tables
- Unique physics per floor
- Intuitive two-thumb controls
- Realistic pinball machine elements
- Game Center leaderboards
- Offline play
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Pinball where the table is a tower. Every table in Tower Pinball is three floors stacked on top of each other, and the ball climbs them. Play well on the ground floor and a lift carries the ball up; play well again and it goes higher. Drain, and it falls back down the tower to wherever the floor below can catch it. ROCKET RANGE, the first table, is a launch site at sunrise. The pad is fire and steel, the upper atmosphere is thin cold air, and the top floor is orbit — and gravity thins as you climb. The same flipper that barely clears a ramp on the pad will fling the ball across the sky in orbit. Learn the three floors and you learn a machine with three personalities. CLOCKWORK TOWER, the second table, is a clock seen from the inside. The workshop floor is oak boards and a brass movement you wind by hand, the gear train turns a great wheel that carries the ball across the floor, and at the top the dial collects the hours and a bell strikes them. The whole floor leans with the clock's beat and the escapements open on the tick, so the table has a tempo you can learn: many of its shots score double when they land on the tick. MADE FOR TWO THUMBS. There are no tiny buttons. The left half of the screen is the left flipper and the right half is the right one, edge to edge, so you play it the way you hold your phone. Nudge the table with a lean or a two-finger tap. A short tour shows you the tower the first time you open it, and a coach shows you where your hands go. A REAL MACHINE. A dot-matrix display calls the shots, bonuses count down at the end of every ball, modes stack, multiball lands on the top floor, and the neon over the flame trench flickers the way a tired tube does. Skill shots, kickbacks, a lock, a wizard mode — the machinery of a cabinet, on a phone, with haptics you can feel and music you can turn off. Every shot is named on the deck, so the display and the table speak the same words. CLIMB THE BOARD. Every finished game posts to a Game Center leaderboard, and your best score sits on the menu. Rocket Range is complete and free. Clockwork Tower is a one-time purchase in the menu, and you can play it free once a day before you decide. It is shareable with your family, with no subscription and no currency, and every table after it will be the same. More tables are coming to the tower: a deep-sea trench and a power grid. No ads. Plays offline. Made for iPhone and iPad, held in two hands.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is review sentiment: Tower Pinball at 100% against Pinball Arcade's 32%. Tower Pinball also leads on rating (5.0 vs 3.2) and update cadence (every 4 days vs every 3 weeks). Pinball Arcade's advantage is ratings volume (807 vs 1) and iOS requirement (10.0 vs 17.0). On price, ads, in-app purchases and monetization model 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. Pinball Arcade sells 10 one-off in-app purchases and Tower Pinball sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.
Tower Pinball holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 3.2. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Pinball Arcade has 807 ratings behind it against 1, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews point the same way: 32% of Pinball Arcade's written reviews are positive against 100% of Tower Pinball's.
Pinball Arcade ships an update every 3 weeks, Tower Pinball every 4 days. The most recent releases landed on October 22, 2026 and October 24, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Pinball Arcade | Tower Pinball |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 3.2 (807 ratings) | 5.0 (1 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 31.5% of reviews | 100.0% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 807 — better | 1 |
| Update frequency | Every 3 weeks | Every 4 days — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | Yes |
| Monetization | Free with in-app purchases | Freemium |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better | iPhone, iPad |
| Requires iOS | 10.0 — better | 17.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 138 MB | 69 MB |
| Age rating | 9+ | 4+ |
| Developer | FarSight Studios | Tim Mueller |
Customer experience
Pinball Arcade
Tower Pinball
Bugs and requests
Pinball Arcade
Reported bugs
4 issues- Tables failing to download or load properly
- Unresponsive controls and flippers
- Scoreboard and UI elements being cut off
- Inconsistent or reversed flipper controls
Requested features
4 requests- Ability to purchase individual tables
- More classic and licensed pinball tables
- Improved UI and controls customization
- Cross-platform/device syncing of purchases
Tower Pinball
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
In-app purchases
Pinball Arcade
- Tales of the Arabian Nights® Pinball Table$0.99
- The Machine: Bride of Pin•bot™ + Medieval Madness™$4.99
- Fun House™ + Cirqus Voltaire™$4.99
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- Monster Bash™ & Gorgar Pinball$4.99
- Creature from the Black Lagoon$4.99
- Elvira's Scared Stiff™ Pinball$4.99
- The Addams Family® Pinball$4.99
- Gottlieb Pack 1$4.99
- Four Pack of Launch Tables$9.99
- Season 1 Pass$29.99
Tower Pinball
- Clockwork Tower$1.99
Questions
Is Pinball Arcade free?
Is Tower Pinball free?
Which has better reviews, Pinball Arcade or Tower Pinball?
Do Pinball Arcade or Tower Pinball have ads?
Which is updated more often, Pinball Arcade or Tower Pinball?
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