Patchwork vs StitchDuck
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Patchwork
Create detailed charts for various crafts like cross stitch, knitting, and crochet. Transform photos into stitchable patterns, generate designs with AI, and match real-world thread colors. Export your work and track progress stitch by stitch.
- Design on a live pixel grid
- Convert photos to patterns
- AI-generated design starting points
- Match real thread colors (DMC, Anchor, Madeira)
- Export charts, PDFs, and shopping lists
- Crafting mode for progress tracking
- Private and ad-free
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If it lives on a grid of color, you can make it in Patchwork. Cross stitch, knitting, crochet, needlepoint, and more. Built natively for iPhone, so it feels fast and at home on your device. Here is what you can do. Design on a live pixel grid. Place stitches one at a time or fill whole areas at once. Draw lines and shapes, copy and paste sections, work in layers, and step back through your history whenever you need to. Turn a photo into a pattern. Bring in any picture and Patchwork maps it to threads you can actually buy. No tracing, no guesswork. You get a chart you can start stitching instead of a screenshot you have to squint at. Generate with AI. Describe what you want and get a starting point in a tap, then refine it however you like. It is a head start, not a black box, and your work stays yours. Match real thread colors. The full DMC, Anchor, and Madeira libraries are built in, over 900 colors, so what you see on screen matches the floss in your hands. Export anything. Save your chart, your symbol key, or a print-ready PDF, plus a shopping list with stitch counts so you know exactly what to buy. Crafting Mode. Track your progress stitch by stitch. Patchwork remembers exactly where you left off. Make it yours with color themes that follow your style. Now the part that matters as much as the features. Your patterns are private. There is no account to make and no server of ours collecting your work. Everything stays on your device and syncs through your own iCloud, which only you can see. No advertising, no tracking, no analytics watching what you make. Patchwork is free to download so you can try it. When you are ready for everything, Patchwork Pro unlocks the full toolkit with one purchase. No subscription. iPad and Mac support are on the way, and your purchase and your patterns will come right along with you. If you stitch, knit, crochet, or design on a grid, Patchwork was made for you. Come make something. Questions or ideas? Write to support@withpatchwork.com. A real person reads every message. From pixels to stitches.
StitchDuck
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Turn a photo into a chart you can stitch in seconds. Or skip the photo and start from a blank grid, one stitch at a time. Fully offline, no account, no data collected. Designing is free; try exports free for 7 days, then subscribe yearly or buy once. PHOTO TO CHART • Any photo from your library becomes a chart in seconds • Crop and straighten first — built-in perspective correction fixes photos shot at an angle • Set stitch count and colour count (up to 100) with a live preview • Every colour lands on a real DMC or Anchor thread number, so you can shop straight from the list SPOT AND CLEAN UP CONFETTI Photo conversions leave stray stitches. The confetti map marks them in red, orange and yellow; paint the area to tidy, pick a level, and they're swapped for the surrounding colour in one go — fully undoable. EVERY STITCH TYPE Full, half, 3/4, 1/4, petite, backstitch, French knots and beads — fractional stitches and knots can all be drawn, undone and exported, not just full crosses. BIG FULL-COVERAGE CHARTS STAY SMOOTH Charts up to 1000×1000 stitches pan, zoom and draw without lag, with full undo and redo behind you. DESIGN IN LAYERS Up to 10 layers — tap a thumbnail to stitch on that one, and the others stay untouched. Rename, reorder, merge, hide. Any project can take a trace image underneath: move, rotate, scale and fade it as you like. A FULL EDITOR • Pencil, paint bucket, eraser, eyedropper, shapes, text, Declutter, Trace image • The paint bucket takes any stitch — fill or erase whole areas of fractional stitches too • Five brush and eraser sizes, so large areas go down in one pass • Backstitch can trace the outline of a colour block automatically, instead of segment by segment • Select any area to move, copy, mirror it — or rotate it to any angle and scale it proportionally • Resize the canvas whenever you like; you don't have to commit to a size up front COLOURS BY THREAD NUMBER • Built-in DMC and Anchor charts, plus your own custom colours • Blend up to 4 threads, with strand count set per colour • Stitch thickness follows the strand count — what you see is what you export • Every colour gets its own symbol, swap it whenever you like • Save favourite palettes as presets and reuse them THREE WAYS TO VIEW Flat blocks for the whole picture, realistic crosses for the look, black-and-white symbols to stitch from. IMPORT AND EXPORT • Open patterns you already have: OXS, Pattern Maker (.xsd), PCStitch (.pat) • Export a print-ready PDF: cover, symbol chart, floss list with how much thread to buy • PDF options: language, stitches per page, a 2-stitch overlap between pages, bold lines every 10 • Preview part of the PDF before you unlock • Also exports OXS, PNG and .sduck project files EIGHT INTERFACE LANGUAGES English, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Japanese, German, French, Spanish and Russian — follows your system language and can be switched in Settings. HOW FREE IS FREE Converting, designing and editing are free, with room for 3 saved patterns; Declutter's confetti map is free too. Exporting, saving more patterns and applying Declutter need an unlock. Two ways, exactly the same features: • Yearly subscription: first-time subscribers get a 7-day free trial, then it renews yearly; cancel anytime • Lifetime: pay once, unlocked for good, never renews Works across iPhone, iPad and Mac. If a subscription ends, only those features lock again — your saved patterns are never deleted and stay editable. Subscription terms: charged to your Apple Account (with a free trial, when the trial ends). Renews yearly unless auto-renew is turned off at least 24 hours before the period ends. Manage or cancel under Subscriptions in Settings. Terms of Use (EULA): https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/ Privacy Policy: https://stitchduckapp.com/privacy/
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is device support: StitchDuck at 3 against Patchwork's 1. StitchDuck also leads on iOS requirement (16.0 vs 26.0). On price, ads and in-app purchases 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
Both are free to download. Patchwork sells 1 one-off in-app purchase and StitchDuck sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.
| Parameter | Patchwork | StitchDuck |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 5.0 (2 ratings) — better | — |
| Number of ratings | 2 — better | — |
| Update frequency | — | Every 11 days |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | Yes |
| Monetization | Free with in-app purchases | — |
| Devices | iPhone | iPhone, iPad, Mac — better |
| Requires iOS | 26.0 | 16.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 80 MB | 52 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Troy Thomas | Guangzhou Maling Information Technology Co., Ltd. |
In-app purchases
Patchwork
- Patchwork Pro$29.99
StitchDuck
- Full Unlock$19.99





