Comparison

SwarmFlow vs Sacred Drift

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

Head to head
About

SwarmFlow

Features
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SwarmFlow is a meditative fish swarm simulation, born from a moment at the beach in Mauritius. Watch the swarm move, touch the water, and experience the quiet fascination of collective life. Free Features: - Interactive fish swarm with realistic flocking behavior - Tap the screen and watch the flight reaction - Drag the food source to guide the swarm - Adjust swarm size and behavior Premium Features (one-time purchase): - Up to 150 fish for impressive swarms - 5 color themes: Deep Sea, Night, Coral, Ocean, and Beach - Current simulation: Tilt your iPhone and watch fish swim with or against the flow - AI-generated meditative soundscapes - Screensaver mode as a digital aquarium - Speed control to find your perfect pace - Subtle food sources with soft shadows for an even more harmonious experience No competition. No scores. Just the simple beauty of a swarm responding to your touch.

About

Sacred Drift

Experience a dynamic, living field of bioluminescent particles that you can interact with. Save and share unique generative art scenes with others. This app offers a pocket-sized generative art studio with extensive customization options.

Highlights
  • Interactive particle field manipulation
  • Generative art creation
  • Customizable motion modes and confinement shapes
  • 22 curated color palettes
  • Shareable scene 'recipes'
  • Offline local processing
Features
Read full description

Sacred Drift is a living field of light you keep in your pocket. Open the app and a slow-breathing cloud of bioluminescent particles fills your screen. Drag to orbit, pinch to zoom in. Tap the dice for a fresh field — every roll is a unique scene, never the same twice. Tap the heart when you find one you love and it's saved as a "recipe": a tiny shareable file that reproduces the exact look on any device, including any web browser. Built on a custom physics engine running 60 frames a second, Sacred Drift is an entire generative art studio that fits in a button row: • 5 motion modes — drift, plus four classic strange attractors (Lorenz, Aizawa, Thomas, Halvorsen) • 4 confinement shapes — particles can swirl through a torus, an N-sided polygon tube, a logarithmic galaxy spiral, or a star tetrahedron (merkaba) • 22 hand-curated palettes from infrared to aurora to chlorophyll • 19 starting presets — Astrophage, Plasma Storm, Aurora Drift, Deep Cosmos, Embers, Stardust, Lorenz Wing, Spiral Galaxy, Merkaba Star and more — or roll the dice • 5 spawn distributions: uniform, central focus, hollow shell, diagonal, twin clusters • Soft-edged additive blending with HDR bloom + vignette • Trail persistence for long-exposure ribbons of light • Optional repulsor for negative-space compositions • Camera auto-orbit • Snapshot the current frame to your photo library — with or without a transparent background • Recipe import / export — share scenes with anyone Privacy: Sacred Drift makes zero network calls. There is no account, no analytics, no advertising, no data collected. Everything happens locally on your phone. Sister app: Sacred Spin (mandalas you spin and tune) is also available.

Screenshots

SwarmFlow4 screens
Sacred Drift4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is price: SwarmFlow at Free against Sacred Drift's $1.99. SwarmFlow also leads on iOS requirement (15.0 vs 17.0). Sacred Drift's advantage is in-app purchases (none vs 1). On update cadence, 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

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

SwarmFlow is free to download; Sacred Drift costs $1.99 up front. SwarmFlow sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. Sacred Drift asks for nothing beyond the download.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

SwarmFlow ships an update weekly, Sacred Drift every 2 weeks. The most recent releases landed on October 3, 2026 and October 4, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard3 real differences · 7 level
SwarmFlow versus Sacred Drift: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterSwarmFlowSacred Drift
PriceFree — better$1.99
Rating—5.0 (2 ratings) — better
Positive reviews—100.0% of reviews
Number of ratings—2 — better
Update frequencyWeekly — betterEvery 2 weeks
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesYesNo — better
Monetization—Paid
DevicesiPhone, iPad, iPod — betteriPhone, iPad
Requires iOS15.0 — better17.0
Further details — not scored
Size8 MB4 MB
Age rating9+4+
DeveloperOliver LievenBradley Tompkins

In-app purchases

1 purchases

SwarmFlow

One-time1
  • SwarmFlow Premium$1.99
None

Sacred Drift

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is SwarmFlow free?
SwarmFlow is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is Sacred Drift free?
Sacred Drift costs $1.99, with no in-app purchases.
Do SwarmFlow or Sacred Drift have ads?
Neither SwarmFlow nor Sacred Drift shows ads.
Which is updated more often, SwarmFlow or Sacred Drift?
SwarmFlow ships an update weekly, and Sacred Drift every 2 weeks. Most recently, SwarmFlow was updated on October 3, 2026 and Sacred Drift on October 4, 2026.

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