Writing Wizard vs Alphablocks
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Writing Wizard
This app helps children learn to trace letters, numbers, and words with a fun, motivating system. It offers customizable tracing, interactive games, and progress reports for parents and educators.
- Customizable tracing practice
- Interactive games and rewards
- Letter names and phonics
- Create custom word lists
- Progress reports
- Printable worksheets
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"Fantastic, customizable tracing practice with fun rewards." 5 Stars - Common Sense Media 470,000+ units sold (including 260,000 to schools) ! Writing Wizard is designed to help every child learn how to trace letters, numbers, and words through a fun system carefully designed to maintain motivation. • Show and enforce how to trace letters correctly • 16 Fonts available (including 3 most popular USA fonts) • Fun tracing using 50+ animated stickers, sound effects and interactive games that animate letters at the end of tracing • Letter names and phonics • Uppercase & lowercase letters, numbers and words • Ability to create your own word lists (and record audio for each word) • Fully customizable to suit every child’s needs (letter size, difficulty,...) • Check progress thanks to reports that display what the child has traced • Shapes tracing activity for toddlers • Create PDF Worksheets and print them to help your child to write on paper • Use Apple pencil to write at very small size _______ ACCOLADES • "Writing Wizard is the most complete and intelligent letter tracing app we’ve seen"" AppoLearning.com • "This brand-new app should be the go-to for every parent, teacher and therapist to work on handwriting" - TOP PICKS - 5 stars - SmartAppsForKids.com • "Writing Wizard by L’Escapadou is everything a parent wants in a handwriting app, and more." 5/5 - kids-app-reviews.com • "L’Escapadou has made handwriting fun." AppyMall.com 5/5 • Listed in "20 best educational iPhone and iPad apps for kids of 2013" - appsplayground.com • Editor's Choice Award for Excellence in Design - Children's Technology Review _______ PERFECT FOR KIDS Kids want to have fun, and Writing Wizard offers a lot of fun to keep them motivated in the learning process ! • They can trace using 50+ animated stickers and sound effects • Once tracing is complete, they can interact with them on 4 games that animate letters • They can trace any word - like their name - and record their voice for each word • They can collect stars in 5-Stars play mode _______ PERFECT FOR PARENTS & TEACHERS • Ability to create your own word lists (and record audio for each word) • Detailed reports provide information on what kids have done, including the ability to replay and export the tracings to view kids' progress • Share word lists via iCloud drive or other cloud providers, adhoc network, or email • Multiple parameters to customize the app according to the child’s current education level (e.g. letter size, difficulty, show/hide model, allow to stop between key points, etc.) • 3 most popular fonts in the US (ZB, DN & HWT) and 13 international fonts (UK, Scandinavia,Australia, germany, France) • Upper and lower case letters, numbers (and word lists) • Letter names and phonics (which can be customized) • A customizable 5-Stars play mode prompting the child to trace a letter or a word 5 times using different parameters (each step is more challenging) • Create an unlimited number of users • Many settings to customize the app (sound, game time limit, black background,...) • In the A-Z section, special graphics available to match letters (e.g. ant graphic for A/a) _______ Note that a free to try version is available (search for "Writing Wizard -Starter" on the App Store) _______ Privacy Policy KNOW WHAT'S INSIDE As a Moms with Apps member, we follow the "Know what's inside" best practices for kids’ apps L’Escapadou takes children’s privacy seriously. We believe you should not have to worry about your kids being tracked by apps or websites. This app: • Does not collect any user information (we do not use data collection tools) • Does not contain in-app purchases • External Links: Protected parent sections are available where you can send us a mail and check out our others apps. Before accessing a parent section, an addition must be solved so that young kids cannot access it. *
Alphablocks
This app uses interactive games and songs to teach preschoolers letter sounds and names through phonics. Children can engage with characters from a popular TV show to develop early reading skills in a fun, multisensory way.
- Phonics mini-games
- Singalong letter song
- Letter sound and name learning
- Progress tracking with stars
- Interactive character learning
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From the BAFTA nominated pre-school learning TV shows Alphablocks and Numberblocks, we bring you Alphablocks Letter Fun! Your little ones are going to LOVE interacting with the Alphablocks in this amazing App. It’s hugely entertaining to play and makes a real difference to their reading through fun, multisensory learning. Alphablocks has been on TV for nearly a decade, helping millions of children learn to read the fun way. Now your little ones can meet all the Alphablocks from A to Z, learning letters and sounds with four great phonics mini-games and a fantastic singalong song. "Alphablock A says a! when an apple lands on her head! " Every Alphablock is designed to make their letter and sound easy to learn, encouraging kids to interact with the characters and really get to know the alphabet. They’ll have great fun getting hands-on with letters and sounds. * No in-app purchases * ▸ MINIGAMES There are four minigames per Alphablock — that’s over 100 great activities for kids to enjoy! ◆ Bubble pop! — match letters to sounds by popping the bubbles that match the sounds you hear. ◆ Paint me — listen to letter sounds as you paint each Alphablock with your finger. ◆ Favourite things — listen out for words that begin with each letter sound and add them to the Alphablock’s collection of favourite things. ◆ Hide and seek — listen carefully to tell letter sounds apart, and see if you can spot where the Alphablock is hiding. ▸ ALPHABLOCKS LETTER SONG Sing along with the Alphablocks as they all get together to sing their letter sounds in a mnemonic song that kids will love and remember! ▸ LETTER SOUNDS AND NAMES When your child has mastered their letters and sounds, change to Letter Name mode and have fun learning all the letter names too. ▸ EARN STARS Every minigame earns a star. Collect all four stars to watch the Alphablock sing their line from the Alphablocks letter song. Can you light up all the stars for all your Alphablocks? (The app keeps your progress between visits. You can reset it if you want to start again or to let a friend or sibling play.) ▸ FULL OF FABULOUS PHONICS Alphablocks is made by teachers and reading experts. It’s built around systematic synthetic phonics, as taught in UK schools. Alphablocks is a step-by-step reading system with episodes, books and more that has helped over a million children learn to read the fun way. Alphablocks Letter Fun was created by Blue Zoo Animation, the multi-award winning studio who are passionate about creating fantastic content for kids tv and games. Blue Zoo has produced many hit pre-school shows including Go Jetters, Digby Dragon, Miffy, Tree Fu Tom, Mac & Izzy, and more. www.blue-zoo.co.uk
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is price: Alphablocks at $2.99 against Writing Wizard's $13.99. Alphablocks also leads on update cadence (every 2 months vs every 4 months) and iOS requirement (13.0 vs 15.6). Writing Wizard's advantage is review sentiment (90% vs 60%) and ratings volume (3.3K vs 91). On rating, ads, in-app purchases and chart position 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
Writing Wizard costs $13.99 and Alphablocks $2.99 up front. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 4.3 for Writing Wizard against 4.4 for Alphablocks. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Writing Wizard has 3.3K ratings behind it against 91, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews are what separate them: 90% of Writing Wizard's written reviews are positive against 60% of Alphablocks's.
Writing Wizard ships an update every 4 months, Alphablocks every 2 months. The most recent releases landed on November 6, 2026 and November 8, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Writing Wizard | Alphablocks |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $13.99 | $2.99 — better |
| Rating | 4.3 (3.3K ratings) | 4.4 (91 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 89.7% of reviews — better | 59.7% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | 3.3K — better | 91 |
| Update frequency | Every 4 months | Every 2 months — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Paid | Free — better |
| Best chart rank | #180 | #129 — better |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod | iPhone, iPad, iPod |
| Requires iOS | 15.6 | 13.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 69 MB | 208 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Pierre Abel | Blue-Zoo |
Customer experience
Writing Wizard
Alphablocks
User reviews
Writing Wizard
From 3.3K App Store ratingsWhat we love
- 👍 Customizable word lists and recording
- 🎨 Engaging graphics and animations
- 🏫 Great for teaching handwriting and spelling
- 🔒 No ads or in-app purchases
- 🎓 Helpful for children with special needs
Room to improve
- 🐛 Occasional crashes or freezing
- 🔤 Limited font options, especially for UK users
- 🔒 Difficulty accessing parental controls
- 🖋️ Apple Pencil not supported
- 🔄 Difficulty clearing tracing history
Alphablocks
From 91 App Store ratingsWhat we love
- 👍 Engaging for children
- 👍 Good for learning letter sounds
- 👍 Educational value
- 👍 Entertaining
- 👍 Playful learning
Room to improve
- 🐛 Incomplete alphabet games
- 🐛 App crashes
- 🐛 App doesn't load
- 🐛 Repetitive sounds
- 🐛 Basic content
Bugs and requests
Writing Wizard
Reported bugs
2 issues- Incorrect letter formation for some characters
- Inconsistent performance on older devices
Requested features
6 requests- Add more font options, including cursive and UK-specific styles
- Improve parental control accessibility
- Integrate Apple Pencil support
- Allow easier clearing of tracing history
- Expand character support (e.g., Latin Extended, Cyrillic, Arabic)
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- Add a free-form writing mode or blank canvas
Alphablocks
Reported bugs
11 issues- Games not appearing for several letters
- App crashes on launch
- App gets stuck on loading screen
- Letters after 'M' or 'L' do not work
- App won't load, shuts down
Show 6 moreShow fewer
- Ad pop-up from invisible button
- Blank pop-up to download another game
- T always has one eyebrow
- U has eyelashes
- Repetitive letter sound in coloring
- Invisible button triggers ad/download pop-up
Requested features
12 requests- Fix graphical glitches (eyelashes on 'U', eyebrows on 'T')
- Unlock all letters/games
- Add uppercase letters
- Include word blending/reading
- Add more content/games
Show 7 moreShow fewer
- Make parent security questions harder
- Add phonics for Phase 2 and 3 sounds
- Incorporate both letter sounds and names
- Improve navigation
- Add word building games
- Make coloring game a letter writing exercise
- Add a password for parent section
In-app purchases
Writing Wizard
No in-app purchases
Alphablocks
No in-app purchases
Questions
Is Writing Wizard free?
Is Alphablocks free?
Which has better reviews, Writing Wizard or Alphablocks?
Do Writing Wizard or Alphablocks have ads?
Which is updated more often, Writing Wizard or Alphablocks?
Which is more popular, Writing Wizard or Alphablocks?
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