Comparison

Chroma8 vs PIXIO Pixel Studio

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

Head to head
About

Chroma8

Features
Read full description

Chroma8 is a focused pixel-art studio for iPhone and iPad — draw, colour, layer and animate at true pixel resolution, then export your work anywhere. No account required to start creating. NEW: COLOUR & PALETTES • A palette bar under the canvas with 11 classic palettes: PICO-8, Game Boy, NES, Commodore 64, CGA, DawnBringer, Sweetie 16, Endesga 32, AAP-64, Resurrect 64 • Make your own: generate palettes from a colour harmony, a gradient, a photo or your art, with hue-shifted shading ramps • Import and export .hex, .gpl, .pal, .txt, .ase, .act and PNG palettes for Aseprite, Photoshop and game engines • Replace any colour across a layer, a frame or the whole animation, or remap art to a palette with dithering • Colour groups recolour a whole shade family at once, keeping shading intact • Colour versions: switch a sprite between looks — a night version, a red team — without changing a pixel, and export a sprite-sheet row per version • Add a palette card with hex codes to your exports AI ASSIST Describe what you want and Chroma8 draws it onto your canvas, where you can edit every pixel. Free for everyone. • Text to sprite — "a small green slime with a highlight" becomes pixel art, not a photo • Photo to pixel art on a reduced palette • Auto-shade, auto-outline and a clean-up pass for stray pixels • Turn one sprite into a walk, run, idle, attack, hit, death, explode or spin cycle • Tween between two keyframes, or retarget a video of yourself onto your sprite • Split a sprite sheet into frames automatically • Every generation kept in a history you can revisit or branch into a new Art It all runs on your device, with no network, no account and no API key. Already pay for an AI service? Optionally connect any OpenAI-compatible endpoint or Anthropic — OpenRouter, OpenAI, Groq or your own Ollama. Your key stays in the Keychain on that device. DRAW WITH PRECISION • Grid-accurate canvas with brush, eraser, fill and selection tools • Round or square brush tips, 1 to 6 pixels across • Recolour Only — paint only where there is already colour • Eyedropper, recent colours and any colour from the system picker • Select, move and turn a block of pixels • Reference photos with quarter-turn rotation • Undo and redo across the whole frame LAYERS & FRAMES • Unlimited layers with visibility, lock and opacity • Frame-by-frame animation with onion skinning • Adjustable playback speed ORGANIZE YOUR WORK • Group related Arts into Projects • Search your library by name, or by what a piece looks like • Everything saved on your device — works fully offline EXPORT ANYWHERE • PNG, animated GIF, MP4 video and scalable SVG • Game-ready sprite sheets with a JSON sidecar CHROMA8 PRO Chroma8 is free to use, supported by ads. Chroma8 Pro removes ads and unlocks Cloud Sync (sign in with email, Google or Apple to back up and access your library across devices), offered as an auto-renewing subscription: • Monthly: $3.99/month after a 7-day free trial • Yearly: $24.99/year after a 7-day free trial Payment is charged to your Apple ID account at confirmation of purchase. Subscriptions automatically renew unless canceled at least 24 hours before the end of the current period. Manage or cancel anytime in your Apple ID account settings. Any unused portion of a free trial is forfeited when you purchase a subscription. A complete guide is built in, covering every feature. Terms of Use: https://colondev.com/apps/chroma8/Terms.html Privacy Policy: https://colondev.com/apps/chroma8/Privacy.html Chroma8 — pixel art, the way it's meant to be made.

About

PIXIO Pixel Studio

Features
Read full description

PIXIO is a small, focused pixel-art studio for iPhone and iPad. Pick a canvas, pick a colour and start painting; when the picture is done, bring it to life as a looping animation. DRAW • 8Ɨ8, 16Ɨ16, 32Ɨ32 and 64Ɨ64 canvases. Switching size is lossless: the picture is always kept at 64Ɨ64, and a coarser size simply paints whole blocks. • Pencil, eraser, flood fill and colour picker. • Horizontal, vertical or both-ways symmetry, plus flip and rotate. • Layers on every frame: add, reorder, hide and delete them, with 50 steps of undo and redo per layer. • A quick palette of the colours already in your picture, a 132-colour grid, a saturation/brightness panel and a hue slider. ANIMATE • A frame timeline with duplicate and delete. • Onion skin with adjustable opacity, so the previous frame shows through while you draw the next one. • Playback from 1 to 60 frames per second. GESTURES • One finger paints. Two fingers pan, and pinch to zoom around your fingers. • Two-finger tap to undo, three-finger tap to redo. • Tap the zoom percentage to snap back to 100 %. EXPORT • Save the current frame as a crisp 2048Ɨ2048 PNG to Photos. • Export the whole animation as a looping 512Ɨ512 GIF and share it anywhere. Optional chiptune background music, silent until you choose a song. No accounts, no ads, no in-app purchases and no tracking: your artwork stays on your device.

Screenshots

Chroma84 screens
PIXIO Pixel Studio2 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is in-app purchases: PIXIO Pixel Studio at none against Chroma8's 2. PIXIO Pixel Studio also leads on ads (none vs shown). On price, device support and iOS requirement 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. Chroma8 sells 2 in-app purchases, starting at $3.99 per month. PIXIO Pixel Studio asks for nothing beyond the download.

Scorecard2 real differences Ā· 4 level
Chroma8 versus PIXIO Pixel Studio: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterChroma8PIXIO Pixel Studio
PriceFreeFree
Update frequencyEvery 10 days—
AdsYesNo — better
In-app purchasesYesNo — better
DevicesiPhone, iPadiPhone, iPad
Requires iOS16.0 — better16.4
Further details — not scored
Size22 MB56 MB
Age rating4+4+
Developerseer99 PVT LTDBitfarm AS

In-app purchases

2 purchases

Chroma8

Subscriptions2
  • Chroma8 Pro7 Days trial$3.991 Month
  • Chroma8 Pro7 Days trial$24.991 Year
None

PIXIO Pixel Studio

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is Chroma8 free?
Chroma8 is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is PIXIO Pixel Studio free?
PIXIO Pixel Studio is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Do Chroma8 or PIXIO Pixel Studio have ads?
Chroma8 shows ads; PIXIO Pixel Studio does not.

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