IdleSpiral vs Ethos Idle
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both games, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
IdleSpiral
An idle, incremental game where players aim to grow a spiral. It combines simple gameplay with mathematical beauty for long-term engagement.
- Idle gameplay
- Incremental progression
- Spiral mathematics
- Long-term engagement
- Simple mechanics
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Idle Spiral is a beautiful idle and incremental game inspired by spirals and mathematics. Grow your spiral farther and farther from the origin. Improve its parameters, discover formulas, challenge enemies, collect rewards, and watch simple mathematical rules create increasingly complex patterns. The controls are simple, but the progression is deep and designed to be enjoyed over a long time. Play actively when you want to optimize your build, or return later and continue from your offline progress. Features: • Deep idle and incremental progression • Spiral growth based on mathematical formulas • Upgrades, battles, challenges, achievements, and daily rewards • Optional ads and in-app purchases • Account, shared Mileage, and cross-platform save foundations • Performance and battery-use options for mobile devices How far can you grow your spiral?
Ethos Idle
Guide humanity's progress from its earliest discoveries to the distant future. Manage your tribe's choices, develop over 200 unique ideas, and explore the world. Advance your civilization, unlock bonuses, and enjoy a single-player, offline experience with optional ads.
- Develop over 200 historic ideas
- Explore and exploit the world
- Manage tribe choices
- Unlock exploration bonuses and synergies
- Prestige mechanic upgrades
- Customizable challenge scenarios
- Offline single-player experience
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Chart the progess of Humanity through the ages, and guide their every discovery from the moment they kindle the first fire to the far future. Develop over 200 unique ideas across three different flavours of thought. Help your people to conquer or make peace with their enemies, explore and exploit the world, and develop projects to meet their needs. Manage your tribe's choices to squeeze out more strength, or sit back and idle as your clan develop on their own. Advance as far as you can take your people, and then collect bonuses to improve future runs. Select varied challenges that change the way the game plays, and combine these challenges to create your own unique scenarios with big rewards. Features: - Over 200 historic ideas to develop, across 3 flavours of thought - Dozens of exploration bonuses and synergies to unlock and exploit - Permanently power up your civilisation with prestige mechanic upgrades - Combine varied challenge conditions to create your own scenarios with powerful rewards - Optional, out-of-the-way ads won't interrupt your experience - A completely offline, single player experience - All game content is accessible for free
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is rating: Ethos Idle at 4.8 against IdleSpiral's 4.2. Ethos Idle also leads on review sentiment (84% vs 54%) and ratings volume (241 vs 79). IdleSpiral's advantage is update cadence (every 2 days vs every 3 weeks). 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. IdleSpiral sells 12 one-off in-app purchases and Ethos Idle sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.
Ethos Idle holds the better App Store score, 4.8 against 4.2. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 79 and 241 respectively. Written reviews point the same way: 54% of IdleSpiral's written reviews are positive against 84% of Ethos Idle's.
IdleSpiral ships an update every 2 days, Ethos Idle every 3 weeks. The most recent releases landed on October 30, 2026 and October 25, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | IdleSpiral | Ethos Idle |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.2 (79 ratings) | 4.8 (241 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 54.3% of reviews | 84.4% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 79 | 241 — better |
| Update frequency | Every 2 days — better | Every 3 weeks |
| Ads | Yes | Yes |
| In-app purchases | Yes | Yes |
| Monetization | Free with in-app purchases | Free with in-app purchases |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod | iPhone, iPad, iPod |
| Requires iOS | 15.0 | 15.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 235 MB | 101 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Idle System, Inc. | Graham Goldstein |
Customer experience
IdleSpiral
Ethos Idle
User reviews
IdleSpiral
From 79 App Store ratingsWhat we love
- 👍 Great game overall
- 💡 Interesting idle/incremental mechanics
- 🔢 Generates big numbers
- ✨ Satisfying progression
- 🎨 Can make cool patterns
Room to improve
- 🐛 Game glitches and bugs
- 🔋 Drains battery quickly
- 📱 Phone gets very hot
- 📉 Progress halts without active play
- 💸 Premium currency hard to accumulate
Ethos Idle
From 241 App Store ratingsWhat we love
- 🚀 Fast progression
- 👍 Minimal ad interruption
- 👍 Simple and enjoyable design
- 👍 Great for relaxing and watching numbers go up
- 👍 Excellent incremental game design
Room to improve
- 🐢 Slower progression speed desired
- 🛒 IAP for 2x production doesn't eliminate video ads
Bugs and requests
IdleSpiral
Reported bugs
28 issues- Game is unresponsive
- Ads don't work or give rewards
- Patterns are random
- Bar at the bottom center not growable
- Phone gets super hot and drains battery
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- Translation is poor
- Offline progress not accumulating
- Game speed items cause overheating
- Game becomes laggy
- Last two Z Reactors missing
- Last three challenges missing
- Game not idle, requires active play
- Rewards reset when app is closed
- Memory of Formula system confusing
- Battles no longer progress offline
- Text is too small
- Daily bonus not working
- Offline gains broken
- Achievements not unlocking
- Offline battles don't increase difficulty
- Stats not functioning
- Social sharing (screenshot/tweet) broken
- Daily rewards unclear
- Challenges past first versions inaccessible
- Save process wipes progress
- Offline enemy kills not counting
- Spiral Equations not working
- Difficulty of fighting tab not increasing offline
Requested features
10 requests- Fix bugs and glitches
- Improve ad rewards and length
- Make the game truly idle again
- Fix offline gains and progress
- Improve translation and text display
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- Bring PC version content to mobile
- Fix social sharing features
- Add dark mode
- Fix challenges not appearing
- Fix Z-Reactors not appearing
Ethos Idle
Reported bugs
2 issues- RNG for challenges is unfair and unfun
- Unlocking buffs for inaccessible technologies
Requested features
2 requests- Option to remove ads entirely
- Clarification on prestige warp gain multipliers
In-app purchases
IdleSpiral
- Spiral Point 500$1.99
- Snake Spiral$4.99
- Bubble Spiral$4.99
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- Arrow Spiral$4.99
- Water Spiral$9.99
- Space Spiral$9.99
- Bonfire Spiral$9.99
- Permanent Bonus$9.99
- Pixel Spiral$9.99
- Railway Spiral$9.99
- Spiral Point 3000$12.99
- Spiral Point 10000$29.99
Ethos Idle
- x2 Speed$6.99








