Comparison

BrainCalm vs Velarium Studio

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.

Head to head
About

BrainCalm

Read full description

SwingleSonic BRAINCALM helps you achieve a state of brain quiet, using sound stimulation and HRV respiration trainings.

About

Velarium Studio

This app offers a private digital space for creative expression and mindfulness. Engage in drawing, painting, journaling, or music creation. It also provides guided sensory grounding and sleep visualizations designed to be calming and non-intrusive.

Highlights
  • Drawing and painting with optional guidance
  • Journaling with open-ended prompts
  • On-device music creation
  • Sensory grounding exercises
  • Guided sleep visualizations
  • Customizable day/night moods
Features
Read full description

Velarium is a trauma-informed art therapy companion. A quiet room you can step into when the day is too loud — to draw, paint, journal, make a little music, ground through your senses, or drift off to sleep with a guided visualization. Nothing here is trying to optimize you. There are no streaks chasing you. No push notifications begging for your attention. No social feeds. Just exercises, your own creative output, and a way to look back gently on what you made. — What's inside — • Drawing & painting. Pencil-friendly canvases with gentle, optional guidance. Save what you finish to a private gallery on your device. • Journaling. Open-ended prompts paired with a calm editor. Mood check-ins use weather metaphors instead of numbers. • Music. Soft on-device piano, bells, ambient pad, strings, and marimba. Export your composition as a real audio file. • Sensory grounding. Guided practices for tactile and visual grounding when you need to return to your body. • Sleep tapes. Guided visualizations of moonlit oceans, autumn villages, falling snow, distant cities, and rainforests in the rain. Body scans and color meditations include calm on-device narration. • Day and night moods. Tap the sun or moon in the corner to shift the entire app's palette to match how you feel. — Designed for nervous systems that have had a day — Every part of Velarium follows trauma-informed design principles: • Soft motion and slow transitions • Permission-style language ("you might let your shoulders soften") instead of commands • No timers chasing you through exercises • Reduce Motion fully respected • Gentle haptics, never sharp ones • You can always exit, never penalized for stopping early — Privacy by default — Velarium does not collect, transmit, or share any of your data. Your drawings, paintings, journal entries, music compositions, sleep playback history, and goals live only on your device. There are no servers, no analytics, no advertising SDKs, and no third-party trackers. The app works fully offline. Sleep tape narration uses Apple's on-device speech synthesizer, so even the spoken cues never leave your phone. For the highest voice quality, download a Premium voice in iOS Settings → Accessibility → Spoken Content → Voices; Velarium will use it automatically. — Built with care — Velarium ships zero third-party dependencies. Every drawing canvas, every breath of procedural ambience, every visual scene, every body-scan glow is rendered from scratch on your device with Apple's frameworks. There's nothing here you didn't already trust when you installed iOS. Made for anyone who needs a slower, gentler corner of the App Store.

Screenshots

BrainCalm4 screens
Velarium Studio4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is price: BrainCalm at Free against Velarium Studio's $0.99. BrainCalm also leads on update cadence (monthly vs every 3 months) and iOS requirement (13.0 vs 17.0). On ads, in-app purchases 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

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

BrainCalm is free to download; Velarium Studio costs $0.99 up front. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

BrainCalm ships an update monthly, Velarium Studio every 3 months. The most recent releases landed on August 11, 2026 and September 22, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard3 real differences · 6 level
BrainCalm versus Velarium Studio: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterBrainCalmVelarium Studio
PriceFree — better$0.99
Rating5.0 (1 ratings) — better
Number of ratings1 — better
Update frequencyMonthly — betterEvery 3 months
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNoNo
MonetizationPaid
DevicesiPhone, iPad, iPod — betteriPhone, iPad
Requires iOS13.0 — better17.0
Further details — not scored
Size33 MB8 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperDavide Del VentoAndreea Buraga

In-app purchases

None

BrainCalm

No in-app purchases

None

Velarium Studio

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is BrainCalm free?
BrainCalm is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is Velarium Studio free?
Velarium Studio costs $0.99, with no in-app purchases.
Do BrainCalm or Velarium Studio have ads?
Neither BrainCalm nor Velarium Studio shows ads.
Which is updated more often, BrainCalm or Velarium Studio?
BrainCalm ships an update monthly, and Velarium Studio every 3 months. Most recently, BrainCalm was updated on August 11, 2026 and Velarium Studio on September 22, 2026.

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