Comparison

Nimbus Synth vs Granula

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

Head to head
About

Nimbus Synth

Features
Read full description

Nimbus Synth is an ambient instrument you play by moving. No keys, no piano roll, no menus to learn. Tilt your phone, drag a finger across the screen, and slow, evolving drones grow out of the motion. Every gesture shapes the sound in real time. SIX VOICES Layer up to six ambient timbres: Sub Drone, Warm Pad, Glass, Air, Metallic, Cello Dark, each with its own character, sculpted through tilt and touch. ALWAYS IN KEY Seven scale modes and note-exclusion keep whatever you play in tune with itself. No wrong notes. LOOP AND LAYER Record a phrase, loop it, and keep playing on top. Quantize to tempo, add a metronome with time signatures and subdivisions, and build a piece one layer at a time. SAVE YOUR IDEAS Keep a library of recordings and slot presets to return to later. NIMBUS SYNTH PRO A one-time unlock, no subscription: • Unlimited saved ideas and presets • Export recordings as WAV and MIDI (free tier exports MP3) • MIDI Out: send what you play live to a DAW or hardware synth over Network MIDI Made for headphones, a quiet room, and a phone in your hand.

About

Granula

Features
Read full description

Granula is a granular synthesizer for the phone. It takes a sound from demo samples (like guitar, calimba, tongue drum, etc.) or thirty seconds you record on the spot and scatters it into hundreds of tiny overlapping grains. A slow, shifting texture comes back to your space: ambient pads, drones, atmospheres that keep evolving as long as you keep listening. Everything is played with your hands. The whole screen is a morph pad: move a finger across it and the sound moves with you, while a field of glyphs lights up under your touch and churns in time with what you hear. FOUR CHARACTERS • Reverse: short grains, played mostly backwards, with octave and fifth sparkles on top • Gater: a denser cloud chopped on a grid, from halves down to sixteenths • Chorus: long, slow, detuned grains with the read position drifting like a tide • Scatter: harmonic intervals thrown at random and sprayed wide FOUR KNOBS • Grain size, from 15 ms clicks to 1 second • Position: where in the sample the grains are lifted from • Density: from sparse drips to a solid wash • Dry/Wet: a six-second convolution reverb, plus the amount of reversed grains RECORD THE WORLD AROUND Hold the record button and capture up to thirty seconds of anything: your voice, a room, rain on a window, a string you plucked once. The take is granulated immediately and kept in your library under a name of its own. You can also import your own MP3 or WAV files. MADE FOR A PHONE • Keeps playing with the screen locked and in the background • Survives calls, headphone unplugs and output switches without losing your session • Any class-compliant USB or Bluetooth MIDI keyboard plays it - plug in and go, nothing to pair inside the app GRANULA PRO Every built-in sound is free and stays free. A free account also brings in one sound of your own - recorded or imported. Granula Pro lifts that limit: record and import as much as you like, and everything syncs to your account so a new phone picks up where the last one left off. No ads. Terms of Use: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/

Screenshots

Nimbus Synth4 screens
Granula4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is iOS requirement: Nimbus Synth at 15.1 against Granula's 17.0. On price, update cadence, ads and in-app purchases there is nothing between them.

Scored on Price Ā· Rating Ā· Positive reviews Ā· Number of ratings Ā· Update frequency Ā· Ads Ā· In-app purchases Ā· Monetization Ā· Best chart rank Ā· Devices Ā· Requires iOS

CostPrice Ā· In-app purchases Ā· Ads Ā· Monetization

Both are free to download. Nimbus Synth sells 1 one-off in-app purchase and Granula sells 1 in-app purchase, starting at $2.99 per month. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Nimbus Synth ships an update weekly, Granula every 5 days. The most recent releases landed on October 29, 2026 and November 6, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard1 real difference Ā· 5 level
Nimbus Synth versus Granula: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterNimbus SynthGranula
PriceFreeFree
Update frequencyWeeklyEvery 5 days — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesYesYes
DevicesiPhone, iPod — betteriPhone
Requires iOS15.1 — better17.0
Further details — not scored
Size38 MB10 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperOndre Studios, LDASergey Duzhev

In-app purchases

1 purchases

Nimbus Synth

One-time1
  • Nimbus Synth Pro$6.99
1 purchases

Granula

Subscriptions1
  • Granula Pro$2.991 Month

Questions

Is Nimbus Synth free?
Nimbus Synth is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is Granula free?
Granula is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Do Nimbus Synth or Granula have ads?
Neither Nimbus Synth nor Granula shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Nimbus Synth or Granula?
Nimbus Synth ships an update weekly, and Granula every 5 days. Most recently, Nimbus Synth was updated on October 29, 2026 and Granula on November 6, 2026.

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