Gradiance vs Fineliner
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Gradiance
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Gradiance empowers you to design elegant gradient backgrounds that can be utilized as wallpapers for your macOS, iOS, and iPadOS devices. The entire screen becomes your canvas. The app has been meticulously crafted to provide an intuitive user-friendly interface. Its design prioritizes simplicity and compactness, ensuring minimal interference. You can effortlessly conceal the controls with a simple click or tap and adjust the position on the screen. Creating a gradient is as easy as 1-2-3! Begin by setting the desired number of control points across the width and height of your screen. Gradiance automatically generates evenly spaced points and randomly assigns colors to each one. Then, you can experiment and have fun selecting each control point you wish to modify, alter its color and opacity, and adjust its horizontal and vertical position to achieve visually appealing gradient effects. Finally, you can now import and export your gradient settings. When you have a design you are happy with you can save it to a png file (on macOS) or export it to Photos to assign as your wallpaper. The image is automatically optimized for the size and resolution of your screen.
Fineliner
Create hand-drawn notes, doodles, and drawings with a powerful yet playful notebook app. Customize the interface with your own handwriting and enjoy vector graphics, layers, and real-time collaboration. Unlock additional colors, pens, and templates with one-time purchases.
- Vector drawing for sharp scaling
- Customizable interface with handwriting
- Layers and automatic shape recognition
- Handwriting search
- Real-time collaboration
- Notebook locking with Face/Touch ID
- Multiple export formats
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A simple, fun, yet powerful notebook for writing, note-taking, doodling, and drawing, optimized for Apple Pencil. No ads, subscriptions, accounts, or logins! Draw the app’s interface yourself, and optionally even make your own handwriting font, so most of what you see is your own writing. Discover powerful features behind the playful UI: - All-vector drawing so you can zoom in, scale, and rotate everything and it stays perfectly sharp - Dark mode (really!), including your notes - Draw with layers and automatic shape recognition - Create your own headers and links for navigation - Search your handwriting and image descriptions - Share notebooks to collaborate with others in real time - Lock notebooks so they require Face ID or Touch ID to open - Export as SVG, PDF, or images… and even export your custom font as a TTF The business model is simple: - Unlimited notebooks and pages - Fast, free, private sync and collaboration with iCloud - You can buy more colors, pen widths, and templates if you'd like, as one-time, family-shared purchases that you keep forever That's it!
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is price: Fineliner at Free against Gradiance's $1.99. Fineliner also leads on update cadence (every 4 days vs every 4 months) and chart position (#71 vs unranked). Gradiance's advantage is in-app purchases (none vs 4) and iOS requirement (18.0 vs 26.0). On ads 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
Fineliner is free to download; Gradiance costs $1.99 up front. Fineliner sells 4 one-off in-app purchases. Gradiance asks for nothing beyond the download.
Gradiance ships an update every 4 months, Fineliner every 4 days. The most recent releases landed on November 8, 2026 and November 11, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Gradiance | Fineliner |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $1.99 | Free — better |
| Rating | — | 4.8 (222 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | — | 91.2% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | — | 222 — better |
| Update frequency | Every 4 months | Every 4 days — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No — better | Yes |
| Monetization | — | Free with in-app purchases |
| Best chart rank | — | #71 — better |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, Mac — better | iPhone, iPad |
| Requires iOS | 18.0 — better | 26.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 10 MB | 14 MB |
| Age rating | +4 | 4+ |
| Developer | YENCO.COM | Overcast Radio, LLC |
In-app purchases
Gradiance
No in-app purchases
Fineliner
- Bolds$4.99
- Tones$4.99
- Widgets$4.99
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- Deluxe Pack$12.99





