Comparison

World Timeline vs Parallel

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

Head to head
About

World Timeline

Explore world history visually with an interactive globe and a comprehensive timeline. Tap events to learn their significance and generate study prompts. Designed for homeschoolers and students, it offers a big-picture view of civilizations and historical moments.

Highlights
  • Interactive globe with shifting political maps
  • Scrollable timeline from Creation to present
  • Detailed event descriptions and significance
  • Study playground for AI prompt generation
  • Offline functionality
  • Year-by-year political map redraws
Features
Read full description

See all of history on one spinning globe. Move from Creation to today and watch empires rise and fall, then tap a place, person or event to read the story behind it. Made by a homeschool dad for families, students and anyone who wants the big picture of world history and Bible history in one place. 1,700+ events · 100+ people · works offline RECENTLY ADDED • Search: type an event, person or place and jump straight to it • Press play and watch history move at 1, 10 or 100 years a second • A new time dial: roll through the centuries with a flick, or jump to Creation, the Flood, Christ, 1776 and more • 100+ people with profiles of their own, from Abraham and Moses to Lincoln and Mandela • Every timeline event now has a full write-up • Stories of how nations around the world won their independence • Hundreds of map years corrected, with new maps for Babel, King David and Cyrus • Dark mode and screen dimming for evening lessons WHAT'S INSIDE Interactive Globe A view of the world before the Flood, then historical borders from the Flood to today. Watch borders shift as you move through time, or press play and let the centuries roll by. Tap a region to see who held it, with write-ups on the major empires, kingdoms and peoples. U.S. states show when they joined and how the land was acquired. Timeline More than 6,000 years on one scrollable canvas, from Creation to today, with major nations and empires side by side. See at a glance which powers were rising while others were falling, and pinch to zoom in on any era. Events and People More than 1,700 events: Biblical events, battles, the founding of nations, voyages, inventions and turning points. Search by name, filter by category, and tap any one to read the story. More than 100 people have profiles of their own: who they were, why they are famous, the impact they had and how they died. Study Playground Pick the people, places and events you are studying and get a ready-made study prompt for ChatGPT or Claude. One-tap presets cover Biblical events, the Story of Jesus, Ancient Rome, the Founding of America, the Reformation, both World Wars and more. Works offline The globe, the maps and all the history ship inside the app. No account, no login and no signal needed. BUILT FOR HOMESCHOOL World Timeline gives kids the big-picture view a textbook chapter cannot: how the stories, civilizations and events of the past line up on one map and one timeline. It works alongside whatever history curriculum you use. The chronology is anchored to the Septuagint, placing Creation at 5554 BC and the Flood at 3298 BC. History is presented in an atlas-style voice and, where it is relevant, from a Biblical perspective, so families can use the lens that fits their studies. The app keeps growing. New events, people and map corrections arrive regularly, most of them without a store update. FREE, WITH AN OPTIONAL UPGRADE World Timeline is free to download, and the timeline, events and study tools are never interrupted. After you have explored the globe for a while, a pop-up now and then offers a one-time purchase that removes it for good, or a short optional video to keep going free. There is no subscription. Everyone who bought the app before it went free keeps the full version automatically. A NOTE ON ACCURACY History is big and the record is imperfect. Borders start from a public research dataset that maps political control at snapshot years, corrected by hand in hundreds of places; between snapshots the app shows the most recent map. Outlines known to be rough are drawn dashed and marked approximate. Dates and details are simplified for clarity, and reasonable sources disagree. Use World Timeline as a learning companion and a starting point for deeper study. If you spot something wrong, the feedback form on the About tab reaches me directly, and I read every message. Made by BlessedHomeschoolDad.com

About

Parallel

Explore historical connections by viewing multiple timelines simultaneously. Discover who lived at the same time as historical figures and events. Create custom collections or use curated ones to delve into specific eras and topics.

Highlights
  • View multiple historical timelines
  • Discover contemporaries at a glance
  • Access concise biographies with Wikipedia links
  • Create custom history collections
  • Offline functionality
  • Private and no tracking
Features
Read full description

Who lived at the same time as Mozart, Van Gogh, or Napoleon? Parallel lays out several timelines at once, and the connections that usually stay hidden appear at a glance. It's your tool for assembling history around what interests you. Ten curated collections come built in, from earth history and the arts to sciences, rulers, empires, buildings, and the events that shaped history. They make it easy to start and give you a taste of what Parallel can do. The rest is yours to shape. For the curious, for the classroom, for everyone who loves history. WHAT YOU CAN DO • Swipe and zoom through the millennia, from antiquity to today. • Line up exactly the collections that fascinate you. • Highlight a person and see their contemporaries at a glance, while everything else fades into the background. • Open any entry for a clear, concise biography or summary, with a link to Wikipedia. • Bring dates and the Wikipedia link straight from Wikidata into your own entry. • Follow a single thread through time, filtered by topic, place, era, and more. • Create your own collections and fill them with what matters to you. • Zoom out from a single year all the way to 13.8 billion years. Every built-in entry is carefully researched, historically grounded, and fact-checked. Try it for free Ancient Rome is included as a ready-made sample collection, no Pro needed. In a few seconds you see how a collection comes together, and it stays with you afterwards. Buy once, no subscription. You buy Parallel just once. The Pro upgrade lifts every limit: unlimited collections and entries, creating and filling your own collections from a spreadsheet or from copied text, your own copies of the built-in collections, and exporting the whole timeline as a PDF. No hidden costs. If you want to go deeper into specific topics, optional premium collections are available. Private and offline Your entries stay on your iPhone. No account, no sign-up, no tracking. The app works offline. Only the Wikidata look-up needs an internet connection. History belongs to everyone, but your data belongs to you.

Screenshots

World Timeline4 screens
Parallel4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is review sentiment: Parallel at 100% against World Timeline's 50%. Parallel also leads on rating (4.0 vs 3.4) and ads (none vs shown). World Timeline's advantage is in-app purchases (none vs 4) and ratings volume (5 vs 1). On price, update cadence and monetization model 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. Parallel sells 4 one-off in-app purchases. World Timeline asks for nothing beyond the download.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

Parallel holds the better App Store score, 4.0 against 3.4. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: World Timeline has 5 ratings behind it against 1, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews point the same way: 50% of World Timeline's written reviews are positive against 100% of Parallel's.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

World Timeline ships an update every 2 weeks, Parallel every 3 weeks. The most recent releases landed on October 15, 2026 and October 12, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard7 real differences · 3 level
World Timeline versus Parallel: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterWorld TimelineParallel
PriceFreeFree
Rating3.4 (5 ratings)4.0 (1 ratings) — better
Positive reviews50.0% of reviews100.0% of reviews — better
Number of ratings5 — better1
Update frequencyEvery 2 weeks — betterEvery 3 weeks
AdsYesNo — better
In-app purchasesNo — betterYes
MonetizationFree with in-app purchasesFree with in-app purchases
DevicesiPhone, iPad, iPod — betteriPhone
Requires iOS15.1 — better18.0
Further details — not scored
Size475 MB5 MB
Age rating+44+
DeveloperMatthew WasheAnatol Knotek

Customer experience

World Timeline

All ratings5 ratings
Positive60.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative40.0%
Written reviews4 reviews
Positive50.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative50.0%

Parallel

All ratings1 ratings
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%
Written reviews1 reviews
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%

In-app purchases

None

World Timeline

No in-app purchases

4 purchases

Parallel

One-time4
  • Painters & Sculptors XL$1.99
  • Buildings XL$1.99
  • Science & Technology XL$1.99
Show 1 more
  • Parallel Pro$3.99

Questions

Is World Timeline free?
World Timeline is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is Parallel free?
Parallel is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Which has better reviews, World Timeline or Parallel?
Parallel is rated higher. World Timeline averages 3.4 out of 5 from 5 ratings, while Parallel averages 4.0 from 1 ratings.
Do World Timeline or Parallel have ads?
World Timeline shows ads; Parallel does not.
Which is updated more often, World Timeline or Parallel?
World Timeline ships an update every 2 weeks, and Parallel every 3 weeks. Most recently, World Timeline was updated on October 15, 2026 and Parallel on October 12, 2026.

Other comparisons