Comparison

Visual Pinball vs Fastest Lap

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

Head to head
About

Visual Pinball

Enjoy a realistic pinball simulation with hundreds of community-created tables. Experience immersive haptic feedback and customize your gameplay with intuitive settings and controller support. Advanced options are available for power users.

Highlights
  • Hundreds of community-developed tables
  • Haptic feedback for immersive gameplay
  • Customizable settings and POV adjustments
  • Game controller support
  • External DMD and AltColor/AltSound support
  • Touch overlay and instructions
Features
Read full description

The official Visual Pinball app. Built by volunteers since 2000 and open source since 2010, Visual Pinball is the simulator the virtual pinball community has been playing for over two decades. More than 70 people have contributed to it, and this app runs the same engine as the desktop version, so every table plays with the physics, lighting and sound its creator intended. No ads. No in-app purchases. No tracking. Made by volunteers. Two years of work from the Visual Pinball volunteers, in one update. Thank you for your patience, and for playing! A FRESH NEW LOOK • Redesigned for iOS 26 with Liquid Glass • Favorites and recently played tables at the top of your list • Search, sorting and three tile sizes • Light, Dark or System appearance • New loading screen that shows progress THE FULL DESKTOP EXPERIENCE • The complete Visual Pinball in-game menu for graphics, sound, controls and table options • Remap every button on keyboards and game controllers • Save settings for every table, or just the one you're playing MORE TABLES, LOOKING BETTER • Show the backglass and score display (DMD, alphanumeric or reels) on screen, right where you want them • Support for PUP packs, FlexDMD, B2S backglasses, video playback and VNI colorizations • All the latest physics and rendering improvements from the desktop version • Much lower memory use: textures are compressed on first load, then cached EASIER TABLE MANAGEMENT • Import .zip files, along with .vpx and .vpxz • Share any table as a single .vpxz file • The web file manager can now upload whole folders, extract archives, edit scripts and settings, and show the log live AND MORE • Many stability and memory fixes This version requires iOS 26.6 or later.

About

Fastest Lap

Experience a pure time-attack racing challenge with no opponents or luck. Master each circuit with precise driving, where every mistake costs. Enjoy a minimalist aesthetic and procedurally generated music.

Highlights
  • Top-down time-attack racing
  • No opponents or contact
  • Deterministic simulation
  • Minimalist flat color graphics
  • Procedurally generated music
  • 24 unique circuits
  • 21-round career mode
Read full description

Fastest Lap is a top-down time-attack racer. One car, one circuit, one clean lap. No opponents, no contact, no luck — and nothing to blame. Pick it up in ten seconds. Then spend a month on one corner. NOBODY SAID IT SHOULD BE EASY Every circuit sets a target time, and it is not a generous one. A career round is cleared by a clean lap driven in that session, under that target. A personal best you set last week cannot clear it for you. Clean is not a judgment call. Put a wheel off the road and the lap is gone; it's decided the same way every time — the simulation is deterministic, so the same inputs produce the same lap on every device. That is also why a ghost and a leaderboard here are worth trusting. The career is ordered by how much a mistake costs, not by lap time. It opens on grass and run-off. It ends on walls three metres from the road. Restarting is one gesture and under half a second. You will use it more than the throttle. That is the design, not an apology. FLAT COLOUR, AND NOTHING ELSE There is not one texture in this game. No gradients, no glow, no lighting — every shape on screen is a flat coloured polygon, and the whole app ships three images, all of which are the icon. Everything else it builds itself: • Twenty-four circuits, each traced from real-world geometry and given a fictional name. Forest, island, desert flats, harbour walls, floodlit night streets. • The night circuits invert every tone, until the road and the lit barriers are the only bright things on screen and the layout draws itself in light — which is what a street circuit lit for racing looks like from above. • Curbs appear only where a corner earns one. Barriers, run-off and scenery are derived from the geometry rather than decorated onto it. • Nothing is painted on: anything the car can reach is solid or drivable, and water stops the car the way a treeline does. • Each circuit's portrait is its own racing line, teal flat-out through to red under heavy braking. It is computed from a driven lap rather than drawn, so two circuits with a similar outline look nothing alike. • The music is generated as it plays rather than recorded. Every circuit has its own tune; the menus are its breakdown, and the lights are its drop. WHAT ELSE IS IN IT • A twenty-one-round career on one car, in order, each circuit opening the next. Four of the rounds are run in the rain. • Rain changes the lap, not just the picture: less grip, a slower target, and a wet ghost of its own to chase. • Your best lap becomes a ghost on the road beside you. Beat it, and it becomes the next one to beat. • A timing screen you can read at speed — a split at every sector, a live delta to your own best, and the four colors a timing screen has used for decades. • Ten liveries, paint and nothing else. Every car drives identically; none is quicker than another, and none costs extra. • Two control layouts — a wheel, or a thumb zone in each corner — picked with the car in your hands during three short drills, and swappable mid-lap without losing your place. • Per-circuit leaderboards and achievements through Game Center, and a record kept on your device whether you sign in or not. ONE PAYMENT No subscription, no adverts, no energy timers, no waiting. The circuits added later cost nothing. Built for one thing: the next lap being quicker than the one you just drove.

Screenshots

Visual Pinball3 screens
Fastest Lap4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is in-app purchases: Visual Pinball at none against Fastest Lap's 1. Visual Pinball also leads on rating (4.3 vs 4.0) and ratings volume (74 vs 4). Fastest Lap's advantage is update cadence (every 5 days vs every 12 months) and review sentiment (100% vs 79%). 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

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Both are free to download. Fastest Lap sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. Visual Pinball asks for nothing beyond the download.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

Visual Pinball holds the better App Store score, 4.3 against 4.0. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Visual Pinball has 74 ratings behind it against 4, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews complicate that: 79% of Visual Pinball's written reviews are positive against 100% of Fastest Lap's, so the app with the better star average is not the one people write more warmly about.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Visual Pinball ships an update every 12 months, Fastest Lap every 5 days. The most recent releases landed on October 22, 2026 and October 15, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard6 real differences · 4 level
Visual Pinball versus Fastest Lap: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterVisual PinballFastest Lap
PriceFreeFree
Rating4.3 (74 ratings) — better4.0 (4 ratings)
Positive reviews78.6% of reviews100.0% of reviews — better
Number of ratings74 — better4
Update frequencyEvery 12 monthsEvery 5 days — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNo — betterYes
MonetizationFreeFree
DevicesiPhone, iPad — betteriPhone
Requires iOS26.617.0 — better
Further details — not scored
Size120 MB3 MB
Age rating9+4+
DeveloperJason MillardMaksym Bilan

Customer experience

Visual Pinball

All ratings73 ratings
Positive80.8%
Neutral6.8%
Negative12.3%
Written reviews56 reviews
Positive78.6%
Neutral12.5%
Negative8.9%

Fastest Lap

All ratings4 ratings
Positive75.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative25.0%
Written reviews3 reviews
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%

Bugs and requests

Visual Pinball

Reported bugs

2 issues
  • Tables don't load for some users
  • Certain complex/intensive tables error out or run at low FPS

Requested features

6 requests
  • List of most played tables
  • Ability to reposition DMD
  • Option to skip startup checks for some tables
  • Ability to edit table scripts on the app
  • Direct link to table depository
Show 1 more
  • iPad version with more screen space

Fastest Lap

Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.

In-app purchases

None

Visual Pinball

No in-app purchases

1 purchases

Fastest Lap

One-time1
  • Unlock Full Game$5.99

Questions

Is Visual Pinball free?
Visual Pinball is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is Fastest Lap free?
Fastest Lap is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Which has better reviews, Visual Pinball or Fastest Lap?
Visual Pinball is rated higher. Visual Pinball averages 4.3 out of 5 from 74 ratings, while Fastest Lap averages 4.0 from 4 ratings.
Do Visual Pinball or Fastest Lap have ads?
Neither Visual Pinball nor Fastest Lap shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Visual Pinball or Fastest Lap?
Visual Pinball ships an update every 12 months, and Fastest Lap every 5 days. Most recently, Visual Pinball was updated on October 22, 2026 and Fastest Lap on October 15, 2026.

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