Comparison

spool. vs Wormhole

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

Head to head
About

spool.

Create full songs on your phone with this pocket music studio. It offers a variety of sound engines, sampling capabilities, step sequencing, and a 4-track tape recorder for recording and mixing your music. Effects and MIDI controller support enhance the creative process.

Highlights
  • Multiple sound engines
  • Sampling and sequencing
  • 4-track tape recording
  • Extensive effects rack
  • MIDI controller support
  • Step sequencer
Features
Read full description

Make a whole song on your phone. Spool is a pocket music studio inspired by the joy of hardware grooveboxes — play, sample, sequence, and record to tape, all in one playful instrument. Fourteen sound engines. From punchy FM and fat subtractive Pulse to shimmering Cluster, plucked String, granular Cloud, the TALK vocoder, the WIDE stereo engine, THUMP bass, a Sampler, and two drum machines — each with its own animated, touchable visualizer and four hands-on controls. Sample anything. Record straight from the mic into the sampler or drum kits, trim it, and play it across the keyboard. Drums & beats. Build kits, chop a sample into a playable kit, and lock in grooves with the step sequencer. Playful sequencers. Pattern and arpeggiator to start; unlock Stream, Taps, and the bouncing-ball Gumball machine for happy accidents. Six minutes of 4-track tape. Record, overdub, varispeed (including reverse), scrub, and bounce your jam to a finished mixdown — export to WAV. Your tape is saved with your project. Effects & mixer. A deep rack — delay, spring reverb, drive, compressor, chorus, multimode filter, phaser, tremolo/auto-pan, beat-repeat stutter, and a pitch-shifter/harmonizer — many tempo-syncable. Plus a master EQ and brickwall limiter so it always sounds finished. Plays with your gear. Connect a USB or Bluetooth MIDI controller and play Spool like hardware. AUv3 plugin support is planned for a future update. Free to download and make music with a starter set of engines and sequencers. A single one-time Spool Pro purchase unlocks the full instrument — all engines, sampling, every effect and sequencer, unlimited projects, export, and MIDI. No subscription. Spool is an original, independent work by a solo developer — affiliated with no hardware maker.

About

Wormhole

Features
Read full description

Wormhole turns any sound you have into music you made. Drop in a clip — a video from your camera roll, a voice memo, a file, or something you hum into the mic. Wormhole listens to it, finds the tempo and the key on its own, and chops it into slices you can play. From there you are one tap away from a beat. FIVE INSTRUMENTS, ONE SCREEN Drums, 808, keys, your chopped clip, and a lead — all on one page. Tap a row to open its notes and draw them straight in. There is no edit mode to learn and no menu tree to climb. If you can tap, you can write a pattern. EVERY NOTE IS IN KEY Wormhole knows what key your project is in and keeps every instrument inside it. You can't place a wrong note. Change the key later and your melodies move with it — the app remembers the scale degree, not the absolute pitch. THE WORMHOLE Send any sound into the Wormhole and it comes back out in your key. Freeze a single grain into a pad. Smear a vocal into a choir. Stutter a snare into a fill that was never played. It is a scale-locked granular bus, and it is the reason the app is called what it is called. CHOP IT YOUR WAY Slice on transients, slice on the grid, or cut it by hand — tap the waveform to add a cut, drag a dot to move one. Pick a part of a long clip and chop only that. Every slice gets its own pitch, filter, and length. STUCK? PRESS FLIP One button writes a whole beat — drums, bass, chords, melody, all in your key, all editable. Press it until something grabs you, then make it yours. LOOPS BECOME A SONG Build up to four versions of every instrument, then place them on a timeline. Drag a block's edge to repeat it. That is the entire arrangement view. POST IT Export a 1080x1920 vertical video with a reactive visual, ready to go straight to your feed. Or take M4A for other apps and 24-bit WAV for your DAW. BUILT PROPERLY Real-time audio engine written from scratch. No login, no account, no cloud, no tracking — your projects live on your phone. Works fully offline. Something you already have is a beat. It just needs chopping. https://wormhole.aimoxyz.xyz/terms

Screenshots

spool.4 screens
Wormhole4 screens

Verdict

The call

spool. and Wormhole are too close to call on the numbers: across 5 compared parameters — price, ads, in-app purchases and device support among them — neither pulls far enough ahead to decide it. What separates them is feature set and interface, not measurable difference.

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. spool. sells 1 one-off in-app purchase and Wormhole sells 2 in-app purchases, starting at $6.99 per month. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.

ScorecardNo meaningful differences
spool. versus Wormhole: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
Parameterspool.Wormhole
PriceFreeFree
Rating5.0 (7 ratings) — better—
Positive reviews100.0% of reviews—
Number of ratings7 — better—
Update frequency—Every 6 days
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesYesYes
MonetizationFree with in-app purchases—
DevicesiPhone, iPadiPhone, iPad
Requires iOS17.017.0
Further details — not scored
Size2 MB22 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperKristopher YangMoritz Maximilian Fricke

In-app purchases

1 purchases

spool.

One-time1
  • Spool Pro$9.99
2 purchases

Wormhole

Subscriptions2
  • Wormhole Pro Monthly$6.991 Month
  • Wormhole Pro Yearly7 Days trial$44.991 Year

Questions

Is spool. free?
spool. is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is Wormhole free?
Wormhole is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Do spool. or Wormhole have ads?
Neither spool. nor Wormhole shows ads.

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