Space Particles vs Black Hole Sandbox
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Space Particles
Explore motion, gravity, and light in this touch-driven visual sandbox. Shape particle fields with various tools and presets, or customize your own simulations. Ideal for creative experimentation and generative art.
- Touch-driven particle manipulation
- Gravity wells and repulsion tools
- Preset visual themes
- Customizable particle properties
- Screenshot capture
- Shareable scene links
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Space Particles is a touch-driven visual sandbox for exploring motion, gravity, and light. Start with a live field of glowing particles, then shape it with gravity wells, repulsion, pulses, stir tools, vortices, and erase or freeze interactions. Switch between presets like spiral galaxies, binary systems, collisions, rings, streams, lattices, and nova-style bursts, or tune the simulation yourself. Particle Mode focuses on gravity-driven motion and emergent patterns. Firework Mode turns the same canvas into a configurable spark launcher with adjustable spread, trail length, gravity, drag, color, size, and lifetime. Built for quick experimentation: - Touch and drag directly on the canvas - Choose particle counts, speed, bounds, trails, colors, and visual themes - Toggle between performance and quality settings - Capture screenshots of scenes you create - Share scene links from the web version Space Particles is for anyone who likes visualizers, creative coding, particle systems, physics toys, generative art, or just watching a screen fill with organized chaos.
Black Hole Sandbox
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A realistic black hole, in the palm of your hand. Black Hole Sandbox gives you a scientifically accurate black hole, ray-traced live on your iPhone. It traces light through curved spacetime using the equations of general relativity: light that comes too close falls into the shadow, and light that passes nearby bends around it. The galaxy behind stretches into arcs, the far side of the disc lifts above and below the shadow, and a thin ring of photons wraps its edge. Orbit it, zoom in, and watch the light bend as you move around it in real time. TWO WAYS TO SEE IT • In-app 3D: set it against a whole galaxy or a field of stars, and watch the lensing bend everything behind it as you orbit around it. • In augmented reality: the star of the show! Put it in your living room, sit it on a table, and walk around it as it warps your room behind it. DESIGN YOUR OWN Go beyond realism and let's see your creativity! Free, to get you started: • Shape and disc: start grounded. Set the size of the shadow, how bright the photon ring burns and how far its glow reaches, and the gap, width and tilt of the accretion disc. • Presets: twelve come built in, and you can save as many of your own as you like. Unlock the full designer with a single one-time purchase. No subscription. • Color and light: dial it up a notch. Choose from 37 palettes of single and dual color combos, or pick your own inner and outer colors, and set how brightly the disc glows. • Texture: wrap the disc in 14 dynamic textures, from smooth swirls and drifting wisps to bands, clumps and cells. Set their strength and detail, spin the disc faster or slower, and add wind to curl the swirls tighter toward the center. • Facets: break the disc into 14 geometric patterns, like triangles, diamonds, scales, spirals and gems, then set the size of the cells and how fast they turn to create a shimmer. • Emojis: feed it your favorite emojis and watch a swarm of them orbit the shadow, glowing as they go. Change their size, density, and how they tumble. • Photos: make one of your own photos the accretion disc and watch it spin around the abyss. Bought Black Hole Sandbox before it was free? The full designer is already yours. Build either a realistic black hole or one that could never exist, then set it on your coffee table.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is in-app purchases: Black Hole Sandbox at none against Space Particles's 1. Space Particles's advantage is device support (3 vs 1) and iOS requirement (15.0 vs 17.0). On price, update cadence and ads 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. Space Particles sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. Black Hole Sandbox asks for nothing beyond the download.
Space Particles ships an update every 8 days, Black Hole Sandbox fortnightly. The most recent releases landed on October 25, 2026 and October 24, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Space Particles | Black Hole Sandbox |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 5.0 (3 ratings) — better | — |
| Number of ratings | 3 — better | — |
| Update frequency | Every 8 days — better | Fortnightly |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | No — better |
| Monetization | Free | — |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better | iPhone |
| Requires iOS | 15.0 — better | 17.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 7 MB | 7 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | +4 |
| Developer | Brandon Schabel | Tim Corin |
In-app purchases
Space Particles
- Space Particles Pro$2.99
Black Hole Sandbox
No in-app purchases
Questions
Is Space Particles free?
Is Black Hole Sandbox free?
Do Space Particles or Black Hole Sandbox have ads?
Which is updated more often, Space Particles or Black Hole Sandbox?
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