Fiber vs Fiber Color ID
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Fiber
A utility application designed to assist professional communications technicians in servicing fiber optic networks. It provides essential tools for efficient network management and troubleshooting.
- Fiber network servicing
- Professional communication tools
- Network management
- Troubleshooting assistance
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Fiber is a utility for professional communications technicians to help them service fiber networks. It provides fiber optic color codes, following the TIA-598-C standard.
Fiber Color ID
Instantly convert fiber optic cable numbers to their corresponding colors and vice versa. This tool provides detailed information on tube/ribbon position, colors, and markings, supporting various international standards and custom configurations. It works offline and is designed for field technicians.
- Convert fiber number to color
- Convert color to fiber number
- Supports international color standards
- Customizable cable configurations
- Offline functionality
- Detailed cable visualization
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Fiber Color ID turns a fiber number into a color, and a color back into a fiber number. Built by a CFOT-certified fiber technician for splicers, OSP technicians and engineers who need the right answer in a handhole, not a spreadsheet back at the office. WORKS BOTH WAYS - Enter a fiber number and get its tube or ribbon, its position in that unit, and both colors with the marking. - Or pick the colors and markings you can actually see on the fiber and get the fiber number back. THE WHOLE CABLE ON ONE CHART - Every tube or ribbon is a row, every position a column, and every cell carries that fiber's number in the cable. Zoom from a 12 out to a 6,912. - Tap a tube and a position and the crosshair lands on the fiber. DASHES OR BINDER THREADS, YOUR CALL Above 12 fibers in a tube, manufacturers mark the repeat in different ways. Some print dashes on the fiber. Others group the fibers under colored binder threads and restart the colors under each thread. Tell the app which your cable uses (dashes, threads or both) and how many fibers sit under each thread. Threads start out wrapping one full run of the colors (12 on a TIA cable), and one tap switches to dashes. COLOR STANDARDS BY COUNTRY TIA-598-D (USA) is the default. DIN VDE 0888 (Germany), S12 (Sweden), FIN 2012 (Finland) and Type E (Televerket / Ericsson) are built in, and so is TIA-598-D-1's 16-color scheme for units of 16, labeled as an alternative, with optional colors for tubes 13-16. The app never guesses which one your cable follows. You pick it, and it remembers. WHEN THE CABLE FOLLOWS NO STANDARD A manufacturer with its own order, a cable old enough that nobody publishes its color code any more. Build the sequence yourself, up to 17 positions, including a natural uncolored fiber and the four added TIA colors. Name the colors the way your crew says them. Set which color the repeat marking is printed in. The app does the arithmetic off your sequence, labels every answer as yours, and one tap puts you back on the standard without deleting anything. Share a sequence with the crew as a short block of text. Importing is free. BUILT FOR REAL CABLE - Loose tube and ribbon construction. - Standard counts from 6 up to 6,912 fibers. - Custom cable counts and custom tube or ribbon sizes for non-standard builds. - Every fiber in the unit drawn out with yours ringed, so you can check the app against what is in your hand. WORKS WITH NO SIGNAL Every answer is arithmetic done on your device against color tables built into the app. No account, no sign-in, no network connection. It works in a vault, a manhole, a splice trailer, or anywhere else with no bars. NO ADS, NO TRACKING No advertising and no analytics. The app does not collect information about you or about what you look up. FREE AND PAID Free covers standard loose-tube cables up to 144 fibers and importing a sequence someone else built. Country standards and the dashes-or-threads setting are never locked, because a wrong color is a wrong splice. There is no trial clock. A single one-time purchase unlocks ribbon mode, custom tube and ribbon sizes, counts above 144, the interactive cable chart, and building and exporting your own color sequences. It is priced for the cables a preset color card cannot handle: a high-count ribbon cable, a tube size nobody printed a card for, a sequence your crew had to work out by hand. Nothing renews and there is nothing to cancel. If the store cannot be reached, an unlock already recorded on your device keeps working. WHAT IS STANDARD, AND WHAT IS CONVENTION Colors follow TIA-598-D unless you choose a country standard or define your own. How the repeat is marked above 12 fibers, and what the markings look like past a double dash, varies by manufacturer and product; where there is no published rule, the app says so rather than guessing. Where your cable sheet disagrees with the app, trust the cable sheet, and please send us the cable structure so we can look at it.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is rating: Fiber Color ID at 5.0 against Fiber's 3.8. Fiber Color ID also leads on update cadence (every 2 days vs every 30 months). Fiber's advantage is in-app purchases (none vs 1) and ratings volume (16 vs 5). On price, ads, monetization model 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. Fiber Color ID sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. Fiber asks for nothing beyond the download.
Fiber Color ID holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 3.8. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 16 and 5 respectively.
Fiber ships an update every 30 months, Fiber Color ID every 2 days. The most recent releases landed on November 6, 2026 and November 10, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Fiber | Fiber Color ID |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 3.8 (16 ratings) | 5.0 (5 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 80.0% of reviews | — |
| Number of ratings | 16 — better | 5 |
| Update frequency | Every 30 months | Every 2 days — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No — better | Yes |
| Monetization | Free | Free |
| Devices | iPhone, iPod | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better |
| Requires iOS | 15.0 | 15.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 5 MB | 4 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Gerry Cardinal III | Practical Byte Apps LLC |
Customer experience
Fiber
Fiber Color ID
In-app purchases
Fiber
No in-app purchases
Fiber Color ID
- Pro Unlock$19.99
Questions
Is Fiber free?
Is Fiber Color ID free?
Which has better reviews, Fiber or Fiber Color ID?
Do Fiber or Fiber Color ID have ads?
Which is updated more often, Fiber or Fiber Color ID?
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