Airport Tycoon vs Space Salvager
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both games, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Airport Tycoon
Manage an airport, from maintaining aircraft and controlling air traffic to signing airline contracts and building your own fleet. Expand terminals and acquire special aircraft to become a global aviation tycoon.
- Realistic aircraft maintenance and painting
- Air traffic control for arrivals and departures
- Build and manage your own aircraft fleet
- Expand airport terminals (domestic, international, cargo, VIP)
- Acquire special aircraft like Concorde and An225
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Airport Tycoon is an airport simulation game, as the director in the game world you start with an airport and hangar, you should maintain airplanes from airlines at beginning, control air traffic, sign contracts with airlines and build your own fleet! You can see your airways all over the world! === Game Features === *Relastic Maintenance & Paint Aircraft Play as a professional aircraft maintenance engineer, through cleaning, de-icing, engine disassembly, etc. To complete the regular maintenance of the aircraft to ensure that the aircraft safely perform every takeoff and landing tasks. *Air Traffic Control In your busy airport, play the role of ATC to make decisions on flight arrivals and departures, to sort out aircraft queues, to ease congestion and delays, to effectively improve flight efficiency and to expand airport revenue! *Build Fleet & Be the tycoon In the process of gradual contracting, it is also possible to expand domestic, international, cargo, VIP terminals, land special aircraft such as Concorde, An225 and C919! Become a rich Airport Tycoon!
Space Salvager
Pilot a salvage tug to derelict ships, cutting free valuable parts while the structure crumbles around you. Race against rivals and manage your greed to get home with your haul, or risk losing everything.
- Push-your-luck gameplay
- Salvage derelict ships
- Rival salvager encounters
- Multiple ship types
- Collectible personal effects
- Daily seeded wrecks
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There's a fortune inside this derelict, and nobody left alive to stop you taking it. Every part you cut free makes the wreck likelier to come down on top of you. Nothing warns you when to leave. There's only what's already in your hold, and how much of it you're willing to bet on one more cut. Space Salvager is a push-your-luck game about greed and timing. You captain a beat-up tug on the edge of explored space: find the dead ships, strip them, and get out before the structure fails. Take too little and you can't afford the fuel home. Take too much and you lose the lot. THE CUT THAT COSTS YOU Every component has a price in stability. Below half, each removal can start a collapse - girders fail, fires start, arcs jump the hull, radiation floods a section. You can always ride it out for one more piece. People do. That's how ships get lost. SEVEN KINDS OF DEAD SHIP Freighters, mining rigs, research vessels, military frigates, colony transports, luxury liners - and occasionally a contact matching no hull design on record. Sealed compartments can be gambled open for a fortune or for slag. Some wrecks hold things that were never meant to be aboard. YOU'RE NOT THE ONLY ONE OUT HERE Rival salvagers arrive mid-job and start cutting the far side. Pay them off, threaten them, or race them to the good parts before they get there. WHAT YOU LEAVE BEHIND Abandon a wreck and it doesn't reset. It stays out there in real time, decaying, getting picked over by someone else. Come back in three days and find out what's left of it. FIFTEEN HULLS, THREE BERTHS The Kestrel is out before the hull knows it was there. The Ox carries everything and leaves slowly - you will fill the hold, and you will regret it when the countdown starts. The Lamprey strips a wreck faster than anything in the registry and takes damage like wet paper. The Bastion is built to survive the collapse rather than avoid it. No hull is strictly better than another. The right one depends on the wreck. THE SHIP'S LOCKER Twenty personal effects, recovered from seven crews. The Long Haul. Cold Hypothesis. Promise of Rain. Seventeen Thousand Years. Sell them for credits, or keep them and eventually learn what happened aboard. Selling the last piece of a set costs you the ending. THE DAILY WRECK One seeded wreck a day, the same for every salvager, flown on a loaner rig. One attempt. Come back tomorrow. NO PAYWALL Free to play, with no in-app purchases. Ads are opt-in rewards only - you choose to watch one, at a moment you picked, for something specific. No banners, no interstitials, nothing that plays uninvited. Credits, fuel and repairs are never for sale. The risk is the game - we're not selling you a way around it. Find it. Strip it. Get out alive.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is in-app purchases: Space Salvager at none against Airport Tycoon's 9. Airport Tycoon's advantage is update cadence (every 4 days vs every 6 weeks) and ratings volume (184 vs 1). On price, rating, ads 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. Airport Tycoon sells 9 one-off in-app purchases. Space Salvager asks for nothing beyond the download.
Space Salvager holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 4.8. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Airport Tycoon has 184 ratings behind it against 1, so its average is the more settled of the two.
Airport Tycoon ships an update every 4 days, Space Salvager every 6 weeks. The most recent releases landed on November 3, 2026 and October 31, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Airport Tycoon | Space Salvager |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.8 (184 ratings) | 5.0 (1 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 37.5% of reviews | — |
| Number of ratings | 184 — better | 1 |
| Update frequency | Every 4 days — better | Every 6 weeks |
| Ads | Yes | Yes |
| In-app purchases | Yes | No — better |
| Monetization | Free with in-app purchases | Free with in-app purchases |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod | iPhone, iPad, iPod |
| Requires iOS | 12.0 — better | 15.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 357 MB | 55 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 9+ |
| Developer | Fuzhou Lingyuan Technology Co., Ltd. | Mason Moran |
Customer experience
Airport Tycoon
Space Salvager
In-app purchases
Airport Tycoon
- A Couple of Gems$0.99
- Special Pack$1.99
- Super Radar$1.99
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- No Ads$4.99
- A Handful of Gems$4.99
- A Pile of Gems$9.99
- A Sack of Gems$19.99
- A Box of Gems$29.99
- A Crate of Gems$49.99
Space Salvager
No in-app purchases
Questions
Is Airport Tycoon free?
Is Space Salvager free?
Which has better reviews, Airport Tycoon or Space Salvager?
Do Airport Tycoon or Space Salvager have ads?
Which is updated more often, Airport Tycoon or Space Salvager?
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