Comparison

ProbePad vs Apperture

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

Head to head
About

ProbePad

Features
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ProbePad is the API client Postman never built for iPhone and iPad — native, private, and fast enough to ship a production fix from the couch. New in v1.6: ProbePad watches your endpoints while you sleep — background health checks with failure alerts, status widgets on your Home and Lock Screen, Spotlight search, and one-tap cancellation. ENDPOINT MONITORING (PRO) • Mark any saved request as watched and ProbePad runs it in the background • A notification when a watched endpoint starts failing, with the request name and the status it returned • A cooldown per endpoint, so a flapping service does not alert you over and over • iOS decides when background work is granted. ProbePad tells you when the last check happened, never when the next one will • If Background App Refresh is off, the app says so plainly WIDGETS — HOME SCREEN AND LOCK SCREEN • Last Request — your most recent run, with its status and when it ran • Request Status — a saved request's last status and response time. Also a Lock Screen circular widget • Endpoint Monitor (PRO) — a watched endpoint's last result, and when it was checked • A widget sees a summary only: request name, host, status, timing. Never a header, a body or a token SPOTLIGHT, SIRI AND SHORTCUTS • Request names and hosts are searchable from the Home Screen — tap a result to open it • Indexing is a switch in Settings, and secrets and environment values are never indexed • "Run Saved Request" and "Send HTTP Request" App Intents for Siri, the Shortcuts app and Focus automations • The Shortcuts result carries the request, the status and the timing CANCEL A RUNNING REQUEST • One tap stops an in-flight request and tears the connection down • The cancelled attempt is written to history, not lost ON CALL, INSIDE THE RESPONSE • Find in the response body, with a live match count and wrapping next/previous — even on truncated bodies • Copy a single header value without selecting text • Replay a returned Set-Cookie as a request header, in one tap • History rows are tagged with the environment they ran against, and a cross-environment diff warns you first BUILD & EXECUTE • GET, POST, PUT, PATCH, DELETE with full header, query and body control • Multipart/form-data with file upload • JSON, raw and form-encoded bodies • Per-request timeout (1–300 s) ORGANIZE • Collections — group related requests, colour-coded (free) • Environments and variables — switch between dev, staging and production (PRO) • Secrets Vault — API keys in the iOS Keychain, Face ID or Touch ID (PRO) INSPECT • Syntax-highlighted JSON tree • Response history with side-by-side diff (free) • Status, headers, timing and byte count AUTHENTICATION • Bearer token, Basic, API key (header or query) • OAuth 2.0 authorization code with PKCE, and client credentials (PRO) • Automatic token refresh, Keychain storage • Provider presets: Google, GitHub, Azure AD, Auth0 • JWT inspection GRAPHQL & WEBSOCKET (PRO) • GraphQL editor with schema introspection, variables and named operations • ws:// and wss:// sessions with text and binary frames, a full transcript and auto-reconnect IMPORT • cURL — paste a command and get a request. Free, and staying free • Postman v2.1 collections, OpenAPI 3.0 and Swagger 2.0 (PRO) PROBEPAD PRO Lifetime is a one-time purchase (US$19.99). Yearly is US$9.99 per year after a seven-day free trial and renews automatically until you cancel it in your Apple Account settings. Prices for your region are shown in the app. Bought ProbePad before v1.6? You keep PRO forever, at no charge, including everything in this release — nothing to buy, nothing to do. PRIVACY-FIRST • All your data stays on your device • No analytics, no third-party SDKs, no advertising identifier, no telemetry • PrivacyInfo.xcprivacy declares everything the app touches • Secrets live in the iOS Keychain, never in plain text Terms of Use (EULA): https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/

About

Apperture

Features
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Apperture lets you see and control one Mac app right from your iPhone — not your whole desktop. Apperture mirrors just the app that matters, full-screen on your phone, so it feels like the app is running in your hand. Traditional screen sharing puts a 27-inch desktop on a 6-inch screen and makes you pan, zoom, and hunt for windows. Apperture takes the opposite approach: pick a single running Mac app and it fills your iPhone with a sharp, low-latency live view sized for the screen you're actually holding. BUILT FOR DEVELOPERS • Mirror the iOS Simulator and it feels native: touches map directly, and rotating your phone rotates the simulated app. • Keep working while your Mac builds and runs. Perfect for agent-assisted coding — let Claude Code or your favorite agent build and launch the app on your Mac, then review and interact with the result from anywhere in the house. • Stream any Xcode-launched Mac app with its real window chrome intact. FULL CONTROL, NOT JUST A VIEW • Tap, drag, long-press for right-click, two-finger scroll — touch input translated naturally to the Mac. • Type with the iPhone keyboard, including full Unicode text entry. • Browse and run the Mac app's real menu bar commands from a searchable, touch-friendly palette. • Send clipboard text securely between devices. • Fit-width, fit-height, and readable-zoom layout modes in portrait and landscape. PRIVATE BY DESIGN • No accounts. No cloud relay. Your screen never touches our servers. • Pairing starts with a short-lived QR code on your Mac, and the Mac owner must explicitly approve every phone. • Connections work only over private networks — your Wi-Fi or your own VPN such as Tailscale. Public endpoints are rejected by design. • Every session is encrypted. Pairing trust is stored in the device Keychain and never synced to the cloud. • Review or revoke paired devices anytime. The Mac keeps a local 30-day session history — device, time, and app names only, never keystrokes or screen contents. GOOD TO KNOW • Apperture requires the free companion Mac app from runapperture.com. It's notarized by Apple and distributed directly because it uses Screen Recording and Accessibility permissions the Mac App Store doesn't allow. • Away from home, you'll need a VPN to reach your Mac — Tailscale takes about five minutes to set up, works beautifully, and is free for personal use. • Your Mac does all the work, so it needs to be on, awake, and logged in. Apperture is a viewer and controller for your own Mac, not a way to run Mac apps on iPhone. • Apperture streams one selected window at a time — that focus is the point. Terms of Use: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/

Screenshots

ProbePad4 screens
Apperture4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is update cadence: ProbePad at weekly against Apperture's every 3 weeks. On price, ads, in-app purchases and device support there is nothing between them.

Scored on Price Ā· Rating Ā· Positive reviews Ā· Number of ratings Ā· Update frequency Ā· Ads Ā· In-app purchases Ā· Monetization Ā· Best chart rank Ā· Devices Ā· Requires iOS

CostPrice Ā· In-app purchases Ā· Ads Ā· Monetization

Both are free to download. ProbePad sells 4 in-app purchases, starting at $9.99 per year and Apperture sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

ProbePad ships an update weekly, Apperture every 3 weeks. The most recent releases landed on October 8, 2026 and October 10, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard1 real difference Ā· 5 level
ProbePad versus Apperture: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterProbePadApperture
PriceFreeFree
Update frequencyWeekly — betterEvery 3 weeks
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesYesYes
DevicesiPhone, iPadiPhone, iPad
Requires iOS17.0 — better18.0
Further details — not scored
Size8 MB11 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperOlof PettersonLAND MK 1

In-app purchases

4 purchases

ProbePad

Subscriptions1
  • ProbePad PRO Yearly7 Days trial$9.991 Year
One-time3
  • ProbePad PRO$5.99
  • ProbePad PRO Lifetime (Launch)$9.99
  • ProbePad PRO Lifetime$19.99
1 purchases

Apperture

One-time1
  • Early Adopter$24.99

Questions

Is ProbePad free?
ProbePad is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is Apperture free?
Apperture is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Do ProbePad or Apperture have ads?
Neither ProbePad nor Apperture shows ads.
Which is updated more often, ProbePad or Apperture?
ProbePad ships an update weekly, and Apperture every 3 weeks. Most recently, ProbePad was updated on October 8, 2026 and Apperture on October 10, 2026.

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