Cargo vs Lightbot
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both games, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Cargo
A brain-challenging puzzle game where players program a robot to move crates. It's designed to help users learn fundamental programming concepts through engaging gameplay and beautiful graphics.
- Robot programming puzzles
- Learn programming concepts
- Beautiful graphics
- Fiendish puzzles
- Record and share solutions
- Programmed on iPad
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Over one million people have enjoyed Cargo-Bot! The puzzle game that challenges your brain and helps you learn programming concepts. Cargo-Bot is the first game programmed entirely on iPad® using Codea It's a puzzle game where you teach a robot how to move crates. Sounds simple, right? Try it out! • Beautiful graphics • Fiendish puzzles • A game about programming, programmed entirely on iPad • Record your solutions and share them on YouTube • Learn more about how it was made by searching for Codea on the App Store
Lightbot
This game teaches programming logic through engaging puzzles. Players guide a robot using commands to solve levels, fostering an understanding of procedures, loops, and conditionals. It's an excellent introduction to coding for kids and puzzle enthusiasts.
- Programming logic puzzles
- Robot guidance with commands
- Teaches procedures, loops, conditionals
- 50 levels and 20 challenge stars
- Multiplayer progress tracking
- Multiple language support
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Featured by Apple in over 100 countries *Best New Apps and Games* *Best for Learning to Code* *Best in Hot Educational Games* Get kids hooked on coding within minutes! Lightbot is a programming puzzle game- a game whose game mechanics require using programming logic to solve levels. Simply guiding a robot to light up tiles and solve levels using commands, Lightbot cultivates a real understanding of procedures, loops, and conditionals. Educators around the world are choosing to use Lightbot first when introducing their students to programming, coding and Computer Science. Lightbot features 50 levels and 20 challenge stars to collect and is a must-have for puzzle enthusiasts. This version of Lightbot can be played in English, French, Russian, Brazilian Portuguese, Spanish, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Norwegian, Slovenian, Romanian, Indonesian, German, Polish, Danish, Croatian, Dutch, Slovak, Czech, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Thai, Hindi, Swedish, Finnish and Hungarian! Just hit the associated flag icon on the main screen to select a language. Lightbot features multiple save slots and separate progress tracking for multiple players. Multiple players can advance at their own pace in their own save slot, and also compete on number of levels finished, number of stars collected and number of overall commands used to complete the game. There are NO in-app purchases in Lightbot.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is price: Cargo at Free against Lightbot's $2.99. Lightbot's advantage is rating (4.5 vs 3.6) and update cadence (every 2 months vs every 30 months). On review sentiment, ratings volume, ads and in-app purchases 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
Cargo is free to download; Lightbot costs $2.99 up front. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
Lightbot holds the better App Store score, 4.5 against 3.6. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 27 and 38 respectively. Written reviews split almost evenly too, at 84% and 85% positive.
Cargo ships an update every 30 months, Lightbot every 2 months. The most recent releases landed on September 29, 2026 and October 4, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Cargo | Lightbot |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free — better | $2.99 |
| Rating | 3.6 (27 ratings) | 4.5 (38 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 84.1% of reviews | 84.7% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 27 | 38 — better |
| Update frequency | Every 30 months | Every 2 months — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Paid | Free — better |
| Best chart rank | — | #175 — better |
| Devices | iPad | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better |
| Requires iOS | 12.4 | 5.1.1 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 18 MB | 53 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Two Lives Left | SpriteBox LLC |
Customer experience
Cargo
Lightbot
User reviews
Cargo
From 27 App Store ratingsWhat we love
- 🚀 Epic
- 👍 Tricky logical game
- 👍 Excellent game!
- 👍 Good accessible programming game
- 👍 Genius!
Room to improve
- 🐛 I AM SO MAD AT THE DEVELOPER AND THE GAME!!!!
- 🐛 The game is bad
- 🐛 The update deleted my save!
- 🐛 App Support
- 🐛 Teaches bad programming practices
Lightbot
From 38 App Store ratingsWhat we love
- 👍 Great for learning programming
- 💡 Fun and engaging gameplay
- 🧠 Thought-provoking puzzles
- 👨👩👧👦 Good for kids and adults
- ✨ Well-designed and polished
Room to improve
- 🐛 Frequent crashes and bugs
- ⏳ Game is too short
- ❌ Difficulty spikes
- 🎧 Cannot listen to music while playing
- 🐞 Some levels have bugs
Bugs and requests
Cargo
Reported bugs
4 issues- Come together 2 hard mode crashes when I complete it in 8 step... wants you to stack 7 blocks but stashes when you do!!
- App froze while I was doing the tutorial. Still frozen each time I open it.
- ERROR: Parameters dt = random numbers. (about 1.6) OUTPUT: TEST TEST error: [string " -- StagePhysics.lua..":97: attempt to index local 'info' (a nil value) Pausing playback
- Infinite loop issue, recursion does not work correctly
Requested features
13 requests- Add a prog 5?
- Create your own level thing added in
- Saving multiple solutions, version control of unsolved puzzles, & saving off a set of instructions for reuse (building libraries of moves that are easy to reference in other puzzles)
- Settings to disable the sounds/music while letting background music play
- A button to simply change the "best solution" criteria
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- Updating the game or downloading "content" updates when new solutions are found
- An option in Settings to include a link to the video with the best solution displayed
- More explications... Per exemple, why a left arrow on the last sqarre of prog2 bring the claw automaticly to the leftmost colum no matter where your claw is???
- A reset levels button so you can use it with other users in a school
- A break function to stop infinite loops
- A tutorial about how to do the tutorial?
- A way to see the best solution for a level
- Multiple player profiles or even reset the game
Lightbot
Reported bugs
7 issues- App crashes on open/startup
- App crashes during gameplay/levels
- Conditional level 2 bug
- Play button covers code in Conditional level
- Not loading due to iOS version
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- English levels not working on iPod 4th gen
- Crashing on 4th gen iPod/iPad
Requested features
8 requests- More levels
- Puzzle editor/user-created levels
- Hint system
- Ability to listen to music while playing
- Unlockable content/robot customization
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- More reward for completing challenges
- More levels to reinforce concepts
- Solutions page
In-app purchases
Cargo
No in-app purchases
Lightbot
No in-app purchases
