Comparison

Spirale vs Agitate

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

Head to head
About

Spirale

Features
Read full description

Pair a black & white film and developer, pick a fixer and start developing. Spirale guides your sessions with clear timers, agitation cues, and reusable chemistry tracking. The data you need, organized around how development works — not around the database behind it. RECIPES. Your darkroom shelf. Spirale pairs each film and developer in one card, color-coded by packaging, so you spot them at a glance. Films, developers, fixers, all major brands are covered. • Reusable developers show batch usage and volume right on the card. • Long press on a recipe to rearrange or delete it. THE EDITOR. All the data, none of the noise. Fine-tune your development variables: target ISO, developer dilution, temperature compensation and agitation style for your chemistry. • See the roll count, mixing date and expiry date for reusable chemistry. • Tap the volume to see the dilution. • Pick from official Ilford, Kodak and Agfa agitation styles. • Add or remove optional steps. THE TIMER. Agitate with precision, leave nothing to chance. • Arcs around the clockface and dots on the progress bar mark each agitation cycle. • Sound, haptic, and text cues show what to do and when. • Tap the seconds hand or the dial to change the timer’s appearance. THE PROCESS. Make it yours. Your own times, recorded as you develop — tracked, averaged, and refined. The longer you use Spirale, the more it reflects how you work. The datasheet is where you start. Where you end up is yours.

About

Agitate

This app provides a reliable timer for home film development, supporting black and white, C-41, and E-6 processes. It features a unique clock that records step completion, not just countdowns, ensuring accuracy even after interruptions. Designed for darkroom use with safelight mode and intuitive controls.

Highlights
  • Accurate timekeeping that records step completion
  • Safelight mode with red screen and low brightness
  • Full screen button for easy operation in the dark
  • Tap-based agitation tracking with optional sound
  • Precise timing for drain and mid-run adjustments
  • Detailed agitation schemes and temperature conversions
  • Extensive database of published film development recipes
Features
Read full description

A timer for developing film at home. Black and white, C-41 and E-6 in one app, entirely on your device. THE CLOCK IS THE TRUTH Most timers count down, and a counter can stop — when a call comes in, when the system reclaims memory, when the app is force quit. Agitate stores the moment your step ends, not the seconds left in it. A call, a reboot, a phone that ran flat and came back: on return it works out where you are from the clock. There is nothing that can freeze, because there is nothing counting. BUILT FOR A DARK ROOM • Safelight mode: red on true black, screen driven to its lowest brightness, and the Live Activity uses the same palette so nothing lights up behind your back • The whole screen is the button, so you can start the next bath blind, in gloves, with wet hands • Every agitation is a tap in your hand. Sound if you want it, and it plays through the silent switch • Large tabular figures that do not jitter, readable across the room • A segment chain that always shows where you are in the process THE DETAILS OTHER TIMERS GET WRONG • The drain is called ten seconds before time, as the makers specify. A timer that simply rings at nine minutes gives you nine minutes and fifteen seconds of development, every time • Nudge the running step by fifteen seconds, or re-read the thermometer mid-run and let only the remainder be recalculated — without abandoning the run • Agitation as published: four inversions in the first ten seconds of each minute is one maker's scheme, five to seven inversions every thirty seconds is another's. They are not interchangeable. Stand and semi-stand are here too, marked as the community methods they are • Time and temperature converted for black and white between 14 and 27 °C, in Celsius or Fahrenheit. Refused for C-41 and E-6, where deviation is a colour shift that no extra time repairs • Minimum concentrate counted per film, not per tank. A 500 ml tank holds two 35 mm films, so a highly diluted developer can be half short while looking fine EVERY TIME FROM A DATASHEET Hundreds of published combinations, searchable, each row naming the manufacturer document it was transcribed from. No scraped database, no crowd-sourced numbers of unknown origin. If a combination cannot be sourced, it is not in here — write it as a recipe of your own instead, which is unlimited and free. WARNINGS BEFORE YOU POUR Expiry, exhaustion, minimum quantity, re-use surcharge and temperature tolerance are all in the free version. A warning behind a paywall would make the free version dangerous, so none of them are. AGITATE PRO Free develops your film. Pro remembers. • A development journal: every finished run with the film, the recipe, the temperature you actually measured, the push, and your own note. Searchable • A chemistry ledger: bottles with mixing date, fill level and film count, so the app knows when a developer is out of life or out of capacity • Export of all of it, recipes included, as CSV and JSON Pro is a one-time purchase. Not a subscription, nothing renews. PRIVACY No account, no sign-up and no server of our own. The free version loads advertising from Google over the network, and Agitate Pro removes it. Your recipes and your journal never leave your device. Agitate is independent and is not affiliated with, sponsored by or endorsed by any manufacturer of film, paper or chemistry. Product names are used only to identify which products a published time applies to. All trademarks are the property of their respective owners. TERMS AND PRIVACY Terms of Use (EULA): https://agitate-app.vercel.app/terms Apple's standard EULA also applies: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/ Privacy Policy: https://agitate-app.vercel.app/privacy

Screenshots

Spirale4 screens
Agitate4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is in-app purchases: Spirale at none against Agitate's 1. Spirale also leads on ads (none vs shown). Agitate's advantage is iOS requirement (17.0 vs 26.0). On price 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. Agitate sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. Spirale asks for nothing beyond the download.

Scorecard3 real differences · 7 level
Spirale versus Agitate: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterSpiraleAgitate
PriceFreeFree
Rating—5.0 (1 ratings) — better
Positive reviews—100.0% of reviews
Number of ratings—1 — better
Update frequency—Every 4 days
AdsNo — betterYes
In-app purchasesNo — betterYes
Monetization—Free with in-app purchases
DevicesiPhoneiPhone, iPad — better
Requires iOS26.017.0 — better
Further details — not scored
Size11 MB7 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperBogdan DumitracheLevin David Schwab

In-app purchases

None

Spirale

No in-app purchases

1 purchases

Agitate

One-time1
  • Agitate Pro$4.99

Questions

Is Spirale free?
Spirale is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is Agitate free?
Agitate is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Do Spirale or Agitate have ads?
Agitate shows ads; Spirale does not.

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